The Once and Future King Read Free

gradually crowding into the forest shade. The conies had hundreds of burrows under these trees, so close together that the problem was not to find a rabbit, but to find a rabbit far enough away from its hole.
    ‘Hob says that we must not fly Cully till he has roused at least twice,’ said the Wart.
    ‘Hob does not know anything about it. Nobody can tell whether a hawk is fit to fly except the man who is carrying it.
    ‘Hob is only a villein anyway,’ added Kay, and began to undo the leash and swivel from the jesses.
    When he felt the trappings being taken off him, so that he was in hunting order, Cully did make some movements as if to rouse. He raised his crest, his shoulder coverts and the soft feathers of his thighs. But at the last moment he thought better or worse of it and subsided without the rattle. This movement of the hawk’s made the Wart itch to carry him. He yearned to take him away from Kay and set him to rights himself. He felt certain that he could get Cully into a good temper by scratching his feet and softly teasing his breast feathers upward, if only he were allowed to do it himself, instead of having to plod along behind with the stupid lure. But he knew how annoying it must be for the elder boy to be continually subjected to advice, and so he held his peace. Just as in modern shooting you must never offer criticism to the man in command, so in hawking it was important that no outside advice should be allowed to disturb the judgment of the austringer.
    ‘So—ho!’ cried Kay, throwing his arm upward to give the hawk a better take—off, and a rabbit was scooting across the close—nibbled turf in front of them, and Cully was in the air. The movement had surprised the Wart, the rabbit and the hawk, all three, and all three hung a moment in surprise. Then the great wings of the aerial assassin began to row the air, but reluctant and undecided. The rabbit vanished in a hidden hole. Up went the hawk, swooping like a child flung high in a swing, until the wings folded and he was sitting in a tree. Cully looked down at his masters, opened his beak in an angry pant of failure, and remained motionless. The two hearts stood still.

Chapter II
    A good while later, when they had been whistling and luring and following the disturbed and sulky hawk from tree to tree, Kay lost his temper.
    ‘Let him go, then,’ he said. ‘He is no use anyway.’
    ‘Oh, we could not leave him,’ cried the Wart. ‘What would Hob say?’
    ‘It is my hawk, not Hob’s,’ exclaimed Kay furiously. ‘What does it matter what Hob says? He is a servant.’
    ‘But Hob made Cully. It is all right for us to lose him, because we did not have to sit up with him three nights and carry him all day and all that. But we can’t lose Hob’s hawk. It would be beastly.’
    ‘Serve him right, then. He is a fool and it is a rotten hawk. Who wants a rotten stupid hawk? You had better stay yourself if you are so keen on it. I am going home.’
    ‘I will stay,’ said the Wart sadly, ‘if you will send Hob when you get there.’
    Kay began walking off in the wrong direction, raging in his heart because he knew that he had flown the bird when he was not properly in yarak, and the Wart had to shout after him the right way. Then the latter sat down under the tree and looked up at Cully like a cat watching a sparrow, with his heart beating fast.
    It was well enough for Kay, who was not really keen on hawking except in so far as it was the proper occupation for a boy in his station of life, but the Wart had some of the falconer’s feelings and knew that a lost hawk was the greatest possible calamity. He knew that Hob had worked on Cully for fourteen hours a day to teach him his trade, and that his work had been like Jacob’s struggle with the angel. When Cully was lost a part of Hob would be lost too. The Wart didn’t care to face the look of reproach which would be in the falconer’s eye, after all that he had tried to teach them.
    What was