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Having sent him all those things which he desired for the advancement of the infant colony, they requested him to send them all the falcons he could meet with, and other kinds of birds.
Early on the morning of the 20th, the gay music of hunting-horns woke the mountain echoes, and a hunting-party suddenly appeared at the gates of the old Benedictine abbey. First came a hundred soldiers on foot, bearing long lances, then fifty German lords in hunting-garb, with falcons on their wrists.
And Earl Godwin came first to his house in London near the Tower Palatine, in what is now called the Fleet and Harold the Earl, and Tostig, and Leofwine, and Gurth, were to meet him there, and go thence, with the full state of their sub-thegns, and cnehts, and house-carles, their falcons, and their hounds, as become men of such rank, to the court of King Edward.
"Then let it he, and see if the barley and clover don't do better," replied Wilhelm gaily, tossing vetches and grains of wheat to a large dove that had alighted on the parapet of his tower. "It eats, and what use is it?" cried Allertssohn, looking at the dove. "Herr von Warmond, a young man after God's own heart, has just brought me two falcons; do you want to see bow I tame them?"
The galleon was an exceptionally large vessel, being, as Saint Leger estimated, of fully five hundred tons measurement. She showed a double tier of ordnance, besides sakers, falcons, falconettes and serpentines on her poop and fore and after castles.
Not only were the keen brown eye and the handsome aquiline beak marked characteristics of his classic features, but in temperament and habit he bore a singular resemblance to the king of all the falcons. Who more delighted in striking down the partridge or the wild duck? What more assiduous destroyer of ground game and vermin ever existed than Tom Peregrine?
A curved horn was strapped over his back, and in his hand he held a long-lashed whip. The dogs whined and yelped, dancing around him in anticipation; there was the stamp of horses, too, in the walled yard. "Mount!" cried a voice in Breton, and with a clatter of hoofs the two falconers, with falcons upon their wrists, rode into the courtyard among the hounds.
The great ship came steadily on, her white sails growing larger and larger, moment by moment, her tiers of guns more distinct and menacing, her whole aspect more defiant. Her waist seemed packed with men. But no streamers, no flag. A puff of smoke floated up from the deck of the Tiger, and a ball from one of her two tiny falcons passed through the stranger's rigging.
I watched them for some time: whenever the storks perceived a grasshopper or other winged insect, they chased it on foot, but if they missed their game, the flycatchers darted from their backs and flew after the insects like falcons, catching them in their beaks, and then returning to their steeds to look out for another opportunity.
This brave reply rendered the king's brother more amorous than ever, and he endeavoured to ensnare this noble woman in order to possess her, dead or alive, and he never doubted a bit that he would have her in his clutches, relying upon his dexterity at this kind of sport, the most joyous of all, in which it is necessary to employ the weapons of all other kinds of sport, seeing that this sweet game is taken running, by taking aim, by torchlight, by night, by day, in the town, in the country, in the woods, by the waterside, in nets, with falcons, with the lance, with the horn, with the gun, with the decoy bird, in snares, in the toils, with a bird call, by the scent, on the wing, with the cornet, in slime, with a bait, with the lime-twig indeed, by means of all the snares invented since the banishment of Adam.
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