3 APRIL 1953, Page 9

The Hawk

By N. M. ROBERTS " O.K. ? " came Dougie's voice from below. He looked down, and saw his face turned up so sharply that the pale oval seemed to be laid 'flat on his shoulders. " O.K. 1 " he called back. Dougie was the better climber, but they both knew he would be no good on the bare pole eighty feet above ground. His head went if he was high and exposed. He'd been sure of his own since the time they had lowered him over -the cliff on the end of a rope after the raven's nest. There had been an instant of terror when he swung free, sky and sea 'melting into one and himself melting into them. Then he had twisted round to face the cliff and clutched at the rock. The granite had been live from the sun, and it was like a big, warm hand gripping both of his and steadyinap them. After that he had felt he would never be scared of heights again.

He was into the first clump of foliage. There was a resiny smell; the twigs fingered his face and probed at the opening of his shirt. He shoved his way through, and started on the second leg of the climb. The trunk was narrowing now, but it still blocked his vision, as he faced it. Below him the green branches (poked solid as a platform; above there was another thick mat of green. .

He tried to picture what the sparrow-hawk's nest, would be like. He was sworn to take only one young bird, 'however many there were, and he wanted a male. Please God thal when he grabbed into the live mass, with the carrion stink and the cruel young beaks and claws, he grabbed right. He knew the female bird was bigger and likely to fly better for game, but he wanted his first hawk to be a male. 'Best of all he would have liked a haggard, a bird caught wild in adult plumage. Training a fledgling was nothing compared with fighting a full-grown bird, your will against his, until, after the weeks of patience and watching and praying almost, you could fly a properly-manned hawk that came to your voice and no other. A falconer's voice.

" Hollo I " he shouted suddenly to the sky, for the day when his hawk would come stooping out of it to' his wrist; and " Hollo-o-o ! " he heard in answer from Dougie's half-broken crow miles, below him. , Well, he didn't know how to get an adult hawk, so his first bird must be an eyas. In Damascus, he had read, there was -a market where you could buy. trained hawks. The Arabs brought them in from the Syrian desert, fierce, eagle-faced men with the birds on their right wrists. not on the left, as in. Europe. Who would want a hawk that somebody else had manned ?. Better his own eyas.

The second layer of foliage was 'not so thick; he had shouldered through it in no time and *as on the last fifteen feet that would bring him up to the nest. The thing was to go for an inner branch of the fork so that he could get above it and reach down. His arms were tiring. He grunted as he hauled himself up the laSt bit. Now the nest was within reach of his hand, and he could hear the young birds mewing. He would not let himself look into it yet, though.. First, he would vike his eyes from the scaly bark just in front of his nose, look round, look up, and only then look down into his first sparrow-hawk's nest. He leaned outward from the slender branch and raised his eyes.

There was a blue, huge sky, and he was alone in it. Tho tree, standing near the edge of the copse, cleared the tops of its neighbours, so that he looked down on a heaving floor of green that cut him off from the sound earth. The branch to which he was clinging swayed and quivered in a wind that came in pettish gusts. It was the sick moment of dangling over the edge of the cliff again. He shut his eyes and 'gripped tighter, waiting for virtue to come out of the wood as it had come out of the rock, but there was no comfort in it Then he had leaned against the shoulders of the earth itself; this was a twig, a toy, a bean-pole, something he could plant and take up again with his own hands. The bile rose in his throat as he opened his eyes; he choked, and felt the damp coming on his forehead and his grasp going limp.

Inside his head there was a tight bandage that was winding itself like a spindle, the loose end making slack circles sound and round the horizon. When it was all unwound it would jerk at the spool and pull him oil' his branch. He would fall, not earthward, but skyward, diving up to be drowned in the vacant blue where there was not a cloud 'even to clutch at. His right hand had come off the branch. The left was crooked round the fork still; the fingers had let go their hold and were trembling as if each had a life of its own.

He had come up here to fetch something, but he could not think what it was. He could only hang where he was till the sky plucked him out of the tree like a dead, bird. A bird —a bird—his hawk ! He could hardly see now, but his shaking right hand groped, fumbled, and was in the nest. Tho heat was so startling that he almost cried out. The young birds were writhing in a quick heap like maggots; buried among them his hand could \feel the blood pulsing and scorching under the feathers. His sight cleared; he closed his fingers on one of the eyases. They were not shaking any more. The young were further grown than he and Dougie had thought; another week might have been too late. .For a moment ho held up the bird, mewing and spitting with terror and rage; then pushed it into the front of his shirt and buttoned the neck up close. Thorns and spears were launched against his bare chest; he laughed at the many small pains and began slither- ing and scrambling from branch to branch, free and happy like somebody running downhill. Through the lowest clump of branches he looked down at Dougie dancing with excite- ment. " Did you do it " he yelled. ' Pat, did you do it ? " Fourteen feet above ground the spike on his right foot stubbed into the wood; then splintered out as he put his weight on it. Not tolfall on the bird. Break his arms and his legs and his skull if he must; only not to fall on the bird after all this. He landed flat on his back- with a force that took his speech away and gave him a stabbing pain where the air had been in his lungs. Dougie's face bent over him, with a dirty, mark on one cheek. He could taste blood in his mouth where he had bitten his lip in falling. -There were spots of blood on the front of his shirt; the little fury inside it was flaying him, " What happened ? " Dougie was asking. He caught at painful breath and spat out the salt taste. " I've got a hawk," he said.