Chapter 7 - Page 2

ravine. Rudy sat there like a fly on a rocking blade of grass, which a nest-building bird has dropped in its hasty flight, on the edge of a factory chimney; but the fly had the advantage of escaping by its wings, poor Rudy had none, he was almost sure to break his neck. The wind whistled around him and the roaring water from the thawed glaciers, the palace of the Ice-Maiden, poured itself into the abyss.

He gave the ladders a swinging motion--as the spider swings herself by her long thread--he seized them with a strong and steady hand, but they shook as if they had worn-out hasps.

The five long ladders looked like a tremulous reed, as they reached the nest and hung perpendicularly over the rocky wall. Now came the most dangerous part; Rudy had to climb as a cat climbs; but Rudy could do this, for the cat had taught it to him. He did not feel that Vertigo trod in the air behind him and stretched her polypus-like arms towards him. Now he stood on the highest round of the ladder and perceived that he was not sufficiently high to enable him to see into the nest; he could reach it with his hands. He tried how firm the twigs were, which plaited in one another formed the bottom of the nest; when he had assured himself of a thick and immoveable one, he swung himself off of the ladder. He had his breast and head over the nest, out of which streamed towards him a stifling stench of carrion; torn lambs, chamois and birds lay decomposing around him. Vertigo, who had no power over him, blew poisonous vapours into his face to stupify him; below in the black, yawning abyss, sat the Ice-Maiden herself, on the hastening water, with her long greenish-white hair and stared at him with death-like eyes, which were pointed at him like two rifle barrels.

"Now, I shall catch you!"

Seated in one corner of the eagle's nest was the eaglet, who could not fly yet, although so strong and powerful. Rudy fastened his eyes on it, held himself with his whole strength firmly by one hand, and with the other threw the noose around it. It was captured alive, its legs were in the knot; Rudy cast the rope over his shoulder, so that the animal dangled some distance below him, and sustained himself by another rope which hung down, until his feet touched the upper round of the ladder.

"Hold fast, do not think that you will fall and then you are sure not to do so!" That was the old lesson, and he followed it; held fast, climbed, was sure not to fall and he did not.

There resounded a strong jodling, and a joyous one too. Rudy stood on the firm, rocky ground with the young eaglet.