From the mountain path the yodelling rang out so merry and full-bodied it suggested high spirits and intrepid courage. It was Rudy; he’d gone to see his friend Vesinand.
‘You have to help me! We’ll take Ragli along too. I’ve got to get hold of the young eagle up on the mountain edge.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to get hold of the dark side of the moon first? It’s every bit as easy!’ said Vesinand. ‘You seem in a very good mood, Rudy!’
‘Yes, because I’m thinking of getting married. But right now, speaking seriously, you’d better know how matters stand with me.’
And soon Vesinand and Ragli knew what it was that Rudy wanted.
‘You’re a real daredevil!’ they said, ‘it won’t work! You’ll break your neck!’
‘You don’t fall when you don’t think you’re going to,’ said Rudy.
Towards midnight they set off, taking with them poles, ladders and rope. Their route led between thickets and bushes, across crumbly stones, always upwards, up into the dark night. Down below the water roared, up above the water murmured, rain-clouds drifted through the air. The hunters reached the precipitous mountain edge. It became darker here; the mountain-walls all but met at this point, and only high up, through the narrow crack between them, did the sky show any light at all. Close by, beneath the three young men, was a deep abyss full of torrential water. All three sat there motionless. They’d wait for dawn, when the adult eagle would fly out. She had to be shot first, before there could be any notion of taking the young one. Rudy squatted as still as if he were a portion of the stone he was sitting on. He had his gun in front of him, poised to shoot, his eyes intently on the furthermost cleft where, inside, under the overhanging cliff, the eagle’s nest was hidden. The three hunters waited for a long time.
Now, high above them, came a whizzing, rushing noise. A huge object hovering overhead intensified the darkness. Two gun-barrels took aim as the black eagle-shape flew out of the nest. One shot was fired. For a moment the outstretched wings flapped, and then slowly the bird went down. With its vast body-dimensions and its great wingspan it would surely fill the entire ravine, and in its fall sweep the hunters away. But the eagle sank into the abyss; there was a groaning in the tree-branches and bushes which were broken by the bird’s fall.
And now hectic activity began. Three of the longest ladders were tied together; they had to reach the top. The ladders were set in place on the outermost, last foothold on the edge of the precipice, but they did not reach the top; and the long stretch of cliff higher up, where the nest was hidden in the lee of the furthest jutting protrusion of rock, was as smooth as any ordinary house-wall. After some deliberation the young men agreed they couldn’t do better than to hoist from above two ladders tied together down into the ravine, and then connect these to the three that had already been positioned from below. With great difficulty they dragged the two ladders further up, and there made the ropes fast. Then the ladders were pushed out over the overhanging cliff and so hung freely over the chasm; Rudy was already sitting there on the lowest rung. It was a freezing cold morning, the cloudy mist was drifting downwards from the black cleft. Rudy sat out there like a fly sitting on the bobbing straw that some nest-building bird has dropped on the rim of a tall factory-chimney. But the fly can fly away when the straw begins to slacken, Rudy could only break his neck. The wind was whistling round him, and down in the abyss the hurry-scurrying water roared out from the thaw-beset glacier, the Ice Virgin’s palace.
Now he set the ladder in a swinging movement, like a spider’s web which by means of its long, stretching thread can grip tightly, and when Rudy, at the fourth attempt, touched the tip of the ladders that had been put in place from below and tied together, he got a good hold of them. They were then joined up with strong, confident hands, though they continued to swing as though on worn-out hinges.
The five long ladders now seemed like one long swaying bamboo plant which, leaning against the rock-wall perpendicularly, reached up very close to the eagle’s nest. Now, though, came the most dangerous part: having to crawl as the cat crawls. But Rudy knew how to do this; the tomcat had taught him. He didn’t even feel Her Dizziness treading the air behind him, and stretching out her polyp’s arms after him. He was now standing on the ladder’s topmost rung, and noticed that even here he hadn’t got up high enough to see inside the nest. He could reach it with his hand only. He tested how firm its lowest part was, the thick branches woven together which formed the bottom of the nest. And when he had got secure hold of a stout, trustworthy branch, he swung himself up off the ladder, his body against the branch, until he had his torso and head over the nest itself.
But here a suffocating stench of carrion streamed forth to greet him. Putrescent lambs, chamois and birds lay here dismembered. Her Dizziness, who had not as yet been strong enough to affect him, blew the noxious vapours in his face for him to go giddy, and fall down into the black, gaping deep, into the furious water on which the Ice Virgin herself was sitting, with her long white-green hair, staring with dead eyes like two gun-barrels.
‘Now I’ll take you captive!’
In a corner of the eagle’s nest Rudy saw sitting, large and powerful, the young eagle who was as yet unable to fly. Rudy fixed his eyes on him, held himself with one hand as strongly as he could, and then with his other hand threw a noose round the eaglet. The bird was captured very much alive, his legs caught in the ever-tightening cord. And Rudy slung the noose with the bird in it over his shoulder so that the creature could dangle a good way below him, as now, with the aid of a lowered rope, he held on fast till the tips of his feet gained the topmost rung of the ladder once more.
‘Hold tight. Don’t think you’re going to fall, and fall you won’t!’ It was the old piece of wisdom, and he followed it. Held on tightly, then crawled, was convinced he wouldn’t fall, and fall he did not.
Now a great yodel burst out, very strong and cheery. Rudy was standing on firm rocky ground with his young eagle.