The Log School-House on the Columbia

by Hezekiah Butterworth

  CHAPTER V.

  THE NEST OF THE FISHING EAGLE.

  Benjamin continued to attend the school, but it was evident that he did sowith an injured heart, and chiefly out of love for the old chief, hisfather. He had a high regard for his teacher, whose kindness wasunfailing, and he showed a certain partiality for Gretchen; but he was asa rule silent, and there were dark lines on his forehead that showed thathe was unhappy. He would not be treated as an inferior, and he seemed tofeel that he was so regarded by the scholars.

  He began to show a peculiar kind of contempt for all of the pupils exceptGretchen. He pretended not to see them, hear them, or to be aware of theirpresence or existence. He would pass through a group of boys as though theplace was vacant, not so much as moving his eye from the direct path. Hecame and went, solitary and self-contained, proud, cold, and revengeful.

  But this indifference was caused by sensitiveness and the feeling that hehad been slighted. The dark lines relaxed, and his face wore a kindly glowwhenever his teacher went to his desk--if the split-log bench for abook-rest might be so called. "I would give my life for Gretchen and you,"he said one day to Mr. Mann; and added: "I would save them all for you."

  There was a cluster of gigantic trees close by the school-house, nearlytwo hundred feet high. The trees, which were fir, had only dry stumps oflimbs for a distance of nearly one hundred feet from the ground. At thetop, or near the top, the green leaves or needles and dead boughs hadmatted together and formed a kind of shelf or eyrie, and on this a pair offishing eagles had made their nest.

  The nest had been there many years, and the eagles had come back to itduring the breeding season and reared their young.

  For a time after the opening of the school none of the pupils seemed togive any special attention to this high nest. It was a cheerful sight atnoon to see the eagles wheel in the air, or the male eagle come from theglimmering hills and alight beside his mate.

  One afternoon a sudden shadow like a falling cloud passed by the half-openshutter of the log school-house and caused the pupils to start. There wasa sharp cry of distress in the air, and the master looked out and said:

  "Attend to your books, children; it is only the eagle."

  But again and again the same swift shadow, like the fragment of astorm-cloud, passed across the light, and the wild scream of the birdcaused the scholars to watch and to listen. The cry was that of agony andaffright, and it was so recognized by Benjamin, whose ear and eye wereopen to Nature, and who understood the voices and cries of the wild andwinged inhabitants of the trees and air.

  He raised his hand.

  "May I go see?"

  The master bowed silently. The boy glided out of the door, and was heardto exclaim:

  "Look! look! the nest--the nest!"

  The master granted the school a recess, and all in a few moments werestanding without the door peering into the tall trees.

  The long dry weather and withering sun had caused the dead boughs toshrink and to break beneath the great weight of the nest that rested uponthem. The eagle's nest was in ruins. It had fallen upon the lower boughs,and two young half-fledged eaglets were to be seen hanging helplessly on afew sticks in mid-air and in danger of falling to the ground.

  It was a bright afternoon. The distress of the two birds was pathetic, andtheir cries called about them other birds, as if in sympathy.

  The eagles seldom descended to any point near the plain in their flight,but mounted, as it were, to the sun, or floated high in the air; but intheir distress this afternoon they darted downward almost to the ground,as though appealing for help for their young.

  While the school was watching this curious scene the old chief of theUmatillas came up the cool highway or trail, to go home with Benjaminafter school.

  The eagles seemed to know him. As he joined the pitying group, the femaleeagle descended as in a spasm of grief, and her wing swept his plume. Sheuttered a long, tremulous cry as she passed and ascended to her young.

  "She call," said the old chief. "She call me."

  "I go," said Benjamin, with a look at his father.

  "Yes, go--she call. She call--the God overhead he call. Go!"

  A slender young pine ran up beside one of the giant trees, tall and green.In a moment Benjamin was seen ascending this pine to a point where hecould throw himself upon the smallest of the great trees and grasp theladder of the lower dead branches. Up and up he went in the view of all,until he had reached a height of some hundred and fifty feet.

  The eagles wheeled around him, describing higher circles as he ascended.He reached the young eagles at last, but passed by them. What was he goingto do?

  There was a shelf of green boughs above him, which would bear the weightof a nest. He went up to them at a distance of nearly two hundred feet. Hethen began to gather up the fallen sticks of the old nest, and to breakoff new sticks and to construct a new nest. The old chief watched him withpride, and, turning to the master, said:

  "Ah-a--that is my boy. He be me. I was he once--it is gone now--what Iwas."

  When Benjamin had made a nest he descended, and at the peril of his ownlife, on the decayed limbs, he rescued the two young eagles that werehanging with heads downward and open beaks. He carried them up to the newnest and placed them in it, and began to descend.

  But a withered bough that he grasped was too slender for his weight, andbroke. He grasped another, but that too gave way. He tried to drop intothe top of the tall young pine below him, but, in his effort to get intoposition to do so, limb after limb of dead wood broke, and he came fallingto the earth, amid the startled looks of the chief and the cries of thechildren.

  The ground was soft, and his body lay for a time half imbedded in it.

  He was senseless, and blood streamed from his nose and reddened his eyes.The old chief seized his arm and tried to raise him, but the effortbrought no sign of life, and his body was lowered slowly back again by theagonized father, who sat down and dropped his head on his son's breast.

  Mr. Mann brought water and wet the boy's lips and bathed his brow. He thenplaced his hand over the boy's heart and held it there. There was a longsilence. The old chief watched the teacher's hand. He seemed waiting for aword of hope; but Mr. Mann did not speak.

  The old chief lifted his head at last, and said; appealingly:

  "Boston tilicum, you do not know how I feel! You do not know--the birdsknow--_you_ do not know!"

  The teacher rubbed the boy's breast and arms, and said:

  "He will revive."

  "What, Boston tilicum?"

  "He will _live_."

  "My boy?"

  "Yes."

  The dark face brightened. The old man clasped the boy's hand and drew itto his breast. The children attempted to brush the earth out of the younghero's dark, matted hair, but the old chief said, mysteriously:

  "No touch him! he is mine."

  At last a convulsive movement passed over the boy's body. The teacheragain pressed his hand on the heart of his pupil, and he quicklyexclaimed: "It beats."

  The fiery sun gleamed from the snowy mountains. There were cool murmurs ofwinds in the trees, and they sent forth a resinous odor into the air. Thebalm dropped down like a messenger of healing.

  Presently the boy's eyes opened and gazed steadily into the blue air.

  The eagles were wheeling about the trees. The boy watched them, as thoughnothing had passed. They were making narrowing circles, and at last eachalighted on the new nest beside their young.

  He turned his face slowly toward his father.

  "Saved!" he said. "They are happy. I fell. Let's go."

  He rose up. As he did so the male eagle rose from his nest and, uttering aglad scream, wheeled in the sky and made his way through the crimson hazetoward the fishing grounds of the lower Columbia.

  The chief's eye followed him for a time; then the old man turned a happyface on the schoolmaster and children and said:

  "I know how he feels--the Manitou overhead--he made the hearts of a
ll;yours--the birds--mine. He is glad!"

  There was something beautiful and pathetic in the old chief's sense of thecommon heart and feeling of all conscious beings. The very eagles seemedto understand it; and Master Mann, as he turned away from the school-housethat day, said to Gretchen:

  "I myself am being taught. I am glad to learn all this large life. I hopethat you will one day become a teacher."

  Gretchen went home that afternoon with a glad heart. Benjamin did notreturn to the school again for several days, and when he came back itseemed to be with a sense of humiliation. He seemed to feel somehow thathe ought not to have fallen from the tree.

  The fourth of July came, and Master Mann had invited the school to cometogether on the holiday for patriotic exercises. He had one of the pupilsread the Declaration of Independence on the occasion, and Gretchen playedthe President's March on the violin. He himself made an historicaladdress, and then joined in some games out of doors under the trees.

  He brought to the school-house that day an American flag, which he hungover the desk during the exercises. When the school went out to play hesaid:

  "I wish I could hang the flag from a pole, or from the top of one of thetrees."

  Benjamin's face brightened.

  "I will go," he said; "I will go _up_."

  "Hang it on the eagle's nest," said one of the pupils. "The eagle is thenational bird."

  Mr. Mann saw that to suspend the national emblem from the eagle's nestwould be a patriotic episode of the day, and he gave the flag to Benjamin,saying:

  "Beware of the rotten limbs."

  "I no woman," said Benjamin; and, waving the flag, he moved like asquirrel up the trees. He placed the flag on the nest, while the eagleswheeled around him, screaming wildly. He descended safely, and made theincident an object lesson, as Mr. Mann repeated the ode to the Americaneagle, found at that time in many reading-books.

  While Mr. Mann was doing so, and had reached the line--

  "Bird of Columbia, well art thou," etc.,

  one of the eagles swept down to the nest and seized the banner in histalons. He rose again into the air and circled high, then with a swift,strong curve of the wings, came down to the nest again, and, seizing theflag, tore it from the nest and bore it aloft to the sky.

  _The eagle soared away in the blue heavens, and the flagstreamed after him in his talons._]

  It was a beautiful sight. The air was clear, the far peaks were serene,and the glaciers of Mount Hood gleamed like a glory of crystallized light.The children cheered. The bird soared away in the blue heavens, and theflag streamed after him in his talons. He dropped the flag at last overa dark, green forest. The children cheered again.

  It was miles away.

  "I go find it," said Benjamin; and he darted away from the place and wasnot seen until the next day, when he returned, bringing the flag with him.

  Marlowe Mann never forgot that fourth of July on the Columbia.