The hawk sprang from the wrist, and he watched the bird flying away, like a wild bird, down the morning sky, which had begun in orange, and was turning to crimson.  “Never will they get that bird back!  You have lost your hawk,” Owen said to the Arab.

The Arab smiled, and taking a live pigeon out of his bournous, he allowed it to flutter in the air for a moment, at the end of a string.  A moment was sufficient; the clear round eye had caught sight of the flutter of wings, and soon came back, sailing past, high up in the air.

“A fine flight,” the Arab said, “the bird is at pitch; now is the time to flush the covey.”  A dog was sent forward, and a dozen partridges got up.  And they flew, the terrible hawk in pursuit, fearing their natural enemy above them more than any rain of lead.  Owen pressed his horse into a gallop, and he saw the hawk drop out of the sky.  The partridge shrieked, and a few seconds afterwards some feathers floated down the wind.

Well, he had seen a falcon kill a partridge, but would the falconer be able to lure back his hawk?  That was what he wanted to see, and, curious and interested as a boy in his first rat hunt, he galloped forward until stopped by the falconer, who explained that the moment was always an anxious one, for were the hawk approached from behind, or approached suddenly, it “might carry”—­that is to say, might bear away its prey for a hundred yards, and when it had done this once it would be likely to do so again, giving a good deal of trouble.  The falconer approached the hawk very gently, the bird raised its head to look at the falconer, and immediately after dipped its beak again into the partridge’s breast.

Owen expected the bird to fly away, but, continuing to approach, the falconer stooped and reaching out his hand, drew the partridge towards him, knowing the hawk would not leave it; and when he had hold of the jesses, the head was cut from the partridge and opened, for it is the brain the hawk loves; and the ferocity with which this one picked out the eye and gobbled it awoke Owen’s admiration again.

“Verily, a thing beyond good and evil, a Nietzschean bird.”

He had seen a hawk flown and return to the lure, he had seen a hawk stoop at its prey, and had seen a hawk recaptured; so the mystery of hawking was at an end for him, the mystery had been unravelled, and now there was nothing for him to do but to watch other birds and to learn the art of hawking, for every flight would be different.

The sun had risen, filling the air with a calm, reposeful glow; the woods were silent, the boughs hung lifeless and melancholy, every leaf distinct at the end of its stem, weary of its life, “unable to take any further interest in anything” Owen said, and the cavalcade rode on in silence.

“A little too warm the day is, without sufficient zest in it,” one of the falconers remarked, for his hawk was flying lazily, only a few yards above the ground, too idle to mount the sky, to get at pitch; and as the bird passed him, Owen admired the thin body, and the javelin-like head, and the soft silken wings, the feathered thighs, and the talons so strong and fierce.