Отрывок из книги
S. L. Bensusan
Published by Good Press, 2021
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He had but one care. His mate, who had built and lived with him for five long years, had disappeared a month before, and he could find no trace of her. In vain he had travelled as far as Caithness on the east, and to Foula among the Shetlands in the north, and down south as far as Perthshire, screaming the old love-cry as he went that she might hear and answer him. She had left the eyrie as usual one morning; they never hunted together, and he had not seen her again. Nor would he, for she had failed to find food and had been tempted by carrion. The carrion—a dead chicken—covered a steel fox-trap, and though, in her frenzied fight for liberty, she had torn the controlling staple from the ground, a keeper had passed within shot before she could get clear of the wood, and now her skin was being stuffed by a Perth taxidermist, and she would presently appear under a glass case in the hall of the shooting lodge by the loch side.
One day differed only from another by reason of the success or failure of its hunting. If rabbits and grouse—red, black, or white—were plentiful, the Golden Eagle sought no other food and returned to his eyrie at peace with all the world. But there were days in the winter season when nothing was to be found, or more often still when the quarry got to cover, and then the eagle would come home screaming with rage, and the red fox would slink to his earth and remain until he was well assured that the great bird was asleep.
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