For an instant Wildenai seemed alarmed. Then she laughed.

"You are afraid of nothing. I knew it!" she exclaimed with pride. "Nor
would there be much danger. We will go to the other side of the island
where the waves run high and the cliffs are tall and black. There will I
show you the nests of the great eagles, and the antelope leaping among
the rocks. And, - who can tell?" she laughed again with child-like
pleasure, "perhaps we shall find a white otter!"

And, true to her word, he heard at dawn next day outside the cavern the
whistle of a blackbird, a signal early contrived between them. She
deemed it best, she explained, to start thus early that the darkness
might conceal them until they had passed well beyond the outskirts of
the village. But this danger overcome, they spent the whole day rambling
fearlessly among the hills, - a long, idle, happy day. Up many a dim
trail winding back into the canyons the princess led him. Through golden
thickets of wild mustard they passed, coming, when he least expected it,
upon glimpses of the summer sea framed between the branches of knarled
old oak trees.

"They are low and crooked, and they spread themselves over the ground as
do our English oaks," the young nobleman informed her.

As Wildenai had promised they discovered, poised high among the crags of
the wild southern shore, the great eagles of which she had told him,
measuring easily, from wing-tip to wing-tip, fully a dozen feet. The
white otter, rarest and most valuable of all the game hunted by her
people, eluded them, but many a small gray fox slipped away among the
bushes, leaving the Englishman tingling for the chase.