After traversing the camp, the small party turned to the left, and proceeded to the lake, whose umbrageous banks they intended to follow for several miles. As we have stated, the morning was magnificent, all nature was laughing, a multitude of birds of every description and colour, hidden beneath the foliage, were singing merrily; squirrels leapt from branch to branch, and splendid elks, terrified by the approach of the travellers, bounded away a few yards from them, while hideous alligators wallowed in the mud pell-mell with enormous frogs which uttered frightful croaks.
Our travellers rode thus for some two hours, and not a word had been spoken since the start, each seeming to be buried in thought, when suddenly a great movement was heard beneath the trees and shrubs around them. The birds suddenly became silent, and, leaving their nests, went to the foot of the trees, where they timidly concealed themselves in the grass, while the frogs croaking on the nymphæas dashed into the water. At the same moment the shadow of two mighty wings was visible on the sand; the Canadian mechanically raised his eyes, and he perceived a white-headed eagle soaring in the blue sky.
The eagle, after hovering in wide circles for some minutes almost over the head of the travellers, dropped with lightning speed into a copse, whence it emerged almost immediately, holding in its powerful claws a luckless parrot, which uttered pitiable cries of distress, and struggled vainly to escape from the deadly grasp of its implacable foe. The eagle rose with extraordinary rapidity, and soon attained an enormous elevation. The Canadian had anxiously followed the incidents of this drama, and perhaps instinctively cocked his rifle.
"All the worse," he muttered, at the moment when the eagle, which only appeared like a black dot in the air, was about to become invisible. "I will save it."
With a movement swift as thought he raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. The Spaniards halted, and looked in amazement at the adventurer; but the latter, whose eyes were obstinately fixed on the sky, did not seem to notice the attention of which he was the object. The eagle, suddenly arrested in its flight, fell with headlong speed, turning in space. Suddenly its claws relaxed, and the delivered victim, half wild with terror, though unwounded, fell perpendicularly for some seconds with its enemy; but, suddenly opening its wings, the poor parrot soared, and then resumed its flight with a long cry of delight, while the eagle writhed in its death throe at the hunter's feet. The Canadian's bullet had passed right through its body.