re safe or not. They
flew up to the top of the tree, and when they found their children
safe, they wished to give them food. All the time they kept saying,
"Eat; then we will kill the thief who steals away our children every
year." The young eagles thought, "Oh, if God would only give us the
power to speak, then we would tell our father and mother that this
boy is no thief." Then God gave them the power to speak, and they said
to the old eagles, "Listen; if that boy had not been here, we should
have died, for he killed a huge snake that was going to swallow us:
only go and look, and you will see it dead and cut into pieces." And
the eaglets refused to eat till the boy had been fed.

The big eagles flew down and found the bits of the snake: so they flew
away to a beautiful garden, where they got delicious fruits and water.
These they brought to the boy, and awoke him and fed him. Then they
said to him, "It is indeed good to find our children alive. Hitherto
our children have always been eaten by that snake. How are your father
and mother? Why did they let you come to this jungle? What have you
come here for?" The little prince said, "My mother's eyes are very
sore; but they would be cured if she could have an eagle's feather to
lay on them. So I came to look for one." Then the mother gave him one
of her feathers.

When the boy was going home, the eaglets said they would go with him.
"No," he said, "I will not take you with me." But the old birds said,
"Take one of them, it will help you one day." The little prince made
his salaam to the big eagles, and took one of their young ones,
mounted his horse, and rode off. The eaglet flew over his head to
shade him from the sun.

When he got home to his seven mothers, he took the feather and went
and sat by the dry well. The king's servants came there to him, and he
gave them the feather, and said, "Take it to your king." This they
did, and the king gave it to the demon, who flew into a great rage.
She said to herself, "The tigers did not kill him, and now the eagles
have not killed him."

At the end of two weeks she began to cry and would not eat. The king
asked her, "What is the matter with you? what has happened to you?"
"My eyes pain me so much," she said. "What will cure them?" said the
king. "If I had only some night-growing rice," she said, "I would boil
it, and make rice-water, which I would drink. Then I should get well."
Now this night-growing rice was a wonderful