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 myste