The Pied Raven of Dun Kirk was pied simply because his body was jet
black and his breast shone iridescent blue; then, too, he had white
wing-shoulders and wore a white cap on top of his head. He looked like
a widow but felt more like a bachelor, for he was a gentleman raven and
kept bachelor hall in a tall tree on the Flemish sand dunes.
The Pied Raven was no fisherman, even though he did love the sight, smell
and particularly the taste of fish; and in the sea to the north were the
best of fishing-grounds. He envied the River Hawk and Sea Eagle who knew
so well the habits of all finny creatures and could select the best,
fresh and squirming from the water. The Pied Raven’s tastes were every
bit as refined as the River Hawk’s, Sea Eagle’s or anybody else’s for
that matter; but he was a poor raven, or rather, poor fisherman and his
fish-diet was in accordance with his means. His means for catching fish
were extremely limited; so all he could do was beg, borrow or steal from
those more gifted than himself. Failing in all three of these methods,
he had to wait around and content himself with such leavings as the
Hawk and Eagle had no room for; and that is how the Pied Raven got into
trouble.
The River Hawk caught a big, flapping fish, selected and served to suit
his appetite to a nicety; no more, no less. After he had filled up and
flown away, the Pied Raven, who all this time was watching and awaiting
his turn, dropped down to take pot-luck. He found mostly bones and very
little fish. This was exasperating, considering the time he had spent
sitting around, so he tore loose a big back-fin and gobbled it down.
“Why is it that the River Hawk eats up all the meat and leaves me none?”
he grumbled. “I never—awr-rk”; something stuck in his throat. Alas! That
miserable back-fin had gone down the wrong way. He coughed and sputtered
and did his best to be rid of it up or down, but the fin had a long spine
and was stuck fast. He choked and gasped, his head began whirling and
he rolled in the dirt; and while lying there with a hazy notion that he
would not be a pied raven much longer, he began to see strange things.
Above him, towered a mighty giant, the largest and shaggiest he had ever
seen. Its nose reached almost to the ground. Two wonderful horns curled
and twisted from its mouth. Another marvelous creature appeared; a giant
and shaggy too but smaller than the first. It was round and fat with
stumpy legs. This giant had a short nose,—not long like the first one. A
horn stuck straight up out of it like a sharp stake.
A third giant loomed up,—smaller yet and nothing like the first two. It
squatted on its hind legs and made motions with the front ones. Its mouth
stretched so queerly from ear to ear and so pleasantly that the Pied
Raven was sure he had flown into another world. Mere earthly creatures
never made such nice faces,—certainly not.
“What a strange-looking crow!” Number Three Giant was saying. “I never
saw one with head and shoulders white. Arrah! it’s dead.”
Even in his dreams, the Pied Raven could not repress his indignation. To
be mistaken for a crow, was more than he could bear.
“I saw it kick a little,” said Giant Number Two,—the one with the
nose-horn.
“So?” The Pied Raven felt himself being lifted from the ground; but he
was growing drowsier every moment and did not care much. Something pried
his mouth open but that did not matter either. He was beyond feeling any
interest in what happened to him.
“Choked by a big fish-bone!” cried a voice, and then a pair of fingers
reached down his throat and pulled something loose that suddenly woke
him up, it hurt so like fury.
“By my old white head!” squawked the Pied Raven; but, all the same,
things stopped spinning around and he felt better. After a moment, he
found himself flat on his back, staring at the sky and beginning to think
it time to get up and go somewhere else.
“A man, a mammoth and a rhinoceros!” he said as the three giants assumed
earthly shapes; and he scrambled to his feet, a Pied Raven once more,
although a trifle the worse for wear. Giant Number Three now become a
Trog-man,—a fairly young one—held the fish-bone between the first and
second fingers of his right hand.
“Well for you we chanced to be passing this way,” he said and smiled
again.
The Pied Raven jumped. Here was a Trog-man who could talk sense. All
the rest of them he had seen, jabbered and made strange noises in their
throats. This one could make his face all sunshine too. The Pied Raven
thought him a pretty good sort.
“Well, indeed,” he rasped. “Trog-men usually throw stones at birds and
never take fish-bones from their throats. I will do as well by you if I
ever can.” He looked curiously at the group before him. “A man, a mammoth
and a rhinoceros; queer combination, that. How did you three ever come
to be together?”
“We have lost our way,” answered the Trog-man—Pic, of course. “We went
north to search for something but were forced to hurry back.”
“Searching for something?” asked the Pied Raven, cocking his head on one
side. “That sounds interesting. What can it be that you three would hunt
for together?”
“Treasure,” Hairi broke in with a most business-like air. “We did not
find it but we are glad enough to get back alive.”
“Treasure?” inquired the Pied Raven, becoming more and more interested.
“What kind?”
“That is what we wish to find out,” the Mammoth replied. “All we know is,
that somewhere in the world there is treasure buried beneath a stone in a
cave on the side of a mountain. We do not know just where to look for it.”
“Rather indefinite,” observed the Pied Raven. “Er-awk; let me think.” He
gazed thoughtfully at the ground. “Mountain, cave, stone; that may help a
little. I know of many mountains, caves and stones but none of them seem
to fit together. Awrk; I have it!” he suddenly exclaimed. “I remember a
cave on a mountain. It has a stone in the entrance. I know because I once
perched on it.”
“Where?” asked Hairi and Wulli in chorus.
“Far from here,” said the Pied Raven. “Too far for such fat animals to
walk. You will never get there.” He shook his head dubiously at the two
great beasts.
“How far?” grumbled the Mammoth who was quick to resent the slur cast
upon his figure. “I can walk farther than any crow flies.”
“Awrk-k-k! do stop calling me a crow,” squawked the Pied Raven. “I am a
raven; not a crow. Please remember that.”
“And we are large, not fat; do not forget that,” retorted the Mammoth.
“Where must we go to reach this cave?” Pic inquired. “We cannot go too
far out of our way. We must be south before the cold weather comes.”
The Pied Raven pointed his bill eastward. “It may save you time if I go
along too,” he said. “I have nothing in particular to do and would help
you who have done me a good turn.”
It was finally agreed that the Pied Raven should join the party and all
go to where the treasure supposedly lay buried in the cave-floor awaiting
their pleasure. None knew where the cave was—none but the Pied Raven.
Pic mounted the Mammoth’s neck and the bird perched in front of him on
the head-peak. Wulli trotted by the side of his partner. After some
discussion—in which the idea was suggested then abandoned of having the
Pied Raven ride on Wulli’s nose-horn and thus relieve the Mammoth of a
double burden—the expedition set forth.
From Dun Kirk, the trio—now become a quartette—moved eastward over the
Flemish sand-dunes and lowlands. Gradually the days and nights grew
colder, the country higher and more broken up by rocks, rivers and
ravines. Squirrels, woodchucks and all were busy lining their nests and
laying up stores for the oncoming winter. The winds blew sharp and bitter
and Pic was forced to bury his feet and hands deeply in the Mammoth’s
long hair to keep them warm. Without being aware of the fact and caring
less, the party passed the Belgian frontier and marched into southern
Holland and out again the same day—into western Germany. None bade them
halt. No arbitrary boundary lines prevented their travelling without
passports or other unheard-of things. Belgium, Holland, Germany and all
went to make up one big country—western Europe—where creatures might live
and go about just where they pleased.
Guided by the Pied Raven, Pic and his friends arrived at last on the
western heights overlooking the Rhine. They descended to the river and
crossed. The Mammoth acted as a ferry-boat for Pic and the Pied Raven who
climbed to the top of his shoulder hump and had a busy time of it keeping
their legs clear of the icy water. The Mammoth and Rhinoceros revelled
in breaking up the ice and breasting the cold, swift current. They were
powerful swimmers and had all the fun while the other two held their
breaths and thanked their lucky stars when safe on solid ground once more.
After crossing the river, the party passed through bedraggled groups
of trees, bordering a deep ravine, at whose bottom flowed a stream,
the Düssel. As they proceeded along the heights the ravine gradually
deepened as the limestone cliffs reared upwards on both sides. The stream
narrowed, the walls rose higher and higher and at last the trio stood on
the brink of the Neander Gorge itself.
The northern crest on which they were now placed, looked across and
upward to the southern line of cliffs, whose summit rose far above the
frozen surface of the Düssel. The Pied Raven suddenly emitted his strange
rasping cry:
“The cave is before us,” he announced so unexpectedly that his three
hearers nearly jumped out of their skins.
All came to a stop and looked up. On the opposite side of the gorge,
about fifty feet above the level on which they stood, a cavity opened
in the face of the limestone wall,—a mere hole, but one of Nature’s
landmarks built to endure for a thousand generations—the Cave of the
Neander Gorge.
“And now my work is done,” said the Pied Raven. “The mountain and cave
are there; the stone rests in the entrance. I leave them to you. Good-bye
and good-luck.”
With a bound, he was high in the sky soaring westward before any one of
the trio realized that their goal was reached and that their guide had
taken his departure.
“Strange that he chose to take his leave without seeing the treasure,”
said Pic as he watched the dark speck disappear in the distance.
“He might have helped us further,” the Mammoth sighed. “The cave is
beyond our reach. Only a bird could get up there.”
“Up, yes,” laughed Pic who had been studying the cliffs above the cave.
“But why not down? I can reach it from the top.”
The rock fell sheer and smooth from the dark hole; but above it, sharp
corners and crevices suggested the possibility of a descent from the
plateau above; a venture which appealed strongly to Pic. It was no easy
matter to reach the cave but well worth the trying.
After a brief search, he discovered a cross-cleft which made it a simple
matter for him to descend to the level of the Düssel. The stream was now
frozen over sufficiently to bear his weight. Hairi and Wulli stood still
and watched. They saw him cross the ice, moving diagonally up-stream to
where a portion of the great rock-wall had crumbled and fallen, thereby
forming a rugged incline or causeway from base to summit. Pic ascended
this causeway with no great difficulty. He reached the top, and then
proceeded downstream along the heights until he stood almost directly
over the cave some one hundred feet below him. He waved his arm and
shouted to his friends on the opposite crest; then slowly and with a
skill born of long experience, he began the perilous descent, clinging
to every projecting corner that gave him a secure hold. He held his
ax-handle between his teeth, thus leaving both arms free. To the Mammoth
and Rhinoceros, he appeared like a fly crawling down the face of the rock.
He reached the cave at last and leaped down to the threshold, ax in
hand all ready to do battle with any who might resent his visit. But no
fierce enemy leaped forth; no sound came from within. As his eyes became
accustomed to the dim inner light, he saw that the cave was a small one
and unoccupied except for a pile of something lying in one corner.
“An eagle’s nest,” he muttered. “The Mammoth was right. Only a bird would
choose such a place for his home.”
He entered the cave. The pile he had first noticed, was a mass of leaves
hollowed in the center like a large nest; but no feathers lay scattered
about,—no refuse of any kind suggesting a bird. Pic noted the absence of
such signs,—a trivial matter but disconcerting, none the less.
“What was that noise?” He raised his ax and crouched with back to the
side-wall, then laughed as he saw the cause of his alarm—a tiny stream of
water trickling through a crack to a shallow pool in the floor. “Water
dripping through the roof—nothing else,” he assured himself. Then came
another sound, a faint rustling. In a moment it ceased. “Only a bat,” and
he breathed once more.
“I seem to be imagining all sorts of absurd things,” thought Pic but the
thought failed to soothe his nerves. “All because of that old nest.”
He kneeled beside it and sniffed. The nest had a strange odor—of what
he could not say, but one fact was clear; it belonged to some animal
and not a bird. He rose to his feet. He was about to seek the platform
outside when something on the cave-floor caught his eye—something that
made his heart beat fast. There at his feet lay a handful of roots and
herbs—freshly picked.
He sank to the ground on one knee and bent low to more closely examine
these alarming objects so strangely out of place in the den of a wild
beast.
[Illustration: WITH A HOARSE CRY PIC SPRANG TO HIS FEET]
“A cave man’s home? Can it be possible?” he asked himself. As if in
reply, an almost inaudible scraping sound broke the dead stillness of the
cave, followed by the low breathing of some living thing behind him. A
dim shadow spread itself over the floor, creeping forward inch by inch
until it reached the side wall and rose slowly upward. Pic followed it
with a fascinated horror that robbed him of power to use his voice or
limbs. Gradually the grey phantom ascended the wall before his eyes and
resolved itself into the silhouetted head and shoulders of a man.
With a hoarse cry, Pic sprang to his feet. Before he could turn,
something descended upon his head with crushing force. Slowly he rolled
over in a crumpled heap. His limbs stiffened, then relaxed and his senses
flew to the winds, shutting out all sight and sound and thought of the
Mammoth and Rhinoceros anxiously awaiting on the opposite side of the
gorge.