Very much disgusted with his own thoughtlessness, Ned turned toward a slope to the east and tried to make his way off the dangerous elevation. As he did so, he heard a whir of wings and felt fanning pinions brush his back.
Turning he saw two huge eagles hovering in the air hardly a yard away. Their vicious eyes were fixed angrily upon him. Involuntarily the boy reached for his revolver but, of course, did not find it in its usual place. It reposed on the shelf hundreds of feet away!
“Now,” thought the boy, “I seem to be having the quiet little communion with nature I set out to attain! If these eagles actually attack me here, unarmed as I am, I’m afraid there’ll be somebody falling over the precipice in a short time.”
While these thoughts were passing through the excited mind of the boy, the eagles, after taking a long swing in the air, approached him, claws and beak threatening destruction.
It was a peculiar situation. Ned was still standing on a ledge a little more than a foot wide, entirely unarmed except for a large knife which he carried in his pocket. It seemed to him that a battle with the birds there could result in only one way.
He did not entirely abandon hope, but he knew that the chances were against him. It seemed that one powerful stroke from a wing must send him over the precipice.
He drew his knife from his pocket and opened it. He was not a moment too soon, for at that instant one of the eagles slashed at him with a beak which seemed to the boy at that time to be something like three feet in length. Threatened with the knife, the bird flew away, but his mate immediately continued the attack.
While obliged to meet only one bird at a time, Ned succeeded admirably in fighting them off, but directly they both charged at the same instant, and then Ned felt the powerful beaks tearing at his hands, at his legs and at his head. By keeping the blade of his knife flashing constantly before his face, he was able to protect himself when the eagles dashed at his eyes!
More than once he was thrown to the ledge by the fanning of great wings which seemed to the boy to be operated by sixty-horse power motors. Time after time he lay almost at the very verge of the precipice. Fighting desperately with knife and feet, however, he managed to escape the claws of the great birds.