# Gay-Neck, the Story of a Pigeon/Part 1/Chapter 4

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CHAPTER IV
GAY-NECK IN THE HIMALAYAS
ince the rain and the heat in the plains proved excessive, my family decided to take us to the Himalayas. If you take a map of India you will find that in its northeast corner is a town called Darjeeling, standing almost face to face with Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world. After travelling, not too fast, by caravan, several days from Darjeeling, my family, myself and my two pigeons reached the little village of Dentam. There we were ten thousand feet above sea level. At such a height an American mountain or the Alps would have at least some snow, ​but in India, which is in the tropics, and on the Himalayas, hardly thirty degrees north of the equator, the snow line does not commence under ten thousand feet, and the jungle of the foot hills abounding with animals is so cold after September that all its denizens migrate southward.
Let me give you just a slight picture of our setting. Our house of stone and mud overlooked small valleys where tea was grown. Beyond, between serried ridges that stuck out in harsh but majestic curves, were valleys full of rice-fields, maize, and fruit orchards. Further on rose the dark evergreen-clad precipices over which reared thousands of feet of pure white ranges, the Kanchinjinga, the peak Makalu, and the Everest ranges. In the first flush of dawn they looked white; but as the light grew in brightness and the sun rose higher, peak after peak defined itself, not far off in the horizon, but piercing the very middle of the sky whence poured a flood of crimson light like the very blood of benediction.
One usually sees the Himalayas best in the early morning for they are covered with clouds during the rest of the day. Hindus, who are religious people, get up in good time to behold the ​sublime hills and to pray to God. Can there be a better setting to prayers than those mountains most of whose peaks yet remain unexplored and untrodden by man? Their inviolate sanctity is something precious, which remains a perpetual symbol of divinity. Heights like that of the Everest are symbols of the highest reality—God. They are symbolic of God’s mystery, too, for with the exception of the early morning they are as I have said, shrouded with clouds all day. Foreigners who come to India imagine they would like to see them all the time, but let no one complain, for he who has beheld Everest in its morning grandeur and awe-inspiring glory will say “It is too sublime to be gazed at all day long. None could bear it continually before his eyes.”
In July those early morning views of the Everest are not vouchsafed us every day, for it is the month of rain. All the ranges lie in the grip of the most devastating blizzards. Once in a while above the battle of storms and driven snow the peaks appear—a compact mass of hard ice and white fire. They glow intensely in the sunlight, while at their feet the snow clouds ​whirl and fall like fanatical dervishes dancing frenziedly before their terrible God.
During the summer my friend Radja and our teacher in jungle lore, old Ghond, came to visit our home. Radja was about sixteen years old, already a Brahmin priest, and Ghond we always called old, for none knew his age. Both Radja and I were handed over to that most competent of hunters for the purpose of studying under his guidance the secrets of jungle and animal life. Since I have described them in my other books, I need not repeat myself here.
As soon as we had settled down in Dentam, I began to train my pigeons in the art of direction. Whenever we had a clear day we climbed all the forenoon toward the higher peaks amid ilexes and balsam forests, and released our birds from some monastery roof, or from the house of a nobleman. And toward evening when we returned home, we invariably found Gay-Neck and his mother there before us.
We had hardly half a dozen clear days during the whole month of July, but under the guidance of the almost omniscient Ghond, and with my friend Radja, we travelled very far in a short ​time. We visited and stayed with all classes of the mountain folk, who looked much like Chinese. Their manners were elegant and their hospitality generous. Of course we took the pigeons with us, sometimes in a cage but most of the time under our tunics. Though we were frequently soaked with rain, Gay-Neck and his mother were religiously guarded from the weather.
Towards the end of July we made a journey beyond every Lamasery (monastery) and baron’s castle of Sikkim that we three human beings and the two pigeons had seen and known. We passed Singalele, where there was a nice little Lamasery, on toward Phalut and the Unknown. At last we reached the homeland of the eagles. Around us were bare granite cliffs surrounded by fir trees and stunted pines, before us to the north lay the Kanchinjinga and the Everest ranges. Here on the edge of an abyss we released our two birds. In that exhilarating air they flew like children running from school at the end of the day. Gay-Neck’s mother flew far upwards in order to show her son the sublime heights.
After the two birds had flown away, we three men talked of what they might be seeing as they ​sped above the altitudes. Before them, no doubt, rose the twin peaks of the Kanchinjinga group slightly lower than Mount Everest but just as impeccable and austere as that immaculate peak untrodden still by the feet of men. That fact roused profound emotions in us. We saw the mountain in the distance just for a few minutes like a mirror before the Face of God and I said to myself, “O thou summit of sanctity, thou inviolate and eternal, may no man tarnish thee, nor may any mortal stain thy purity even by his slightest touch. May thou remain forever unvanquished, oh Thou backbone of the Universe, and measurement of Immortality.”
But I have brought you so high not to tell you about mountains, but of an adventure that befell us there. Now that Gay-Neck and his mother had flown, we gave up watching them and went in quest of an eagle’s nest which was on a neighbouring cliff. The Himalayan eagle is brown with a soft golden glow, and though very beautiful to look at—it is in perfect proportion of beauty with strength—yet it is a fierce beast of prey.
But at first on this particular afternoon we ​encountered nothing savage. On the contrary, we found two fluffy white eaglets in an eyrie. They looked as engaging as new-born babes. The southern wind was blowing right in their eyes but they did not mind it. It is in the nature of the Himalayan eagle to build his nest facing the direction of the wind. Why? No one knows. Apparently the bird likes to face that which he floats up on.
The younglings were nearly three weeks old, for they were already shedding their birthday cotton-like appearance and had begun to grow real plumage. Their talons were sharp enough for their age, and their beaks hard and keen.
An eagle’s eyrie is open and large. Its entrance ledge—that is to say, landing place—is about six or seven feet wide and quite clean. But within, where it is dark and narrow, there is a perfect litter of twigs, branches, and a little of the hair and feathers of victims, every other part of their prey being devoured by the eaglets. The parents devour most of the bones, hair and feathers with the meat.
Though the surrounding country was clad in stunted pine trees, yet it was full of bird noises. ​Also strange insects buzzed in the fir trees. Jewelled flies fluttered on blue wings over mauve orchids, and enormous rhododendrons glowed in sizes sometimes as large as the moon. Now and then a wild cat called, apparently talking in his noon-day sleep.
Suddenly Ghond told us to run a dozen yards and hide in a bush. Hardly had we done so when the noises about us began to subside. In another sixty seconds the insects stopped their buzzing, the birds ceased to call, and even the trees seemed to grow still with expectation. In the air slowly rose the thin whistle of something. In a few moments it fell into a lower key. Hard upon it came a weird noise almost sounding like a shriek and a giant bird flew down to the eagle’s eyrie. The wind was still whistling in its wings. By its size Ghond thought it was the mother of the two babies. She remained still in the air till the eaglets withdrew into the inner recesses of their home. From her talons hung something well skinned, like a large rabbit. She landed, dropping her prey on the ledge. One could see that her wings from tip to tip measured half a dozen feet. She folded them as a man folds a paper, then seeing that ​her children were coming toward her, she drew in her talons lest they pierce their un-armoured tender flesh. Now she hobbled like a cripple. The two little fellows ran and disappeared under her half open wings, but they did not want to be brooded, for they were hungry. So she led them outward to the dead rabbit, tore away some of its flesh, excluded any bone that clung to it, and gave it to them to swallow. Again from below and all about the insects and birds resumed their noises. We rose from our hiding and started homeward after Radja and I had extracted a promise from Ghond that he would bring us back later to see the full-fledged eaglets.
And so in a little over a month we returned. We brought with us Gay-Neck and his mother, for I wished the little fellow to fly the second time so that he would know with absolute certainty every village, Lamasery, lake and river as well as the beasts, and the other birds—cranes, parrots, Himalayan herons, wild geese, divers, sparrow hawks and swifts. On this trip we went about a hundred yards beyond the eagle’s nest. The finger of autumn had already touched the rhododendrons. Their flaming petals ​were falling out, their long stems, many feet high, rustled in the winds. Leaves of many trees had begun to turn, and the air was full of melancholy. At about eleven, we uncaged our pigeons, who flew away into the sapphire sky that hung like a sail from the white peaks.
They had flown for about half an hour when a hawk appeared above them. It drew nearer the two pigeons, and then drove at them. But the prey proved too wary; they escaped scatheless. Just as Gay-Neck and his mother were coming down swiftly to where the trees were, the hawk’s mate appeared and attacked. She flew at them as her husband had done without gaining her objective. Seeing that their prey was escaping, the male hawk cried shrilly to his mate; at that she stopped in the air just marking time. The pigeons, feeling safe, quickened their wing motion and flew southward while the two hawks followed, converging upon them from the east and the west. Wing-beat upon wing-beat, they gained on the pigeons. Their wings shaped like a butcher’s hatchet tipped off at the end, cut through the air like a storm . . . one, two, three—they fell like spears! Gay-Neck’s mother stopped, and ​just floated in the air. That upset the calculation of the hawks. What to do now? Which one to fall upon? Such questioning takes time, and Gay-Neck seized the chance to change his course. Swiftly he rose higher and higher. In a few moments his example was followed by his mother, but she had lost time, and the hawks rose almost vaulting up to her. Then apparently a sudden panic seized her; she was afraid that the hawks were after her son and in order to protect him—which was utterly unnecessary—she flew toward the two pursuers. In another minute both of those birds of prey had pounced upon her. The air was filled with a shower of feathers! The sight frightened Gay-Neck, who fell upon the nearest cliff for protection and safety. It was his mother’s error that deprived her of her own life and probably imperiled that of her son.
We three human beings began a search for the cliff where Gay-Neck had fallen. It was no easy task, for the Himalayas are very treacherous. Pythons if not tigers were to be feared. Yet my friend Radja insisted, and Ghond the hunter agreed with him, saying that it would augment our knowledge.
​We descended from the cliff that we were on and entered a narrow gorge where the raw bones lying on the ground convinced us that some beast of prey had dined on its victim the previous night. But we were not frightened, for our leader was Ghond, the most well-equipped hunter of Bengal. Very soon we began a laborious climb through clefts and crevices full of purple orchids on green moss. The odour of fir and balsam filled our nostrils. Sometimes we saw a rhododendron still in bloom. The air was cold and the climb unending. After two in the afternoon, having lunched on a handful of chola (dried beans softened in water), we reached the cliff where Gay-Neck was hiding. To our surprise we discovered that it was the eagle’s nest with two eaglets—the babies of our previous visit—now full-fledged. They were sitting on the front ledge of their eyrie, while to our utter amazement we saw Gay-Neck at the farthest corner of a neighbouring ledge, cowering and weak. At our approach the eaglets came forward to attack us with their beaks. Radja, whose hand was nearest, received an awful stroke which ripped open the skin of his thumb whence blood ​flowed freely. The eagles were between us and Gay-Neck and there was nothing to be done but to climb over a higher cliff to reach him. Hardly had we gone six yards away from the nest when Ghond signed to us to hide as we had done the first time we had come. We did so with celerity, under a pine, and soon with a soft roar in the air, one of the parent eagles drew near. In a few seconds there fell a high pitched sound as the eagle sailed into its nest. A shiver of exquisite pleasure ran up and down my spine as her tail feather grazed our tree and I heard that whistling mute itself.
Let me re-emphasize the fact that people who have an idea that the eagle builds its nest on an isolated inaccessible cliff are mistaken. A powerful bird or beast does not have to be so careful in choosing its home. It can afford to be negligent. The nest of such a gigantic bird must have as its first requirement space so that it can open and shut its wings in the outer court of its home, and a place so spacious cannot be too inaccessible. Next, the eagle has no knack at building nests. It chooses a ledge that juts out of a cliff-cavern where nature has already performed two-thirds ​of the task. The last third is done by the birds themselves and it merely consists in getting branches, leaves, and blades of grass together as a rough bed where the eggs may be laid and hatched.
All those details we gathered as we crawled out of our hiding place and examined—for the second time—the eyrie from a distance. There was no doubt that they were our old friends—the two babies—grown big, and their mother. She, even now though they were grown up, drew in her talons as a matter of habit lest they hurt her children. But it was momentary; after she had made sure that they were racing to meet her, she opened them and stood firmly on the outer ledge. The eaglets, though they should not be called so now that they were full fledged, rushed forward and took shelter under her wide-spread wings. But the little beasts did not stay there long, they did not want to be loved, they were very hungry, they wanted something to eat and alas, she had brought nothing. At that they turned from her and sat facing the wind, waiting.
At Ghond’s signal we all three rose and began to climb. In the course of another hour we had ​crawled in lizard-like silence over the roof of the eagle's nest. Just as I passed over it, an abominable odour of bones and drying flesh greeted my nostrils. That proved that the eagle—king of birds though he is—is not as clean and tidy as a pigeon. I, for one, prefer a pigeon’s nest to an eagle’s eyrie.
Soon we reached Gay-Neck and tried to put him in his cage. He was glad to see us, but fought shy of the cage. Since it was getting late I gave him some lentils to eat. Just about the middle of his meal, seeing him deeply absorbed in eating, I made an effort to grab him with my hand. That frightened the poor bird and he flew away. The noise of his flight brought the mother eagle out of the inner recess of her nest. She looked out, her beak quivering and her wings almost opening for flight. At once all the jungle noises below were stilled and she sailed away. We felt that all was over for Gay-Neck. Suddenly a shadow fell upon him. I thought it was the eagle pouncing; however it only rested on him a moment and then receded, but he had had the fright of his life and he flew away, driven by sheer terror, in a zig-zag course, far beyond our sight. ​I was convinced that we had lost Gay-Neck. But Ghond insisted that we would find the bird in a day or two, so we decided to wait and spend our time there.
Night came on apace and we sought shelter under some pines. The next morning we were told by Ghond that the day had come for the young eagles to fly. He concluded: “Eagles never give their children lessons in flight. They know when their eaglets are ready for it. Then the parents leave for ever.”
All that day the parent eagle did not re-visit her nest. When night came again her children gave up all hope of her return, and withdrew into the inner part of their home. It proved a memorable night for us. We were so far up that we were quite sure of no attack by a four-footed beast of prey. Tigers and leopards go downwards, not that they fear the heights, but because like all animals they follow their food. Antelopes, deer, bison and wild boars graze where valleys and jungle-growth are plentiful and since they go where grass, sapling, luscious twigs, in short, their dinner, grows on river banks, those who live by eating them search for them there. ​That is why, with the exception of birds and a few animals such as wild cats, pythons, and snow leopards, the heights are free of beasts of prey. Even the yak, who takes the place of the cow, does not climb so high very frequently or in large numbers. One or two mountain goats one sees occasionally, but nothing larger, and so our night was free of any dramatic experience. But this was amply compensated for by the piercing cold that possessed and shook our bodies in the early dawn. Sleep was out of the question, so I sat up, and wrapping all the blankets of my bedding around me, watched and listened. The stillness was intense—like a drum whose skin had been so stretched that even breathing on it would make it groan. I felt hemmed in by the piercing soundlessness from every direction. Now and then like an explosion came the crackling of some dry autumn leaves as a soft-footed wild cat leaped on them from the branch of a tree not far away. That sound very soon sank like a stone in the ever rising tide of stillness. Slowly one by one the stars set. The rising tide of mystery that was reigning everywhere deepened, when like the shaking of lances something shivered in the ​eagle’s eyrie. There was no doubt now that the day was breaking. Again rose the same sound from the same place. The eagles were preening their wings as a man stretches himself before fully waking from sleep. Now I could hear a rustle near by that I thought must be the two eagles coming forward on the front ledge of their nest. Soon came other noises. Storks flew by overhead, strange birds like cranes shouldered the sky. And nearby the bellow of a yak tore the stillness asunder as if he had put his horn through the skin of a drum. Far down, birds called one another. At last fell a white light on the Kanchinjinga range. Then Mokalu appeared with an immense halo of opal back of his head. The lower ranges, as high as Mont Blanc, put on their vesture of milk-white glory: shapes and colours of stone and tree leaped into sight. Orchids trembled with morning dew. Now the sun, like a lion, leaped on the shoulder of the sky, and the snow-bastioned horizons bled with scarlet fire.
Ghond and Radja, who had been awake already, stood up; then the latter, a well-trained priest, chanted the Sanskrit Vedic prayer to Savitar—the Sun:
The prayer frightened the eagles, unaccustomed to human voices. But ere they were excited to fury our little ritual was over and we hid ourselves under the stunted pine. The eagles, left without any breakfast, looked out and scanned the sky for a sign of their parent. They gazed below where flocks of parrots and jays flew, small as humming birds. Wild geese came trailing across the snowy peaks where they had spent the night on their journey southward. Soon they too grew small as beetles and melted into space. Hour after hour passed, yet no sight of the big eagle! The full-fledged eaglets felt hungrier and hungrier, and began to fret in their nest. We heard a quarrel going on in the interior of the eyrie which grew in intensity and noise till one of them left home in disgust and began to climb the cliff. He went higher and higher. Up and up he walked without using his wings. By now it ​was past midday; we had luncheon, yet still there was no sight of the parent birds. We judged that the eagle left in the nest was the sister, for she looked smaller than the other eaglet. She sat facing the wind, peering into the distance, but she too grew down-hearted. Strange though it may sound, I have yet to see a Himalayan eagle which does not sit facing the wind from the time of its birth until it learns to fly, as a sailor boy might sit looking at the sea until he takes to navigating it. About two in the afternoon that eagle grew tired of waiting in the nest. She set out in quest of her brother who was now perching on the top of a cliff far above. He too was facing the wind. As his sister came up his eyes brightened. He was glad not to be alone and the sight of her saved him from the melancholy thought of flying for food. No eagle-child have I seen being taught to fly by its parents. That is why younglings will not open their wings until driven by hunger. The parent eagles know this very well and that is why when their babies grow up, and the time has come, they leave them and go away.
The little sister laboriously climbed till she ​reached her brother’s side but alas, there was no room for two. Instead of balancing themselves on their perch, the sister’s weight knocked her brother almost over. Instantly he opened his wings wide. The wind bore him up. He stretched out his talons, but too late to reach the ground. He was at least two feet up in the air already, so he flapped his wings and rose a little higher. He dipped his tail—which acted like a rudder and swung him sideways, east, south, east. He swung over us and we could hear the wind crooning in his wings. Just at that moment a solemn silence fell on everything; the noises of insects stopped; rabbits, if there were rabbits, hid in their holes. Even the leaves seemed to listen in silence to the wing-beats of this new monarch of the air as he sailed higher and higher. And he had to go away up, for only by going very far could he find what he sought. Sometimes eighteen hundred to three thousand feet below him, an eagle sees a hare hopping about on the ground. Then he folds his wings and roars down the air like lightning. The terrible sound of his coming almost hypnotizes the poor creature and holds him bound to the spot listening to his enemy’s ​thunderous approach, and then the eagle’s talons pierce him.
Seeing her brother go off in this way, and being afraid of loneliness, the sister suddenly spread her wings too. The wind blowing from under threw her up. She also floated in the air and tacked her flight by her tail toward her comrade and in a few minutes both were lost to sight. Now it was our turn to depart from those hills in search of our pigeon. He might have gone to Dentam. But it behoved us to search every Lamasery and baronial castle which had served Gay-Neck as a landmark in his past flights.