Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/248

 fence, then he went back and then went out again as though he were taking exercise. Seeing me he hastened back to his corner, limping and hopping, and throwing back his head, opening his beak, with his feathers ruffled, at once prepared for battle. None of my caresses could soften him; he pecked and struggled, would not take meat from me, and all the time I was near him he used to stare intently in my face with his savage piercing eyes. Fierce and solitary he awaited death, mistrustful and hostile to all. At last the convicts seemed to remember him, and though no one had mentioned him, or done anything for him for two months, every one seemed suddenly to feel sympathy for him. They said that they must take the eagle out. “Let him die if he must, but not in prison,” they said.

“To be sure, he is a free, fierce bird, you can’t get him used to prison,” others agreed.

“He’s not like us, it seems,” added some one.

“That’s a silly thing to say. He’s a bird and we are men, aren’t we?”

“The eagle is the king of the forests, brothers,” began Skuratov, but this time they did not listen to him. One day after dinner when the drum had just sounded for us to go to work, they took the eagle, holding his beak, for he began fighting savagely, and carried him out of the prison. We got to the rampart. The twelve men of the party were eagerly curious to see where the eagle would go. Strange to say, they all seemed pleased as though they, too, had won a share of freedom.

“See, the our, one does something for his good, and he keeps biting one,” said the convict who was carrying him, looking at the fierce bird almost with affection.

“Let him go, Mikitka!”

“It’s no use rigging up a Jack-in-the-box for him it seems. Give him freedom, freedom full and free!”

He threw the eagle from the rampart into the plain. It was a cold gloomy day in late autumn, the wind was whistling over the bare plain and rustling in the yellow, withered, tussocky grass of the steppes. The eagle went off in a straight line, fluttering his injured wing, as though in haste to get away from Is anywhere. With curiosity the convicts watched his head flitting through the grass.

“Look at him!” said one dreamily. “He doesn’t look