Algernon Blackwood

“ Their eyes are as sharp and quick as eagles’.”
“Poor things,” said George; “perhaps they are crying for the stolen eggs.”
“You are too tenderhearted to be an egg collector,” laughed Fred. “It’s a good thing the farmers are not, or we should never have hens’ eggs for breakfast.”
“I don’t mind taking one egg from a nest, or even two, if there are plenty left, and the bird won’t miss them,” replied George; “but it seems rather a shame to take all.”
“They have probably laid a lot more by this time,” remarked Edwin, who knew nothing whatever of the habits of hawks, and little of any other birds. ”

“ Dick Ormsby, who worked on the farm that adjoined old Mutton’s, had accomplished this feat, and had found two nests. With four eggs in a little bag tied round his neck, his companions had pulled him slowly up the dizzy distance, and landed him safely over the edge of the cliff. In his frantic efforts to ward off the blows of the parent birds, however, and prevent himself at the same time from swinging out too much from the rocks and fraying the rope on which his life depended, he had struck the eggs a blow that had smashed two of them beyond all power of mending. ”

“ It was one thing to let him down, foot by foot, but it was quite another thing to pull him up, inch by inch. The weight seemed twice as great. The brothers strained every muscle, and hauled till the rope cut into their hands and the perspiration poured in streams down their faces. Loop by loop they passed the rope round the rock, inch by inch it crept up toward them over the brink, and at last they had the satisfaction and relief of feeling the signal which meant that George was on the ledge and able to give the three pulls. ”

“ No one knows how to carry birds’ eggs in his mouth without breaking them better than I do.”
“Well, now,” slowly began George, who had not been heard from at all since the bold project of robbing the nest had been under discussion, “don’t you fellows think it is rather a cruel trick to play? One of the nests is already empty. It only had two eggs in it, and Fred said that Dick took them both. The other one can only have one or two left in it.”
“It only has one,” interrupted Harry, “because Dick divided the two eggs, and put one in the empty nest.” ”

“ Slowly, foot by foot, Harry and Edwin let out the rope, which had been carefully looped round the angle of the big boulder. The strain did not seem too great for them at first, and sometimes, when George found a chance foothold on the face of the cliff, there was no weight at all. A hundred feet is a long way, though, when a boy, and a brother at that, is hanging at the other end of a rope that can only move a foot at a time. ”

“ About a hundred feet from the summit, on a narrow ledge formed by the dislodgment, years before, of some heavy mass of rock, the hawks had built their clumsy nests of sticks and twigs. Far above their heads, as the boys stood in Farmer Mutton’s meadow and shaded their eyes to look upwards, they could just make out the two fierce birds, mere specks in the sky, circling round and round, many hundred feet above the summit of the cliffs. From time to time their shrill cry, that had something plaintive in it, dropped downward to them.
“They can see us far better than we can see them,” said Fred ”

“ At least two-thirds of their holidays were spent in looking for specimens with which to enlarge their collection; and Edwin, the youngest of the three, who had always joined their expeditions as a sort of golf “caddie” (to carry the bag and climbing irons) , was now for the first time admitted seriously into the partnership.
“Mr. Winter has added a wonderful new hawk’s egg to his collection, I believe,” May continued quietly, after a pause. “He told me the other day that he bought it from a man who climbed down Farmer Mutton’s cliffs to the nest and⁠—”
“Farmer Mutton’s cliffs!” ”

“ She recognised that a judicious concession to the enemy might save her much subsequent teasing, and, being of a naturally sweet disposition, she contrived that the boys should have their egg-collecting hero all to themselves for the greater part of the evening. ”