Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/156

 play, were likely soonest to approach the surface of their glimmering, golden world.

Suddenly he paused in his slow wheeling, dipped forward, and dropped, with narrowed wings, down, down from his dizzy height to within something like fifty yards of the water. Here he stopped, with wings widespread, and hovered, almost motionless, slowly sinking like a waft of thistle down when the breeze has died away. He had seen a fair-sized trout rise lightly and suck in a fly which had fallen on the bright surface. The ringed ripples of the rise had hardly smoothed away when the trout rose again. As it gulped its tiny, half-drowned prey the poised bird shot downward again—urged by a powerful surge of his wings before he closed them—this time with terrific speed. He struck the water with a resounding splash, disappeared beneath it, and rose again two or three yards beyond with the trout securely gripped in his talons. Shaking the bright drops in a shower from his wings he flapped hurriedly away with his capture to his nest on the steep slope of the hogback. He flew with eager haste, as fast as his broad wings could carry him; for he feared lest his one dreaded foe, the great, white-headed eagle, should swoop down out of space on hissing pinions and rob him of his prize.