Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Charles G. D. Roberts, title page]
*SOME
ANIMAL
STORIES*
BY
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD LONDON & TORONTO
All rights reserved
FIRST PUBLISHED . . . 1921
REPRINTED . . . 1923, 1925, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1932
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
*CONTENTS*
Do Seek their Meat from God
"The Young Ravens that Call upon Him"
Strayed
The Watchers in the Swamp
Quills the Indifferent
Stripes the Unconcerned
The Black Mule of Aveluy
Star-Nose of the Under Ways
Kroof, the She-Bear
The Initiation of Miranda
A Royal Marauder
*SOME ANIMAL STORIES*
*DO SEEK THEIR MEAT FROM GOD*
One side of the ravine was in darkness. The darkness was soft and rich,
suggesting thick foliage. Along the crest of the slope tree-tops came
into view--great pines and hemlocks of the ancient unviolated
forest--revealed against the orange disc of a full moon just rising.
The low rays slanting through the moveless tops lit strangely the upper
portion of the opposite steep,--the western wall of the ravine, barren,
unlike its fellow, bossed with great rocky projections, and harsh with
stunted junipers. Out of the sluggish dark that lay along the ravine as
in a trough, rose the brawl of a swollen, obstructed stream.
Out of a shadowy hollow behind a long white rock, on the lower edge of
that part of the steep which lay in the moonlight, came softly a great
panther. In common daylight his coat would have shown a warm fulvous
hue, but in the elvish decolourising rays of that half hidden moon he
seemed to wear a sort of spectral grey. He lifted his smooth round head
to gaze on the increasing flame, which presently he greeted with a
shrill cry. That terrible cry, at once plaintive and menacing, with an
undertone like the fierce protestations of a saw beneath the file, was a
summons to his mate, telling her that the hour had come when they should
seek their prey. From the lair behind the rock, where the cubs were
being suckled by their dam, came no immediate answer. Only a pair of
crows, that had their nest in a giant fir-tree across the gulf, woke up
and croaked harshly their indignation. These three summers past they
had built in the same spot, and had been nightly awakened to vent the
same rasping complaints.
The panther walked restlessly up and down, half a score of paces each
way, along the edge of the shadow, keeping his wide-open green eyes upon
the rising light. His short, muscular tail twitched impatiently, but he
made no sound. Soon the breadth of confused brightness had spread
itself further down the steep, disclosing the foot of the white rock,
and the bones and antlers of a deer which had been dragged thither and
devoured.
By this time the cubs had made their meal, and their dam was ready for
such enterprise as must be accomplished ere her own hunger, now grown
savage, could hope to be assuaged. She glided supplely forth into the
glimmer, raised her head, and screamed at the moon in a voice as
terrible as her mate's. Again the crows stirred, croaking harshly; and
the two beasts, noiselessly mounting the steep, stole into the shadows
of the forest that clothed the high plateau.
The panthers were fierce with hunger. These two days past their hunting
had been wellnigh fruitless. What scant prey they had slain had for the
most part been devoured by the female; for had she not those small blind
cubs at home to nourish, who soon must suffer at any lack of hers? The
settlements of late had been making great inroads on the world of
ancient forest, driving before them the deer and smaller game. Hence the
sharp hunger of the panther parents, and hence it came that on this
night they hunted together. They purposed to steal upon the settlements
in their sleep, and take tribute of the enemies' flocks.
Through the dark of the thick woods, here and there pierced by the
moonlight, they moved swiftly and silently. Now and again a dry twig
would snap beneath the discreet and padded footfalls. Now and again, as
they rustled some low tree, a pewee or a nuthatch would give a startled
chirp. For an hour the noiseless journeying continued, and ever and
anon the two grey, sinuous shapes would come for a moment into the view
of the now well-risen moon. Suddenly there fell upon their ears, far
off and faint, but clearly defined against the vast stillness of the
Northern forest, a sound which made those stealthy hunters pause and
lift their heads. It was the voice of a child crying,--crying long and
loud, hopelessly, as if there were no one by to comfort it. The
panthers turned aside from their former course and glided toward the
sound. They were not yet come to the outskirts of the settlement, but
they knew of a solitary cabin lying in the thick of the woods a mile and
more from the nearest neighbour. Thither they bent their way, fired
with fierce hope. Soon would they break their bitter fast.
Up to noon of the previous day the lonely cabin had been occupied. Then
its owner, a shiftless fellow, who spent his days for the most part at
the corner tavern three miles distant, had suddenly grown disgusted with
a land wherein one must work to live, and had betaken himself with his
seven-year-old boy to seek some more indolent clime. During the long
lonely days when his father was away at the tavern the little boy had
been wont to visit the house of the next neighbour, to play with a child
of some five summers, who had no other playmate. The next neighbour was
a prosperous pioneer, being master of a substantial frame house in the
midst of a large and well-tilled clearing. At times, though rarely,
because it was forbidden, the younger child would make his way by a
rough wood road to visit his poor little disreputable playmate. At
length it had appeared that the five-year-old was learning unsavoury
language from the elder boy, who rarely had an opportunity of hearing
speech more desirable. To the bitter grief of both children, the
companionship had at length been stopped by unalterable decree of the
master of the frame house.
Hence it had come to pass that the little boy was unaware of his
comrade's departure. Yielding at last to an eager longing for that
comrade, he had stolen away late in the afternoon, traversed with
endless misgivings the lonely stretch of wood road, and reached the
cabin only to find it empty. The door, on its leathern hinges, swung
idly open. The one room had been stripped of its few poor furnishings.
After looking in the rickety shed, whence darted two wild and hawklike
chickens, the child had seated himself on the hacked threshold, and
sobbed passionately with a grief that he did not fully comprehend. Then
seeing the shadows lengthen across the tiny clearing, he had grown
afraid to start for home. As the dusk gathered, he had crept trembling
into the cabin, whose door would not stay shut. When it grew quite
dark, he crouched in the inmost corner of the room, desperate with fear
and loneliness, and lifted up his voice piteously. From time to time
his lamentations would be choked by sobs, or he would grow breathless,
and in the terrifying silence would listen hard to hear if any one or
anything were coming. Then again would the shrill childish wailings
arise, startling the unexpectant night, and piercing the forest depths,
even to the ears of those great beasts which had set forth to seek their
meat from God.
The lonely cabin stood some distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile, back
from the highway connecting the settlements. Along this main road a man
was plodding wearily. All day he had been walking, and now as he neared
home his steps began to quicken with anticipation of rest. Over his
shoulder projected a double-barrelled fowling-piece, from which was
slung a bundle of such necessities as he had purchased in town that
morning. It was the prosperous settler, the master of the frame house.
His mare being with foal, he had chosen to make the tedious journey on
foot.
The settler passed the mouth of the wood road leading to the cabin. He
had gone perhaps a furlong beyond, when his ears were startled by the
sound of a child crying in the woods. He stopped, lowered his burden to
the road, and stood straining ears and eyes in the direction of the
sound. It was just at this time that the two panthers also stopped, and
lifted their heads to listen. Their ears were keener than those of the
man, and the sound had reached them at a greater distance.
Presently the settler realised whence the cries were coming. He called
to mind the cabin; but he did not know the cabin's owner had departed.
He cherished a hearty contempt for the drunken squatter; and on the
drunken squatter's child he looked with small favour, especially as a
playmate for his own boy. Nevertheless he hesitated before resuming his
journey.
"Poor little devil!" he muttered, half in wrath. "I reckon his precious
father's drunk down at 'the Corners,' and him crying for loneliness!"
Then he reshouldered his burden and strode on doggedly.
But louder, shriller, more hopeless and more appealing, arose the
childish voice, and the settler paused again, irresolute, and with
deepening indignation. In his fancy, he saw the steaming supper his
wife would have awaiting him. He loathed the thought of retracing his
steps, and then stumbling a quarter of a mile through the stumps and bog
of the wood road. He was foot-sore as well as hungry, and he cursed the
vagabond squatter with serious emphasis; but in that wailing was a
terror which would not let him go on. He thought of his own little one
left in such a position, and straightway his heart melted. He turned,
dropped his bundle behind some bushes, grasped his gun, and made speed
back for the cabin.
"Who knows," he said to himself, "but that drunken idiot has left his
youngster without a bite to eat in the whole miserable shanty? Or maybe
he's locked out, and the poor little beggar's half scared to death.
_Sounds_ as if he was scared"; and at this thought the settler quickened
his pace.
As the hungry panthers drew near the cabin, and the cries of the lonely
child grew clearer, they hastened their steps, and their eyes opened to
a wider circle, flaming with a greener fire. It would be thoughtless
superstition to say the beasts were cruel. They were simply keen with
hunger, and alive with the eager passion of the chase. They were not
ferocious with any anticipation of battle, for they knew the voice was
the voice of a child, and something in the voice told them the child was
solitary. Theirs was no hideous or unnatural rage, as it is the custom
to describe it. They were but seeking with the strength, the cunning,
the deadly swiftness given them to that end, the food convenient for
them. On their success in accomplishing that for which nature had so
exquisitely designed them depended not only their own, but the lives of
their blind and helpless young, now whimpering in the cave on the slope
of the moon-lit ravine. They crept through a wet alder thicket, bounded
lightly over the ragged brush fence, and paused to reconnoitre on the
edge of the clearing, in the full glare of the moon. At the same moment
the settler emerged from the darkness of the wood-road on the opposite
side of the clearing. He saw the two great beasts, heads down and snouts
thrust forward, gliding toward the open cabin door.
For a few moments the child had been silent. Now his voice rose again
in pitiful appeal, a very ecstasy of loneliness and terror. There was a
note in the cry that shook the settler's soul. He had a vision of his
own boy, at home with his mother, safe-guarded from even the thought of
peril. And here was this little one left to the wild beasts! "Thank
God! Thank God I came!" murmured the settler, as he dropped on one knee
to take a surer aim. There was a loud report (not like the sharp crack
of a rifle), and the female panther, shot through the loins, fell in a
heap, snarling furiously and striking with her fore-paws.
The male walked around her in fierce and anxious amazement. Presently,
as the smoke lifted, he discerned the settler kneeling for a second
shot. With a high screech of fury, the lithe brute sprang upon his
enemy, taking a bullet full in his chest without seeming to know he was
hit. Ere the man could slip in another cartridge the beast was upon
him, bearing him to the ground and fixing keen fangs in his shoulder.
Without a word, the man set his strong fingers desperately into the
brute's throat, wrenched himself partly free, and was struggling to
rise, when the panther's body collapsed upon him all at once, a dead
weight which he easily flung aside. The bullet had done its work just
in time.
Quivering from the swift and dreadful contest, bleeding profusely from
his mangled shoulder, the settler stepped up to the cabin door and
peered in. He heard sobs in the darkness.
"Don't be scared, sonny," he said, in a reassuring voice. "I'm going to
take you home along with me. Poor little lad, _I'll_ look after you if
folks that ought to don't."
Out of the dark corner came a shout of delight, in a voice which made
the settler's heart stand still. "_Daddy_, daddy," it said, "I _knew_
you'd come. I was so frightened when it got dark!" And a little figure
launched itself into the settler's arms, and clung to him trembling.
The man sat down on the threshold and strained the child to his breast.
He remembered how near he had been to disregarding the far-off cries,
and great beads of sweat broke out upon his forehead.
Not many weeks afterwards the settler was following the fresh trail of a
bear which had killed his sheep. The trail led him at last along the
slope of a deep ravine, from whose bottom came the brawl of a swollen
and obstructed stream. In the ravine he found a shallow cave, behind a
great white rock. The cave was plainly a wild beast's lair, and he
entered circumspectly. There were bones scattered about, and on some
dry herbage in the deepest corner of the den, he found the dead bodies,
now rapidly decaying, of two small panther cubs.
*"THE YOUNG RAVENS THAT CALL UPON HIM"*
It was just before dawn, and a greyness was beginning to trouble the
dark about the top of the mountain.
Even at that cold height there was no wind. The veil of cloud that hid
the stars hung but a hand-breadth above the naked summit. To eastward
the peak broke away sheer, beetling in a perpetual menace to the valleys
and the lower hills. Just under the brow, on a splintered and creviced
ledge, was the nest of the eagles.
As the thick dark shrank down the steep like a receding tide, and the
greyness reached the ragged heap of branches forming the nest, the young
eagles stirred uneasily under the loose droop of the mother's wings. She
raised her head and peered about her, slightly lifting her wings as she
did so; and the nestlings, complaining at the chill air that came in
upon their unfledged bodies, thrust themselves up amid the warm feathers
of her thighs. The male bird, perched on a jutting fragment beside the
nest, did not move. But he was awake. His white, narrow, flat-crowned
head was turned to one side, and his yellow eye, under its straight,
fierce lid, watched the pale streak that was growing along the distant
eastern sea-line.
The great birds were racked with hunger. Even the nestlings, to meet
the petitions of whose gaping beaks they stinted themselves without
mercy, felt meagre and uncomforted. Day after day the parent birds had
fished almost in vain; day after day their wide and tireless hunting had
brought them scant reward. The schools of alewives, mackerel, and
herring seemed to shun their shores that spring. The rabbits seemed to
have fled from all the coverts about their mountain.
The mother eagle, larger and of mightier wing than her mate, looked as
if she had met with misadventure. Her plumage was disordered. Her eyes,
fiercely and restlessly anxious, at moments grew dull as if with
exhaustion. On the day before, while circling at her viewless height
above a lake far inland, she had marked a huge lake-trout, basking near
the surface of the water. Dropping upon it with half-closed, hissing
wings, she had fixed her talons in its back. But the fish had proved
too powerful for her. Again and again it had dragged her under water,
and she had been almost drowned before she could unloose the terrible
grip of her claws. Hardly, and late, had she beaten her way back to the
mountain-top.
And now the pale streak in the east grew ruddy. Rust-red stains and
purple, crawling fissures began to show on the rocky face of the peak.
A piece of scarlet cloth, woven among the faggots of the nest, glowed
like new blood in the increasing light. And presently a wave of rose
appeared to break and wash down over the summit, as the rim of the sun
came above the horizon.
The male eagle stretched his head far out over the depth, lifted his
wings and screamed harshly, as if in greeting of the day. He paused a
moment in that position, rolling his eye upon the nest. Then his head
went lower, his wings spread wider, and he launched himself smoothly and
swiftly into the abyss of air as a swimmer glides into the sea. The
female watched him, a faint wraith of a bird darting through the gloom,
till presently, completing his mighty arc, he rose again into the full
light of the morning. Then on level, all but moveless wing, he sailed
away toward the horizon.
As the sun rose higher and higher, the darkness began to melt on the
tops of the lower hills and to diminish on the slopes of the upland
pastures, lingering in the valleys as the snow delays there in spring.
As point by point the landscape uncovered itself to his view, the eagle
shaped his flight into a vast circle, or rather into a series of
stupendous loops. His neck was stretched toward the earth, in the
intensity of his search for something to ease the bitter hunger of his
nestlings and his mate.
Not far from the sea, and still in darkness, stood a low, round hill, or
swelling upland. Bleak and shelterless, whipped by every wind that the
heavens could let loose, it bore no bush but an occasional juniper
scrub. It was covered with mossy hillocks, and with a short grass,
meagre but sweet. There in the chilly gloom, straining her ears to
catch the lightest footfall of approaching peril, but hearing only the
hushed thunder of the surf, stood a lonely ewe over the lamb to which
she had given birth in the night.
Having lost the flock when the pangs of travail came upon her, the
unwonted solitude filled her with apprehension. But as soon as the
first feeble bleating of the lamb fell upon her ear, everything was
changed. Her terrors all at once increased tenfold,--but they were for
her young, not for herself; and with them came a strange boldness such
as her heart had never known before. As the little weakling shivered
against her side, she uttered low, short bleats and murmurs of
tenderness. When an owl hooted in the woods across the valley, she
raised her head angrily and faced the sound, suspecting a menace to her
young. When a mouse scurried past her, with a small, rustling noise
amid the withered mosses of the hillock, she stamped fiercely, and would
have charged had the intruder been a lion.
When the first grey of dawn descended over the pasture, the ewe feasted
her eyes with the sight of the trembling little creature, as it lay on
the wet grass. With gentle nose she coaxed it and caressed it, till
presently it struggled to its feet, and, with its pathetically awkward
legs spread wide apart to preserve its balance, it began to nurse.
Turning her head as far around as she could, the ewe watched its every
motion with soft murmurings of delight.
And now that wave of rose, which had long ago washed the mountain and
waked the eagles, spread tenderly across the open pasture. The lamb
stopped nursing; and the ewe, moving forward two or three steps, tried
to persuade it to follow her. She was anxious that it should as soon as
possible learn to walk freely, so they might together rejoin the flock.
She felt that the open pasture was full of dangers.
The lamb seemed afraid to take so many steps. It shook its ears and
bleated piteously. The mother returned to its side, caressed it anew,
pushed it with her nose, and again moved away a few feet, urging it to
go with her. Again the feeble little creature refused, bleating loudly.
At this moment there came a terrible hissing rush out of the sky, and a
great form fell upon the lamb. The ewe wheeled and charged madly, but
at the same instant the eagle, with two mighty buffetings of his wings,
rose beyond her reach and soared away toward the mountain. The lamb
hung limp from his talons; and with piteous cries the ewe ran beneath,
gazing upward, and stumbling over the hillocks and juniper bushes.
In the nest of the eagles there was content. The pain of their hunger
appeased, the nestlings lay dozing in the sun, the neck of one resting
across the back of the other. The triumphant male sat erect upon his
perch, staring out over the splendid world that displayed itself beneath
him. Now and again he half-lifted his wings and screamed joyously at
the sun. The mother bird, perched upon a limb on the edge of the nest,
busily rearranged her plumage. At times she stooped her head into the
nest to utter over her sleeping eaglets a soft chuckling noise, which
seemed to come from the bottom of her throat.
But hither and thither over the round bleak hill wandered the ewe,
calling for her lamb, unmindful of the flock, which had been moved to
other pastures.
*STRAYED*
In the Cabineau Camp, of unlucky reputation, there was a young ox of
splendid build, but of a wild and restless nature.
He was one of a yoke, of part Devon blood, large, dark-red, all muscle
and nerve, and with wide magnificent horns. His yoke-fellow was a
docile steady worker, the pride of his owner's heart; but he himself
seemed never to have been more than half broken in. The woods appeared
to draw him by some spell. He wanted to get back to the pastures where
he had roamed untrammelled of old with his fellow-steers. The
remembrance was in his heart of the dewy mornings when the herd used to
feed together on the sweet grassy hillocks, and of the clover-smelling
heats of June when they would gather hock-deep in the pools under the
green willow-shadows. He hated the yoke, he hated the winter; and he
imagined that in the wild pastures he remembered it would be for ever
summer. If only he could get back to those pastures!
One day there came the longed-for opportunity; and he seized it. He was
standing unyoked beside his mate, and none of the teamsters were near.
His head went up in the air, and with a snort of triumph he dashed away
through the forest.
For a little while there was a vain pursuit. At last the lumbermen gave
it up. "Let him be!" said his owner, "an' I rayther guess he'll turn up
agin when he gits peckish. He kaint browse on spruce buds an'
lung-wort."
Plunging on with long gallop through the snow he was soon miles from
camp. Growing weary he slackened his pace. He came down to a walk. As
the lonely red of the winter sunset began to stream through the openings
of the forest, flushing the snows of the tiny glades and swales, he grew
hungry, and began to swallow unsatisfying mouthfuls of the long moss
which roughened the tree-trunks. Ere the moon got up he had filled
himself with this fodder, and then he lay down in a little thicket for
the night.
But some miles back from his retreat a bear had chanced upon his
foot-prints. A strayed steer! That would be an easy prey. The bear
started straightway in pursuit. The moon was high in heaven when the
crouched ox heard his pursuer's approach. He had no idea what was
coming, but he rose to his feet and waited.
The bear plunged boldly into the thicket, never dreaming of resistance.
With a muffled roar the ox charged upon him and bore him to the ground.
Then he wheeled, and charged again, and the astonished bear was beaten
at once. Gored by those keen horns he had no stomach for further
encounter, and would fain have made his escape; but as he retreated the
ox charged him again, dashing him against a huge trunk. The bear dragged
himself up with difficulty, beyond his opponent's reach; and the ox
turned scornfully back to his lair.
At the first yellow of dawn the restless creature was again upon the
march. He pulled more mosses by the way, but he disliked them the more
intensely now because he thought he must be nearing his ancient pastures
with their tender grass and their streams. The snow was deeper about
him, and his hatred of the winter grew apace. He came out upon a
hill-side, partly open, whence the pine had years before been stripped,
and where now grew young birches thick together. Here he browsed on the
aromatic twigs, but for him it was harsh fare.
As his hunger increased he thought a little longingly of the camp he had
deserted, but he dreamed not of turning back. He would keep on till he
reached his pastures, and the glad herd of his comrades licking salt out
of the trough beside the accustomed pool. He had some blind instinct as
to his direction, and kept his course to the south very strictly, the
desire in his heart continually leading him aright.
That afternoon he was attacked by a panther, which dropped out of a tree
and tore his throat. He dashed under a low branch and scraped his
assailant off, then, wheeling about savagely, put the brute to flight
with his first mad charge. The panther sprang back into his tree, and
the ox continued his quest.
Soon his steps grew weaker, for the panther's cruel claws had gone deep
into his neck, and his path was marked with blood. Yet the dream in his
great wild eyes was not dimmed as his strength ebbed away. His weakness
he never noticed or heeded. The desire that was urging him absorbed all
other thoughts,--even, almost, his sense of hunger. This, however, it
was easy for him to assuage, after a fashion, for the long, grey,
unnourishing mosses were abundant.
By and by his path led him into the bed of a stream, whose waters could
be heard faintly tinkling on thin pebbles beneath their coverlet of ice
and snow. His slow steps conducted him far along this open course.
Soon after he had disappeared, around the curve in the distance there
came the panther, following stealthily upon his crimsoned trail. The
crafty beast was waiting till the bleeding and the hunger should do its
work, and the object of its inexorable pursuit should have no more heart
left for resistance.
This was late in the afternoon. The ox was now possessed with his
desire, and would not lie down for any rest. All night long, through
the gleaming silver of the open spaces, through the weird and chequered
gloom of the deep forest, heedless even of his hunger, or perhaps driven
the more by it as he thought of the wild clover bunches and tender
timothy awaiting him, the solitary ox strove on. And all night, lagging
far behind in his unabating caution, the panther followed him.
At sunrise the worn and stumbling animal came out upon the borders of
the great lake, stretching its leagues of unshadowed snow away to the
south before him. There was his path, and without hesitation he followed
it. The wide and frost-bound water here and there had been swept clear
of its snows by the wind, but for the most part its covering lay
unruffled; and the pale dove-colours, and saffrons, and rose-lilacs of
the dawn were sweetly reflected on its surface.
The doomed ox was now journeying very slowly, and with the greatest
labour. He staggered at every step, and his beautiful head drooped
almost to the snow When he had got a great way out upon the lake, at the
forest's edge appeared the pursuing panther, emerging cautiously from
the coverts. The round face and malignant green eyes were raised to
peer out across the expanse. The labouring progress of the ox was
promptly marked. Dropping its nose again to the ensanguined snow, the
beast resumed his pursuit, first at a slow trot, and then at a long,
elastic gallop. By this time the ox's quest was nearly done. He plunged
forward upon his knees, rose again with difficulty, stood still, and
looked around him. His eyes were clouding over, but he saw, dimly, the
tawny brute that was now hard upon his steps. Back came a flash of the
old courage, and he turned, horns lowered, to face the attack. With the
last of his strength he charged, and the panther paused irresolutely;
but the wanderer's knees gave way beneath his own impetus, and his horns
ploughed the snow. With a deep bellowing groan he rolled over on his
side, and the longing, and the dream of the pleasant pastures, faded
from his eyes. With a great spring the panther was upon him, and the
eager teeth were at his throat,--but he knew nought of it. No wild
beast, but his own desire, had conquered him.
When the panther had slaked his thirst for blood, he raised his head,
and stood with his fore-paws resting on the dead ox's side, and gazed
all about him.
To one watching from the lake shore, had there been any one to watch in
that solitude, the wild beast and his prey would have seemed but a speck
of black on the gleaming waste. At the same hour, league upon league
back in the depth of the ancient forest, a lonely ox was lowing in his
stanchions, restless, refusing to eat, grieving for the absence of his
yoke-fellow.
*THE WATCHERS IN THE SWAMP*
Under the first pale lilac wash of evening, just where the slow stream
of the Lost-Water slipped placidly from the open meadows into the
osier-and-bulrush tangles of the swamp, a hermit thrush, perched in the
topmost spray of a young elm tree, was fluting out his lonely and
tranquil ecstasy to the last of the sunset. _Spheral, spheral, oh,
holy, holy, clear,_ he sang; and stopped abruptly, as if to let the
brief, unfinished, but matchlessly pure and poignant cadence sink
unjarred into the heart of the evening stillness. One minute--two
minutes--went by; and the spaces of windless air were like a crystal
tinged with faint violet. And then this most reticent of singers loosed
again his few links of flawless sound--a strain which, more than any
other bird-song on this earth, leaves the listener's heart aching
exquisitely for its completion. _Spheral, spheral, oh, holy, holy_--but
this time, as if seeking by further condensation to make his attar of
song still more rare and precious, he cut off the final note, that
haunting, ethereal--_clear_.
Again the tranced stillness. But now, as if too far above reality to be
permitted to endure, after a few seconds it was rudely broken. From
somewhere in the mysterious and misty depth of the swamp came a great
booming and yet strangulated voice, so dominant that the ineffable
colours of the evening seemed to fade and the twilight to deepen
suddenly under its sombre vibrations. Three times it
sounded:--_Klunk-er-glungk_ ... _Klunk-er-glungk_ ... _Klunk-er-glungk_,
an uncouth, mysterious sound, sonorous, and at the same time half
muffled, as if pumped with effort through obstructing waters. It was
the late cry of the bittern, proclaiming that the day was done.
The hermit-thrush, on his tree-top against the pale sky, sang no more,
but dropped noiselessly to his mate on her nest in the thickets. Two
bats flickered and zigzagged hither and thither above the glimmering
stream. And the leaf-scented dusk gathered down broodingly, with the
dew, over the wide solitudes of Lost-Water Swamp.
* * * * * *
It was high morning in the heart of the swamp. From a sky of purest
cobalt flecked sparsely with silver-white wisps of cloud, the sun glowed
down with tempered, fruitful warmth upon the tender green of the
half-grown rushes and already rank water-grasses--the young leafage of
the alder and willow thickets--the wide pools and narrow, linking lanes
of unruffled water already mantling in spots with lily-pad and
arrow-weed. A few big red-and-black butterflies wavered aimlessly above
the reed-tops. Here and there, with a faint elfin clashing of
transparent wings, a dragon-fly, a gleam of emerald and amethyst fire,
flashed low over the water. From every thicket came a soft chatter of
the nesting red-shouldered blackbirds.
And just in the watery fringe of the reeds, as brown and erect and
motionless as a mooring stake, stood the bittern.
Not far short of three feet in length, from the tip of his long and
powerful dagger-pointed bill to the end of his short rounded tail, with
his fierce, unblinking eyes round, bright and hard, with his snaky head
and long, muscular neck, he looked, as he was, the formidable master of
the swamp. In colouring he was a streaked and freckled mixture of slaty
greys and browns and ochres above, with a freckled whitish throat, and
dull buff breast and belly--a mixture which would have made him
conspicuous amid the cool light green of the sedges, but that it
harmonised so perfectly with the earth and the roots. Indeed, moveless
as he stood, to the undiscriminating eye he might easily have passed for
a decaying stump by the water side. His long legs were of dull olive
which melted into the shadowy tones of the water.
For perhaps ten minutes the great bird stood there without the movement
of so much as a feather, apparently unconcerned while the small
inhabitants of the swamp made merry in the streaming sunshine. But his
full round eyes took in, without stirring in their sockets, all that
went on about him, in air, or sedge, or water. Suddenly, and so swiftly
that it seemed one motion, his neck uncoiled and his snaky head darted
downward into the water near his feet, to rise again with an eight-inch
chub partly transfixed and partly gripped between the twin daggers of
his half-opened bill. Squirming, and shining silverly, it was held
aloft, while its captor stalked solemnly in through the sedges to a bit
of higher and drier turf. Here he proceeded to hammer his prize into
stillness upon an old half-buried log. Then, tossing it into the air,
he caught it adroitly by the head, and swallowed it, his fierce eyes
blinking with the effort as he slowly forced it down his capacious
gullet. It was a satisfying meal, even for such a healthy appetite as
his, and he felt no immediate impulse to continue his fishing.
Remaining where he was beside the old log, thigh deep in the young
grasses and luxuriously soaking in the sunshine, he fell once more into
a position of rigid movelessness. But his attitude was now quite
different from that which he had affected when his mind was set on fish.
His neck was coiled backwards till the back of his head rested on his
shoulders, and his bill pointed skyward, as if the only peril he had to
consider seriously during his time of repose might come, if at all, from
that direction. And though he rested, and every nerve and muscle seemed
to sleep, his gem-like eyes were sleeplessly vigilant. Only at long
intervals a thin, whitish membrane flickered down across them for a
fraction of an instant, to cleanse and lubricate them and keep their
piercing brightness undimmed.
Once a brown marsh-hawk, questing for water-rats, winnowed past, only
ten or a dozen feet above his head. But he never stirred a muscle. He
knew it would be a much more formidable and daring marauder than the
marsh-hawk that would risk conclusions with the uplifted dagger of his
bill.
In about half-an-hour--so swift is the digestion of these masters of the
swamp--the bittern began to think about a return to his easy and
pleasant hunting. But, always deliberate except when there was need for
instant action, at first he did no more than uncoil his long neck, lower
his bill to a level, and stand motionlessly staring over the sedge-tops.
One of the big red-and-black butterflies came wavering near, perhaps
under the fatal delusion that that rigid yellow bill would be a good
perch for him to alight on. A lightning swift dart of the snaky head;
and those gay wings, after curiously adorning for a moment the tip of
the yellow bill, were deftly gathered in and swallowed--an unsubstantial
morsel, but not to be ignored when one is blest with a bittern's
appetite.
After a few minutes more of statuesque deliberation, having detected
nothing in the landscape particularly demanding his attention, the
bittern lazily lifted his broad wings and flapped in slow flight, his
long legs almost brushing the sedge-tops, back to the post of vantage
where he had captured the chub. As soon as he alighted he stiffened
himself erect, and stared about as if to see whether his flight had been
noticed. Then, presently, he seemed to remember something of importance.
This was the season of mating joys and cares. It was time he signalled
his brown mate. First he began snapping his bill sharply, and then he
went through a number of contortions with his throat and neck, as if he
were trying to gulp down vast quantities of air, and finding the effort
most difficult. At length, however, the painful-looking struggle was
crowned with achievement. Once more, as on the preceding evening, that
great call boomed forth across the swamp, sonorous yet strangulated,
uncouth yet thrilling and haunting, the very voice of solitude and
mystery:--_Klunk-er-glungk--Klunk-er-glungk--Klunk-er-glungk_.
Almost immediately came an acknowledgement of this untuneful
love-song--a single hoarse _quaw-awk_; and another snaky brown head and
yellow dagger bill were raised above the tops of the sedges. The hen
bittern, in response to her mate's cry, had just come off her nest.
For some tranquil moments the two eyed each other without stirring, and
it almost seemed as if their very immobility was a mode of expression, a
secret code for communication between them. The result, if so, appeared
to be satisfactory. The hen came stalking solemnly through the grass
and sedges towards the water's edge, only pausing on the way to transfix
and gulp down a luckless frog. And the stately male, once more
spreading his spacious vans, flapped slowly over and dropped again into
the grass some ten or a dozen feet from the nest.
The nest was a rather casual structure of dry grass and weeds, in a
hollow of the turf, and more or less concealed by leaning tufts of
swamp-grass. It contained three large eggs of a dull greenish buff,
clouded with darker tones, and blending elusively with the soft
colourings of the nest. These precious eggs the male bittern had no
intention of brooding. His object was merely to stand guard over them,
with jealous vigilance, while his mate was away foraging. The sun was
softly warm upon them, through the thin shadows of the grass blades, and
he knew they would not chill during her brief absence. He took his post
just near enough to keep his eye upon the nest, without unduly drawing
attention to its hiding-place.
This patch of water-meadow, perhaps a half-acre in extent, on which the
bitterns had their nest, was one of many such tiny islands scattered
amid the interlacing channels of Lost-Water Swamp. It formed a
congenial refuge for all that small life of the wilderness which loves
to be near water without being in it. It was particularly beloved of
the meadow-mice, because the surrounding watercourses and morasses were
an effectual barrier to some of their worst enemies, such as foxes,
skunks, and weasels; and they throve here amazingly. To be sure the
bittern would take toll of them when they came his way, but he did not
deliberately hunt them, rather preferring a diet of frogs and fish; and
moreover, his depredations upon the mice were more than counterbalanced
by his eager hostility to their dreaded foes, the snakes. So, on the
whole, he might have been regarded by the mouse community as a
benefactor, though a rather costly one.
Even now, as he stood there apparently thinking of nothing but his
guardianship of the nest, he gave a telling example of his beneficence
in this regard. There was a tiny, frightened squeak, a desperate small
rustling in the grass-stems, and a terrified mouse scurried by, with a
two-foot black snake at its tail. The bittern's head flashed down,
unerringly, and rose again, more slowly, with the snake gripped by the
middle. Held high in air, as if on exhibition, between the knife-edge
tips of that deadly yellow bill, the victim writhed and twisted, coiling
itself convulsively around its captor's head and neck. But with two or
three sharp jerks it was drawn further back, towards the base of the
mandibles, and then, with an inexorable pressure, bitten clean in two,
the halves uncoiled and fell to the ground, still wriggling
spasmodically. With grave deliberation the bittern planted one foot
upon the head half, and demolished the vicious head with a tap of his
bill. This done, he swallowed it, with determined and strenuous
gulpings. Then he eyed the other half doubtfully, and decided that he
was not yet ready for it. So, placing one foot upon it with a precise
air, as if in assertion of ownership, he lifted his head again and
resumed his motionless guarding of the nest. If any mice were
watching--and their beady bright eyes are _always_ watching--they may
well have congratulated themselves that the pair of bitterns had chosen
this particular island for their nesting-place.
A little later in the morning--perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes after
the incident of the snake--the mice found yet another potent reason for
congratulating themselves on the presence of their expensive champion.
The hen bittern, apparently, had not been very successful in her
foraging. She had shown as yet no sign of returning to the nest. The
male was just beginning to get impatient. He even went so far as to
move his head, though ever so slightly. Indeed, he was on the very
point of beginning those grotesque snappings of the bill and gulpings of
air, which would be followed by his booming triple call, when he caught
sight of a dark form moving through the grass, beyond the nest.
Instantly he stiffened again into rigidity. Only, very slowly, the long
slender feathers which crowned his head and lay along his neck began to
rise.
The dark form, gliding stealthily among the grasses, was that of an
animal about two feet in length, low on the legs, slender, sinuous,
quick-darting. The bittern had never chanced to observe a mink before,
but he needed no one to tell him that this creature was dangerous.
Ferocity and efficiency were written all over the savage, triangular
head, and lithe, swift body. But the intruder had evidently not yet
discovered the precious nest. He was half a dozen paces away from it,
and not moving directly towards it. He seemed quite otherwise occupied.
Indeed, in the very next moment he pounced upon a mouse, which he tore
and devoured with an eagerness which showed him to be hungry. The
bittern, being blest with prudence and self-control, made no move to
meet trouble half-way. He waited, and hoped anxiously that the treasure
of the nest might escape discovery.
The mink, to do that sanguinary marauder justice, was not at the moment
thinking of any such luxury as eggs. A restless and far-ranging slayer,
and almost as much at home in the water as on dry land, he had entered
the swamp in the hope of finding just such a happy hunting ground as
this bit of mouse-thronged meadow. He had just arrived, after much
swimming of sluggish channels, scrambling over slimy roots, and picking
a fastidious way about dark pools of treacherous ooze, and he was now
full of blood-thirsty excitement over the success of his adventure. His
acute ears and supersensitive nostrils had already assured him that the
meadow was simply swarming with mice. His nose sniffed greedily the
subtle, warm mousy smells. His ears detected the innumerable, elusive
mousy squeaks and rustlings. His eyes, lit now with the red spark of
the blood-lust, were less fortunate than his ears and nose, because word
of a new and dreadful foe had gone abroad among the mouse-folk, and
concealment was the order of the day. But already, he had made one
kill--and that so easily that he knew the quarry here was not much
hunted. He felt that, at last, he could afford to take life easily and
do his hunting at leisure.
He licked his lips, gave his long whiskers a brush with his fore-paws,
to cleanse them after his rather hasty and untidy meal, and was just
preparing to follow a very distinct mouse trail which lay alluringly
before his nose, when a chance puff of air, drawing softly across the
grass, bore him a scent which instantly caught his attention. The scent
of bittern was new to him, as it chanced. He knew it for the scent of a
bird, a water-bird of some kind,--probably, from its abundance, a large
bird, and certainly, therefore, a bird worth his hunting. That the
hunting might have any possible perils for himself was far from
occurring to his savage and audacious spirit.
Curious and inquiring, he rose straight up en his hind-quarters in order
to get a good view, and peered searchingly over the grass-tops. He saw
nothing but the green and sun-steeped meadow with the red-and-black
butterflies wavering over it, the gleam of the unruffled water, and the
osier-thickets beyond, their leafage astir with blackbirds and
swamp-sparrows. He looked directly at, and _past_, the guardian bittern,
not discovering him for a bird at all, but probably mistaking that
rigid, vigilant shape for an old brown stump. For the mink's eyes, like
those of many other animals, were less unerring than his ears and
nostrils, and much quicker to discern motion than fixed form. Had the
bittern stirred by so much as a hair's breadth, the mink would have
detected him at once for what he was. But there in the full glare of
the open, his immobility concealed him like a magic cloak. The mink
looked at him and saw him not; nor saw another similar form, unstirring,
tensely watchful, over by the water-side. The hen bittern, warned
perhaps by some subtle telepathic signal from her mate, had stopped her
fishing and stood on guard.
Having failed to detect the source of that strange, intriguing smell,
the mink concluded, from past experiences with partridge, grouse, and
duck, that it must come from a brooding mother, hiding on a nest in the
grass. Nothing could be more satisfactory. His eyes blazed blood-red
at the prospect of slaughter. Dropping down again upon all fours, he
darted forward, up the trail of the scent, soundless as a shadow and
swift as a shifting beam of light,--and came full upon the nest with its
three unsheltered eggs. Instantly seizing the nearest one between his
agile forepaws, he crunched the shell and began greedily sucking up the
contents.
But the savour of the feast had hardly thrilled his palate when it
seemed as if the skies had fallen upon him. A scalding anguish stabbed
his hunched-up shoulders, a smother of buffeting wings enveloped him,
and he was borne backward from the nest in an ignominious bundle, the
broken egg-shell still clinging to his nose.
At that moment when he had dropped upon all fours and darted forward
through the grass toward the nest, all the immobility of the watching
bittern had vanished. His long crest standing straight up in his fury,
he had launched himself to the attack, covered the intervening distance
with two tremendous thrusts of his powerful wings, and fallen like a
cyclone upon the violator of his home. The dagger of his bill had
struck deeply, though at random; his hard wing-elbows had landed their
blows effectively; and the impetus of his charge had swept the battle
clear of the nest, thus saving the two remaining eggs from destruction.
The same impetus carried him clear of his foe and a couple of paces
past, but he turned adroitly in the air and landed facing about, ready
for the inevitable counter-attack.