Word: hawking
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Rage In a Mangold Eye. All that White knew about hawks to begin with, he had learned from three tracts on the subject and from an exchange of letters with two of the few remaining hawk-masters left in Europe. The bird was Gos, an untamed tiercel (male) of the largest European species of the short-winged hawks, only three inches smaller than a golden eagle. The scene of their encounter was a clearing in a Buckinghamshire wood, where White lived alone in a cottage...
...hawk arrived in a sack from Germany, White caught him by the leather jesses tied to his feet, and set him on his gloved fist. "For an instant he stared upon me with a mad, marigold or dandelion eye, all his plumage flat to the body and his head crouched like a snake's in fear or hatred, then bated wildly from the fist." Upside down he hung, by his jesses, screaming his rage...
From that moment, it was hawk or man. When White gently lifted Gos back to fist, he bated again. All night long Gos bated and Whits lifted him back. How long would it go on? Until White's patience cracked, or he fell asleep-in which case, the hawk-masters had assured him, the hawk would know that he was the stronger, and would die rather than be tamed-or until the hawk himself fell asleep on the fist. White knew that hawks sometimes held out for as long as nine days...
...agony of patience," he writes. "At the thousandth bate in a day, on an arm that ached to the bone . . . merely to twitch him gently back to the glove . . . to reassure him with tranquillity, when one yearned ... to pound, pash, dismember!" After three days and three nights, the hawk fell asleep. The next day he was as wild as ever...
...hand and ripped his cheek. After days of inching progress, Gos accepted a 24-yd. creance (length of twine). White's next job was to teach Gos to fly to his shoulder. At first White cringed as Gos pounced, claws first. There was always the chance that the hawk would strike at his face. Five yards, two yards-soon White could stare at the hawk until he was only a few inches away. The next step was to fly Gos against live game. But the end came suddenly. Gos flew to the end of his creance, snapped...