Within a minute or two after I'd done calling out, as I said, there came running in Mick Maguire, and Bat Boroo, and all the lazy-bones of the place: and after them followed Paddy Doolan, ould Malachi Roe, and a power more of landsmen, with women and children at their heels; but not a fisherman, good or bad, ould or young, was ashore. I tould them of the wail I'd heard from the Dillosk-women, and the point it bore from; and off they wint, one following another, as fast as they came in; and it wasn't long before all the place was in arms, and not a soul but me left in it, far or near. All this didn't take more than the time I'm telling it. Meanwhile Norah recovered: she was now so weak, that Ileen unbound her, but the women still kept a hould of her; and there they were--wailing about her, and she sitting on a stone, with her hands clasped, gazing at the waters, that were just rising towards the top of the land-mark, where the child, that had now cried itself asleep again, lay without knowing its danger. Now and then she turned her eyes along the shore to the men that were running down to the ridge as fast as they well could: though they were landsmen, there was more than one among them that could swim; and Norah, as well as the women about her, had rason to hope bad wouldn't be the end of it. A man tires, but the rising tide don't, and the waters still kept their pace; but the men slackened, and just as the foremost of them got up,--and that was Mick Maguire, out of breath, and who'd no heart, though his legs was the best,--just as he got up to the women, a great wave came in, and they all saw it a way off, for it was taller, and might be seen above those before it:--it came on slowly, but strongly; and instead of breaking and being divided in two by the land-mark, it swept in a full body above it, and Norah's baby was afloat! Just then, all set up a shriek; and it was answered by one they little expected: what was it but the scream of the great eagle himself, that came down from the clouds a'most, and gripped up the baby in his mighty claws!--so saving it from one death, for another that was more frightful, and that too, a thousand-fold! He didn't rise at once, but skimmed along the face of the sea for some time, so that the baby dipped in the tops of the waves, and scattered a foam round itself and the bird now and then; and it was thought he'd drop it more than once: but no,--he soon began to get higher and higher, and rose, at last, on his strong wings, above the cliffs themselves; and then, making a half circle, wheeled round, and wint over the heads of the women, right away to his nest in the mountain. And all that while, the women looked up silently, and them that was running along the beach stood still, and nobody, breathed; so that the flap of the eagle's wing was heard plainly, far as he was above them.