Freddy and the Perilous Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page B

scenery and thought about scrambled eggs and hot buttered toast and muffins with jam and other things that the people in the houses below them were probably having for breakfast at that very moment. I don’t know that you can blame him. One third of a piece of molasses candy is not a very filling breakfast.
    Suddenly a large bird came soaring over the top of a distant hill, then swerved and with powerful wing beats came flying towards them. He was dark, with a white head and tail. “Good gracious,” said Freddy to himself, “an eagle! I do hope it isn’t Pinckney. That would be just too much of a coincidence when we’ve been talking about Uncle Wesley.” For Pinckney was the eagle who had carried the ducks’ uncle off.
    Like all birds, the eagle was curious, and he wanted to investigate the balloon. Pretty soon the ducks caught sight of him, and with frightened quacks they cowered in the bottom of the basket. The eagle was so close now that they could hear the swish of air made by each down stroke of the great wings. And then he caught sight of Freddy, and with a harsh scream of surprise turned a complete double somersault in his amazement at seeing that the balloonist was a pig.
    He recovered himself fifty feet down, and beat up to their level again. “Welcome, oh pig, to the starry upper spaces of the blue empyrean,” he said as he soared alongside. “What strange chance brings you thus to adventure in your frail chariot among the trackless haunts of the feathered folk?”
    Freddy had talked to eagles before, so he was not surprised at this high-flown language. Eagles, since they are the national bird, have a great sense of their own dignity, and feel that just ordinary talk is beneath them.
    Freddy, however, was pretty good at noble-sounding language himself. “Hail, oh monarch of the skies,” he said, and then explained about the ascension and their present difficulties. “And so,” he concluded, “we know not where we are, nor whither we are bound, nor are we provided with the wherewithal to sustain life on this problematical and involuntary journey. Therefore we beseech your aid. If your present course should lead you within wingbeat of the domicile of that respected farmer, Mr. Bean—”
    â€œMr. Bean!” interrupted the eagle, and he swung in towards them, and perching on the edge of the basket, stared at Freddy with his fierce yellow eyes. “Great is the renown and widespread the repute of that excellent man, Bean, and his talented livestock among all furred and feathered dwellers within the confines of the Empire State. And you—ha! those well-weighed words I should have recognized. Are not you that pig whose noble song in praise of the eagle is taught to every young eaglet throughout the length and breadth of these mountains before he is allowed to leave the nest?”
    Freddy blushed. “I did indeed, five years ago, pen some few poor lines in unworthy tribute to our national bird. But I had thought them long forgotten.”
    Freddy blushed.
    â€œForgotten!” exclaimed the eagle. “Ha, you should hear my young Waldemar recite those glowing stanzas. How does it go?
    â€œ O eagle, mightiest of all living things ,
    Nor Death, nor Destiny, has longer stings— ”
    â€œâ€”spreads stronger wings,” corrected Freddy.
    â€œOf course. And then:
    â€œ Thy claws of steel, thy beak of burnished brass Make malefactor pigs chew up the grass .”
    â€œThat’s not just exactly as I wrote it,” said Freddy. “Though very nice. But I wrote:
    â€œ Thy claws of brass, thy beak of burnished steel Make malefactor pigs in terror squeal .”
    â€œAh, yes,” said the eagle. “But in either version, most complimentary. And while written, as I am given to understand, specifically for my brother Pinckney, a most elegant compliment to the entire eagle race.”
    â€œPinckney is your