The Houma courier. (Houma, La.) 1878-1939, 1900-06-09
Gallant Little Hale Robbins
a oharles Adams.
MASTER HALE ROBBTNs has NO

battle with tWO-white-headed eagles,
accounts of which were published at
the time in several Maine newspapers.
But it makes ones heart ache to see
the car on the little feIlow-great,
blue, livid scars that go to the bone;
eight on his face and scalp, eleven on
his right arm and shoulder, six on
the other arm, three down his back
and several Others-over 30 in all!
This lad of ten is indeed ga battle
SCARED veteranI" Some of these
scars he will carry to his grave-elo-
quent evidence of the pluck with
which he fought the big birds of prey.
But thanks to the boys courage,
his little sister Lois, in whose defense
he made the fight, has but one light
scar upon her cheek. The two or
three red marks still visible on her
hand and wrist, when ~Contrasted with
his wounds, show plainly how Hale
took the aggressive and bore the
brunt of the battle. The fight was
fought to a finish. 1t was nearly an
hour after the eagles first swooped
down that a last lucky blow of the
c~orn-cutter brought the big female
to the ground.
A local taxidermist has mounted
this eagle, and no pathological col
lection within my knowledge pos
sesses a more savage-Iooking speci-
men of Haliaetus leucocephalus. The
wings, from tip to tip, spread fully
six feet six inches.
The assault was not wholly unpro-
vOked, although the children were not
to blame for it. By i'll luck the birds
had just been disturbed by the fall
of one of their young from the nest
in the great elm tree.
+ The Robbinses live in a clearing on
the St. Croix river, in eastern Maine.
From their house to the district
school the road is a long one for lit
tie six-year-old Lois Robbins, and for
a mile and a half or more it t~raverscs
the forest, But up to the morning of
the encounter the child had not
missed a day of the summer term.
Hale had been his sisters trusty
guardian ever since she was large
enough to toddle out-of-doors, and the
child needed a protector there, for it
is a rather wild sort of country, not
wholly free from wild animals. The
boy appears to have had no uncertain
or wavering sense of his fraternal re-
sPonsibility. Ever since he was seven
years old he had undertaken "never
to come home without little sister"
That morning they set of for school
just before eight O'Clock. In addition
to their dinner-paiE and two books,
they carried a light woven bushel
basket and an old bush-hook, or corn
cutter, as they called it, because their
father sometimes used it for cutting
rows of sweet corn in the garden.
This tool consisted of about Is inches
cut from the point of a worn-out hay
scythe, so inserted in a rude wooden
handle that blade and handle stood
at right angles with each other.
Grandma Hale had asked Hale to
stop on his way home from school at
a swale near the run, and cut a
quantity of thoroughwort and snake
head, two herbs much priced by the
old woman which were then in flow
er, fit for gathering, The basket and
Cutting-hook were for this purpose,
but the children were told not to take
them to the schoolhouse, but to leave
them at Indian Jake's shanty," just
beyond the swale. The Indian is their
nearest neighbor, but at the time he
happened to be away from home,
guiding tourists at the lakes.
The eagles nest was an object of
constant interest to Hale, who often
stopped to watch the birds come and
go from the elm tree, which stands
on a bluff overlooking the river.
AS the children came along that
morning little Lois espied one of the
eagles flying heavily to the tree, bear
ing a fish in its talons, taken perhaps
from some fsh-hawk on the neigh
boring lake. sob, look!" the child
exclaimed, dropping the handle of the
basket and pointing with her finger.
FThere's the old eagle going to the
nest, and it's got a great thing in. it's
feetl"
at is going to feed the young ones,'
said Hale. "Now bark and you'll
hear 'em scream!"
The eagle bore the fish to the big
nest in the tree-top, and Immediately
the peculiar whistling cries of the
young were heard.
"0h, I hear 'em squeam!" cried Lois.
t'Don't they squeam high?"
It was a large fish, and perhaps life
was not wholly extinct in it; when
torn by the young beaks and talons
it may have given a spasmodic flop.
This was probably the reason that
one of the small birds was dislodged
from its place in the nest and fell.
An instant later it caught by its tai
ons on a small, low limb of the tree
and hung there, swinging and scream
ing.
some of 'em has tumbled out!" cried
Hale and, boylike, he ran forward,
followed by little Lois, both much'ex-
cited; for the young bird was not
more than 90 from the ground. I'm
able to fly as yet, it chung to the
limb with its feet, Topping clumsily.
Meantime the parent eagle, after
peering down from the nest, swooped
past it, then rose. Another smaller