Sister Teresa. George Moore

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СКАЧАТЬ The night was filled with cries as if the camp had been attacked. But the disturbances was caused by the stampeding of the horses; three had broken their tethers and had gone away, after first tumbling into the reeds, over the hills, neighing frantically. As his horse was not one of the three it did not matter; the Arabs would catch their horses or would fail to catch them, and indifferent he stood watching the moon hanging low over the landscape, a badly drawn circle, but admirably soft to look upon, casting a gentle, mysterious light down the lake. The silence was filled with the lake's warble, and the ducks kept awake by the moon chattered as they dozed, a soft cooing chatter like women gossiping; an Arab came from the wood with dry branches; the flames leaped up, showing through the grey woof of the tent; and, listening to the crackling, Owen muttered "Resinous wood … tamarisk and mastic." He fell asleep soon after, and this time his sleep was longer, though not so deep … He was watching hawks flying in pursuit of a heron when a measured tramp of hooves awoke him, and hard, guttural voices.

      "The Arabs have arrived," he said, and drawing aside the curtain of his tent, he saw at least twenty coming through the blue dusk, white bournous, scimitars, and long-barrelled guns! "Saharians from the desert, the true bedouin."

      "The bedouin but not the true Saharian," his dragoman informed him.

       And Owen retreated into his tent, thinking of the hawks which the

       Arabs carried on their wrists, and how hawking had been declining in

       Europe since the sixteenth century. But it still flourished in

       Africa, where to-day is the same as yesterday.

      And while thinking of the hawks he heard the voices of the Arabs growing angrier. Some four or five spurred their horses and were about to ride away; but the dragoman called after them, and Owen cried out, "As if it matters to me which hawk is flown first." The quarrel waxed louder, and then suddenly ceased, and when Owen came out of his tent he saw an Arab take the latchet of a bird's hood in his teeth and pull the other end with his right hand. "A noble and melancholy bird," he said, and he stood a long while admiring the narrow, flattened head, the curved beak, so well designed to rend a prey, and the round, clear eye, which appeared to see through him and beyond him, and which in a few minutes would search the blue air mile after mile.

      The hawk sprang from the wrist, and he watched the bird flying away, like a wild bird, down the morning sky, which had begun in orange, and was turning to crimson. "Never will they get that bird back! You have lost your hawk," Owen said to the Arab.

      The Arab smiled, and taking a live pigeon out of his bournous, he allowed it to flutter in the air for a moment, at the end of a string. A moment was sufficient; the clear round eye had caught sight of the flutter of wings, and soon came back, sailing past, high up in the air.

      "A fine flight," the Arab said, "the bird is at pitch; now is the time to flush the covey." A dog was sent forward, and a dozen partridges got up. And they flew, the terrible hawk in pursuit, fearing their natural enemy above them more than any rain of lead. Owen pressed his horse into a gallop, and he saw the hawk drop out of the sky. The partridge shrieked, and a few seconds afterwards some feathers floated down the wind.

      Well, he had seen a falcon kill a partridge, but would the falconer be able to lure back his hawk? That was what he wanted to see, and, curious and interested as a boy in his first rat hunt, he galloped forward until stopped by the falconer, who explained that the moment was always an anxious one, for were the hawk approached from behind, or approached suddenly, it "might carry"—that is to say, might bear away its prey for a hundred yards, and when it had done this once it would be likely to do so again, giving a good deal of trouble. The falconer approached the hawk very gently, the bird raised its head to look at the falconer, and immediately after dipped its beak again into the partridge's breast.

      Owen expected the bird to fly away, but, continuing to approach, the falconer stooped and reaching out his hand, drew the partridge towards him, knowing the hawk would not leave it; and when he had hold of the jesses, the head was cut from the partridge and opened, for it is the brain the hawk loves; and the ferocity with which this one picked out the eye and gobbled it awoke Owen's admiration again.

      "Verily, a thing beyond good and evil, a Nietzschean bird."

      He had seen a hawk flown and return to the lure, he had seen a hawk stoop at its prey, and had seen a hawk recaptured; so the mystery of hawking was at an end for him, the mystery had been unravelled, and now there was nothing for him to do but to watch other birds and to learn the art of hawking, for every flight would be different.

      The sun had risen, filling the air with a calm, reposeful glow; the woods were silent, the boughs hung lifeless and melancholy, every leaf distinct at the end of its stem, weary of its life, "unable to take any further interest in anything" Owen said, and the cavalcade rode on in silence.

      "A little too warm the day is, without sufficient zest in it," one of the falconers remarked, for his hawk was flying lazily, only a few yards above the ground, too idle to mount the sky, to get at pitch; and as the bird passed him, Owen admired the thin body, and the javelin-like head, and the soft silken wings, the feathered thighs, and the talons so strong and fierce.

      "He will lose his bird if he doesn't get at pitch," the falconer muttered, and he seemed ashamed of his hawk when it alighted in the branches, and stood there preening itself in the vague sunlight. But suddenly it woke up to its duty, and going in pursuit of a partridge, stooped and brought it to earth.

      "A fine kill; we shall have some better sport with the ducks."

      Owen asked the dragoman to translate what the falconer said.

      "He said it was a fine kill. He is proud of his bird."

      Some Arabs rode away, and Owen heard that a boat would be required to put up the ducks; and he was told the duck is the swiftest bird in the air once it gets into flight, but if the peregrine is at pitch it will stoop, and bring the duck to earth, though the duck is by five times the heavier bird. The teal is a bird which is even more difficult for the hawk to overtake, for it rises easier than the duck; but if the hawk be at pitch it will strike down the quick teal. One of the Arabs reined in his horse, and following the line of the outstretched finger Owen saw far away in a small pool or plash of water three teal swimming. As soon as the hawk swooped the teal dived, but not the least disconcerted, the hawk, as if understanding that the birds were going to be put up, rose to pitch and waited, "quite professional like," Owen said. The beautiful little drake was picked out of a tuft of alfa-grass. But perhaps it was the snipe that afforded the best sport.

      At mid-day the falconers halted for rest and a meal, and Owen passed all the hawks in review, learning that the male, the tercel, is not so much prized in falconry as the female, which is larger and fiercer. There was not one Barbary falcon, for on making inquiry Owen was told that the bird he was looking at was a goshawk, a much more beautiful hawk it seemed to him than the peregrine, especially in colour; the wings were not so dark, inclining to slate, and under the wings the breast was white, beautifully barred. It stood much higher than the other hawks; and Owen admired the bird's tail, so long, and he understood how it governed the bird's flight, even before he was told that if a hawk lost one of its tail feathers it would not be able to fly again that season unless the feather was replaced; and the falconer showed Owen a supply of feathers, all numbered, for it would not do to supply a missing third feather with a fourth; and the splice was a needle inserted into the ends of the feathers and bound fast with fine thread. The bird's beauty had not escaped Owen's notice, but he had been so busy with the peregrines all the morning that he had not had time to ask why this bird wore no hood, and why it had not been flown. Now he learnt that the gosshawk is a short-winged hawk, which does not go up in the air, and get at pitch, and stoop at its prey like the peregrine, but flies directly after СКАЧАТЬ