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of food. (The way to every creature’s heart was through the belly. This was why women had insisted on the prerogative of being allowed to cook.) Finally he must jump to the fist with one flap of the wings, as a preliminary to increasing the distance.
    It was only patience which could achieve this end. I realized that the hawk must be tied to his perch by a leash, and now for three days stood a yard away from him, holding meat out in my hand. I went to him again and again, speaking to him from outside the mews, opening the door slowly, edging forward on feet that moved like the hands of a clock.
    Here comes (one thought, suddenly catching oneself out) that excellent piece of work called man, with his capacity for looking before and after, his abilities to reflect upon the enigmas of philosophy, and the minted storehouse of an education that had cost between two and three thousand pounds, walking sideways to a tied bird, with his hand held out in front of him, looking the other way and mewing like a cat.
    But it was pure joy, even joy to stand absolutely motionless for fifteen minutes, or while one slowly counted a thousand.
    Part of the joy was that now, for the first time in my life, I was absolutely free. Even if I only had a hundred pounds, I had no master, no property, no fetters. I could eat, sleep, rise, stay or go as I liked. I was freer than the Archbishop of Canterbury, who no doubt had his fixed times and seasons. I was as free as a hawk.
    Gos had to be taught to know his call. Later on he might get out of sight when being flown at game, and had to be so taught that he could be recalled by the whistle. Most falconers used an ordinary metal whistle, but my escaped soul felt too poetical for that. I felt that Gos was too beautiful to be shrilled at with a policeman’s mechanical note. He was to come to a tune, and if I could have played it I would have bought a penny whistle. But I could only whistle with my mouth, and that had to do. Our melody was a hymn, ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’ — the old metrical Scottish one.
    Hawks were taught to come to their whistle by associating it with food, like Pavlov’s famous dog. Whenever they were fed the whistle was blown, a kind of dinner gong. So now, as one sidled up to that fierce, suspicious eye, the mews reverberated day in and day out with this sweet highland tune. One came to hate it in the end, but not so much as one would have hated anything else. Besides, I whistled it so sadly that there was always a faint interest in trying to keep to the right notes.
Monday
    Gos had on the whole a pessimistic and apprehensive expression, a characteristic of most predatory creatures. We are pugnacious through our inferiority complexes. Even the pike’s ironic mouth has a hint of depression in it.
    The day was probably typical of training a goshawk, only most austringers had better tempers. It was now nearly a week since I had devoted most of my time and all my thought to him, it was several days since he had begun stepping fairly regularly to the glove, and that morning he had been carried for four hours. So it was not rewarding when the extraordinary creature bated away the moment I entered at two-fifteen. I sat down for ten minutes about a yard from his perch, talking and whistling to him, holding out a piece of liver. He only bated absent-mindedly, so I went to pick him up. Now he bated in earnest, as if he had never seen me before. We had a scene in which at least the master behaved well, and at last we were able to sit down with him on the glove, trying to make him feed. He would not feed. No stroking, offering, nor teasing had any effect. I thought: well, we will go for a walk instead and feed when we get back. The moment the man stood up, with infinite caution and joint by joint, the bird started to behave like a lunatic. And a lunatic he verily was: probably not certifiable, and normally sane enough to outward appearances, yet a sufferer from