He was not in the trap at
all, but had walked carefully round it. The splashing was made in
tearing one fish to pieces with his claws, and freeing the other from
a stake that held it.

After that he would not go near the shallows; for a new experience had
come into his life, leaving its shadow dark behind it. He who was king
of all he surveyed from the old blasted pine on the crag's top, who
had always heretofore been the hunter, now knew what it meant to be
hunted. And the fear of it was in his eyes, I think, and softened
their fierce gleam when I looked into them again, weeks later, by his
own nest on the mountain.

Simmo entered also into our hunting, but without enthusiasm or
confidence. He had chased the same eagle before--all one summer, in
fact, when a sportsman, whom he was guiding, had offered him twenty
dollars for the royal bird's skin. But Old Whitehead still wore it
triumphantly; and Simmo prophesied for him long life and a natural
death. "No use hunt-um dat heagle," he said simply. "I try once an'
can't get near him. He see everyt'ing; and wot he don't see, he hear.
'Sides, he kin _feel_ danger. Das why he build nest way off, long
ways, O don' know where." This last with a wave of his arm to include
the universe. Cheplahgan, Old Cloud Wings, he proudly called the bird
that had defied him in a summer's hunting.

At first I had hunted him like any other savage; partly, of course, to
get his skin for the curator; partly, perhaps, to save the settler's
lambs over on the Madawaska; but chiefly just to kill him, to exult in
his death flaps, and to rid the woods of a cruel tyrant. Gradually,
however, a change came over me as I hunted; I sought him less and less
for his skin and his life, and more and more for himself, to know all
about him. I used to watch him by the hour from my camp on the big
lake, sailing quietly over Caribou Point, after he had eaten with his
little ones, and was disposed to let Ismaquehs go on with his fishing
in peace. He would set his great wings to the breeze and sit like a
kite in the wind, mounting steadily in an immense spiral, up and up,
without the shadow of effort, till the eye grew dizzy in following.
And I loved to watch him, so strong, so free, so sure of
himself--round and round, up and ever up, without hurry, without
exertion; and every turn found the heavens nearer and the earth spread
wider below. Now head and tail gleam silver white in the sunshine now
he hangs motionle