There were kites in the shape of fish,
hawks, eagles, and butterflies. Some had hummers, made of whalebone, which
hummed musically in the wind as they rose; and as for fighting kites, they
were abroad in squads and battalions. In one place the fight was between
single kites; in another a score of men with blue kites met a score with
red kites and the kites fluttered, darted, swooped, dived this way, that
way, and every way, as they were skilfully moved by the strings pulled from
below. Now and again one of them was seen to fall helplessly away and drift
down the wind; its string had been cut by some victorious rival, and it had
been put out of the battle.
Taro had his kite high up in the air very soon; it flew splendidly, and for
some time he was very busy in trying it and learning its ways, for every
kite has its own tricks of moving in the air. Then suddenly he saw a great
brown eagle sailing towards it. He looked up and saw that a boy named
Kanaya was directing the eagle kite towards his own, and that it was a
challenge to a fight. Taro accepted at once, and the combat was joined.
Kanaya brought his eagle swiftly over Taro's big square kite, brightly
painted in bars of many colours, but Taro let out string and escaped. Then
he swung his kite up into the wind and made it swoop on the eagle. But
Kanaya was already winding his string swiftly in and had raised his kite
out of reach of the swoop. And so they went on for more than an hour,
pursuing, escaping, feinting, dodging, until at last the eagle caught
a favourable slant of wind and darted down so swiftly that Taro could
not escape.
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