course I pointed out to him that we were in great danger, and that we
couldn’t hope to hold out much longer--and what do you think he said?
‘Twinkle,’ he said, ‘think of your first nest last year. Don’t you
remember those sunny days in the meadow by the brook, and the excitement
as the hatching days drew near?’ Can you imagine such folly as to talk
of hatching when we were sitting in a place like that, hardly able to
hold on for the wind?”
Flip thought he knew why Pipi had said that, but he did not interrupt
this time.
“Well,” continued Twinkle, “he went on like that, and told me to cheer
up, and said we couldn’t be far from land, for the ship was only a
fishing-smack caught in a storm, and they never venture very far from
shore; and at last I got very angry with such nonsense, and told him
nothing should make me leave go except the wind. So Pipi declared at
last that he was going on, and I had better come too; but I wouldn’t, so
he opened his wings, and just as he left the rope, somehow or other I
did so too.”
“Why,” said Flip, unable to suppress himself this time. “I thought you
said Pipi was the last bird in the world you would obey!”
“I didn’t obey Pipi,” said Twinkle, indignantly. “I went of myself.”
But Flip knew better, for Pipi had a wonderful influence over the other
birds, and they all knew that Twinkle in particular could always be led
by him.
“Well, there we were again at the mercy of this horrible south-easter.
Pipi was a little ahead of me, and kept up his call-note continuously: I
kept on answering it as well as I could. We had not been flying long,
when suddenly, at no great distance, a light burst out in the darkness.
‘Land and the lighthouse!’ called out Pipi, and on we went at a
tremendous speed, for the gale was now almost behind us, roaring
furiously. In another moment the light went out as suddenly as it had
begun, and then I knew that it was one of those revolving lights that we
have sometimes seen in our travels, and I guessed that it was that one
on the headland yonder, where we arrived a year ago, that beautiful calm
night with the gentle westerly breeze.”
“Oh, dear, dear!” said Flip, “I remember that it puzzled Pipi dreadfully
that night, and he declared he would find out all about it some day.”
“Well,” said Twinkle, “his wish has been gratified this year. I was
almost too faint and tired to fly any farther, and my pace had
slackened, so that Pipi was some way in front, when out came the light
again, a great deal bigger than before, and just ahead of us. As I
reached it, and was sinking down on the land exhausted, I saw Pipi fly
right up to it, and heard a loud tap of his bill against something hard;
and then he fell down on the balustrade in front of the light, and there
he lay, as dead as a thrush’s snail, as I said before.”
Flip was silent, and put his head under his wing to hide his grief. “Did
you go and look at him?” he said at last.
“How can you ask such a question?” answered Twinkle. “I sank to the
ground, and got into some long grass under a bit of hedge by the
lighthouse. I hadn’t strength left to take wing again; and if I could
have done it, I should have been blown against the lighthouse: and what
was more, the light had gone out again, and I couldn’t see where it
was.”
“But the light came out once more, I suppose?” asked Flip.
“I don’t know,” said the other. “I put my head under my wing and went to
sleep under the hedge; which is exactly what you too would have done, if
you had been there.”
Flip said no more; but he formed a strong opinion about Twinkle, and
felt that he did not care for his company any longer. Watching his
opportunity, while the other was at work on a fly, he flitted quietly
into the thick of the alders on the other side of the round pond, and
taking a perch right down in the roots by the water, began to give vent
to his own sorrow by uttering a sad cheep every minute or two. Poor
Pipi, the kindest and the cleverest of them all! always helping some
one, and always in good humour! never without some little fun of his
own, even in the most awkward moments! How could they possibly get back
again to Africa, when the summer was over, without Pipi? How indeed
would Flip have the heart to sing to his wife during the nesting-time,
unless Pipi’s voice was heard from the next tree? Pipi was always
singing, and his voice was the best of all: for while the others were
always finding their voices go up with a turn at the end of their
strain, like those commonplace chaffinches, Pipi almost always brought
down his in a perfect cadence, which is the great accomplishment of a
willow-warbler. And when the young were fledged, no young father of a
brood was so careful or so beloved as Pipi. _He_ did not leave all the
work to his wife, as some did; Mrs. Pipi had been hard-worked ever since
they built their nest at the foot of the big elm-tree, and now she was
sent off every day in the early morning to eat her fill of insects in a
neighbouring garden, with a special warning to beware of the old gray
cat, who was always creeping about between the pea-rows. Then Pipi used
to take the young ones under his own charge, and put off his own
breakfast till he had fed them well, popping the food into their gaping
beaks as fast as if his wife had been there to help him. What fun he
used to make of them! Flip remembered how he was once sitting on a
bough, singing to his own wife, who had not yet hatched all her eggs,
when he saw Pipi trying to entice his young ones out of the nest. They
all came out at last, except Dot the youngest, who sat at the door of
the nest, and looked through the buttercup stems into the wide world
with fearful and restless eyes. Pipi tried all he could to make her come
out; he perched on the bough above her and sang his best, so that her
little black eyes twinkled, for she knew that music well; but still she
hesitated. Then he picked up a little green caterpillar and put it down
just in front of her; her bill opened wide at the sight of such a juicy
morsel, but still she did not come. Just then a snail came slowly by,
with its shell on its back.
“Dot,” said Pipi, “do you see that creature with his nest on his back?
Shall I tell you why he must always carry it? When he was a nestling, he
wouldn’t come out of his nest like the others; so at last the nest stuck
to him, and he carries it to this day, and always will. So take care the
same thing doesn’t happen to you, Dot--I rather think I see your back
beginning to stick to that bit of moss; and if you don’t make haste--”
But before he could finish the sentence, the horror-stricken Dot was out
of the nest; and in another minute she was on a twig beside him.
Recollections like these passed through poor Flip’s clouded mind, as he
lurked in the stems of the alder-root. But after a while, as the wind
went down, he bestirred himself, and flying up to the top of the alder,
began to look about him. There was the sea, and there the little gap,
with the stream, where he had landed: and there, right above it, on a
headland, was the lighthouse. It would not take long to get there, and
he felt that he must go and find out if anything was to be seen of poor
Pipi. A flight would do him good, and there were plenty of hedges to
rest on. So after a number of quick low flights from hedge to hedge and
tree to tree, he came to the front of the lighthouse, and sank rather
tired into the long grass where Twinkle had landed in the night. Peeping
out after a while, he flew about a little, searching for poor Pipi’s
body: but nothing was to be seen of it. Then, taking courage, he flew up
on to the platform in front of the light, on which Twinkle had described
Pipi’s falling, but neither here was there a trace to be seen of Pipi.
Just as he was going to fly off he heard a voice inside the
lantern-room, and listened, for birds can understand all languages.
“Well, Peter,” said the voice, “what did you get in last night’s gale?
The warblers ought to be coming now; we have had the chiffchaffs and the
wheatears, and a few redstarts; who are the next earliest this year?”
Flip peeped in at a corner of the window; it was dangerous, but he might
see or hear something of Pipi. The man who had spoken was a tall, hale,
and hearty looking old gentleman, with a face glowing with its own
good-nature as well as with the blustering of the gale. He was answered
by the lighthouse-man, who wore an oilskin hat, and was short and
weather-beaten.
“Good afternoon, Professor,” he said, as he put his hand into a deep
pocket of his overcoat, “I’ve a thing or two for you this time; sure to
get something in a gale like that, though for the matter of that a calm
night suits ’em better. We’ll have more to-night again, I’ll answer for
it. Here they be: some of ’em knocked agen the window and fell on the
platform (Flip felt his ears tingling and his brain swimming); some on
‘em were blowed right away and we couldn’t find ’em. Wrens we calls ’em
here, though they ben’t just like our jenny wrens, all the same,” said
he, as he pulled out a number of little birds and laid them on the
table.
Flip shuddered; he recognized his kindred, but their eyes were closed,
their heads hung down, and their feathers lay loose and heavy: there was
no telling one from another, especially at his distance from the table.
Still, he had no doubt in his mind that Pipi was among them.
“Willow-wrens, if you like,” said the Professor; “willow-warblers, I
like to call them; _Phylloscopus trochilus_ is the scientific name, and
you will find all about them in that book of mine I gave you, at page
432. A redstart too, I see, poor fellow; so much the worse for
somebody’s garden or field this next May or June. But now, where’s the
diary; let us have them all down--wind, what was it, south-east by
south?”
“That’s it, sir,” said the lighthouse-man; and they sat down together at
the table, and began to turn the birds over one by one. Flip watched
till they came to the last, in the dim expectation of recognizing Pipi;
but it was impossible, for the dead eyes showed no traces of their
luckless owner’s identity. It was a mournful scene, and Flip was just
about to take flight, when he heard Peter’s voice again.
“There be another on ’em down stairs, Professor,” he said; “he were only
stunned like, and my missus said as she’d keep un a bit, and see if he’d
come to life again.”
Flip’s feathers stood on end with excitement.
“Missus,” called out Peter, putting his head out of the door, “what ha’
you done with that bit of a wren as I give you this marnin’?”
“Putten him in the old canary cage, and given him some crumbs and milk,”
said the wife from below; “but he won’t touch neither of ’em, and he’s
as bad as can be. Ask the Professor gentleman if he’ll come down and see
him.”
Thereupon the Professor and Peter went down stairs, and Flip could hear
no more. He felt sick at heart. Even if this was Pipi, it was clear
enough he was going to die. If he got nothing better than crumbs and
milk, how in the name of all that’s feathered was he going to live?
“What stupid creatures these men-folks are!” thought Flip; and perhaps
he was not far wrong. But he did not know what a professor meant, and he
was not aware that the genial old gentleman from the distant University
knew almost as much about the food of willow-warblers as he did himself.
Flip flew round to the back of the lighthouse, and looking in through
the window, he saw the Professor sitting by the fire with something in
his hand. But his back was turned to the window, and Flip could not see
what it was. The woman was looking over the Professor’s shoulder, and a
small bird-cage stood on the table, the sight of which made Flip tremble
all over. At last the Professor put down on the table the thing he had
in his hand: it was a willow-warbler, still alive, for the beak was
slowly opening and shutting; but the eyes were closed, and it was
evidently dying. Flip could not tell whether or no it were Pipi; the
room was now getting dark, and the window was away from the sun. But it
was no use waiting any longer; Flip felt sure the bird must die, and
even if it did not, it would be put into the cage to pine away for want
of air and proper food; and after all, how was he to tell that Pipi was
not among the dead birds up stairs? So he flew away with an aching
heart, feeling that there was nothing left to do, but to try and forget
all about it. “And yet,” thought poor Flip, as he reached the little
pond once more, “I can try and remember what poor Pipi used to do, and
how good-natured and cheerful he was; and so far as there ever can be
another Pipi, I will be he.”
* * * * *
The willow-warblers do not all take flight together to their inland
haunts after their arrival from the sea, but work their way gradually
through woods and hedges, refreshing and strengthening themselves as
they go. The party to which Flip and Twinkle belonged had not far to go
to get to the meadow by the brook, of which Pipi had reminded Twinkle on
the fishing-smack--the meadow where they themselves had reared their
brood last year, and close to another, not less delicious, where they
themselves had been born. In two or three days they had reached it, and
soon began to exercise their voices, so as to be ready for the arrival
of the hen birds, who always come a few days later. This year the
weather continued cold and stormy, with strong April showers, and the
hens did not come for a day or two later than usual. What excitement
there was when they arrived at last, straggling in by twos and threes
along the bushes that grew by the brook’s edge, so as to keep sheltered
from the wind! Flip went down the willows to meet them, and asked each
one whether she had come by the lighthouse, or seen anything of Pipi;
but the hens were either too tired or too excited to pay much attention
to him.
“That is not the way to welcome us,” they said; “accidents must happen,
and must be forgotten. No, we saw nothing of Pipi. Why don’t you sing,
instead of telling us sad tales?” And on they went into the meadow,
where the songs of the cock birds were calling them.
One well-known song was missing from the tall elm by the brook-side; and
Flip, in spite of his excitement in singing, and his hopes that his
courtship might be successful with a certain little brown member of a
last year’s brood, could not help thinking now and then, with a heavy
heart, of Pipi the best of singers, and of all the happiness they might
have had but for that unlucky lighthouse. Twinkle too would sometimes
remind him of his sorrow in
[Illustration: Pipi looked up and saw Flip; in an instant they were
together.--P. 205.]
his blunt and selfish way, and Flip felt his company still so unpleasant
that he moved to a tree further up the brook.
One day, not long after the arrival of the hens, when Flip had made sure
of his little spouse, and they were flying after one another from tree
to tree round the field, then into another field and another, in loving
chase, Flip caught a low song that made him stop instantly and perch. It
sounded again from a low willow, and then Flip could see the singer
moving about inside the tree, where the leaves were just beginning to
appear. In another moment a willow-warbler fluttered out; its flight was
feeble, and as it perched again, Flip could see that it held on with
some difficulty to the twig, for its right leg was injured. But it was
Pipi!
Yes, it was Pipi beyond all doubt; and Flip, glued to his bough by
amazement, gave out such a strain of song as he had never in his whole
life before been able to produce. Pipi looked up and saw Flip; in an
instant they were together, and in such a state of tremor and delight,
that poor Mrs. Flip was left quite out in the cold, and became for the
first time in her life jealous of a cock bird.
“Never mind me,” said Pipi at last; “look at me, Mrs. Flip, a poor
wreck, with a bruised bill, and a game leg, and only half a song: who
could be jealous of me? Leave off fluttering round poor Flip, and let me
tell him my story, and then you shall have him all to yourself.”
So Mrs. Flip perched quietly on a bough hard by, for she was a sensible
bird, or she would not have married Flip; and she had so often heard him
talk of Pipi that she felt he must want sadly to hear the story.
Then Pipi told how he had suddenly come upon the light, and then lost
all his senses as suddenly; how, when he came to himself, he was in a
horrible cage, with nothing fit to eat, even if he could have eaten it;
how the Professor had taken him in his hand and stroked him softly, and
then had bound up his leg without hurting him a bit; how he had told
Peter’s wife to keep Pipi warm, and to get some insects off the trees
for him if he got any better. And then how he felt the warmth slowly
reviving the life within him, and how he began to flutter a little
about the room, and was very nearly caught by the cat, and then put into
the cage out of her reach; how Peter brought a great piece of
willow-bough, as the Professor had told him, on which Pipi had contrived
to find a few insects; and how, as strength returned, a great desire
grew within him to get away to the meadow and the brook, and he
fluttered so much that his feathers began to fall out, and he could take
no more food. And lastly, how Peter’s good wife had taken the cage into
the garden and opened the door, and how he had made his way, slowly and
wearily, to the old summer home.
“And now you know all about it,” he said, and sang one strain with
something like the old force. “Let us go and find old Blossom,” said he,
“and see if his _tale_ is equal to mine. And Twinkle too--poor grumpy
Twinkle; I shall never be able to hold up my head before him any more,
and he will be more unpleasant than ever. But after all,” he went on
after a moment, “Twinkle was my only companion that dreadful night, and
he is not such a bad bird after all, and is sure to be glad to see me.
And let me tell you,” he added, in a serious voice, “that I intend to
visit that kind lighthouse-woman again, and the Professor too, if I can
find him; for I have found out one thing in the lighthouse, and that is,
that though men are often cruel to us birds, they are not all so; and
though they must, most of them, know very little about us, there are a
few at least who understand our ways.”
Pipi soon regained his strength, his song, and his spirits; he found a
wife, and when his young ones were old enough to understand, he told
them many stories of his wonderful adventures. And he did not forget to
go and see Peter and his wife in the autumn, when the birds were on
their way once more to the south. He came into the garden, and from the
stunted currant-tree on the wall he looked into the kitchen, and uttered
a little low note of greeting. The woman looked up from her washing, saw
Pipi, and uttered a cry of delight. “Peter!” she called, “it is the sick
bird! Come quick and see!” But Pipi could not stay for Peter, and the
cage, still standing on the dresser, made him even now feel a little
uncomfortable. His voice, like that of all his comrades, had been almost
silent for several weeks; but as a gleam of autumn sunshine shot into
the garden, and lit up the hardy little double daisies that still
contrived to bloom in that bleak spot, he called up all his strength,
and uttered a single strain, the faint echo of his old spring song,
before he flew away. It went straight to the good woman’s heart, and she
never forgot it.
“Peter,” she said, as the lighthouse-man came into the kitchen, “don’t
forget to tell the Professor gentleman that the little bird came back to
thank him and us. And, Peter, don’t you ever go for to keep any more
birds in cages, when you can have ’em sing to you out o’ doors; for the
blessed creatures are worth better than that, and there’s human beings
as might take a lesson from ’em.” And those kind eyes of hers were moist
as she went on with her washing.
THE OWLS’ REVENGE.
(A TALE OF BIRDS AND MEN.)
I.
In May all woods are beautiful; but of all the woods I know, there is
none on which the month of bluebells so freely lavishes her delights, as
on the ancient and unkempt wood of Truerne. The blue carpet spread in
every clearing, the gray-green oak-stems rising softly out of the blue,
the fleecy clouds of spring, seen gently moving eastwards through the
ruddy young leaves overhead, can never be forgotten by any one who has
rambled here for a whole May-morning. No trim park-paling shuts in
Truerne wood; its outskirts are set about, in these sweet spring days,
with an untidy maze of “whitening hedges and uncrumpling fern,” with
stretches of gorse and trailing bramble, with dense thickets of
blackthorn where the nightingale builds his nest and sings unheeded. It
is all this wild setting of the woodland, as well as the freedom of the
wood itself, that makes it so dear to such of its human neighbours as
love quiet and solitude, as well as to the birds and beasts that find
home and happiness in its shelter.
Of the few human beings who haunted it a few years ago, old Oliver the
woodman was the only one to whom it had wholly yielded up its secrets;
and when one day he was found under his favourite old oak-tree, wrapped
in a slumber from which there was no awakening, we felt that the good
genius of the wood had vanished, leaving no successor. But on the
morning of that 16th day of May on which my story begins and ends, old
Oliver was still vigorous, and had risen at daybreak in order to finish
his work early. He meant to set forward about midday for the
neighbouring town on the hill; for it was fairday, or “club” as we call
it in these parts, at Northstow, and he wished once more to buy a
fairing for the rheumatic old wife sitting by the chimney-corner at
home.
He is sitting, and eating his dinner, at the foot of his favourite oak,
which is separated by a few yards of bluebells and undergrowth from one
of the grassy rides, or “lights” (as we call them) which intersect the
wood, and let sunshine and fresh air into its tangled depths. It is his
favourite tree, partly because its gray-lichened stem divides on one
side, as it nears the ground, into two big root-branches which leave a
comfortable space between them--a mossy arm-chair of which he only knows
the comfort who has toiled since daybreak without ceasing; and partly
because the tree is old, as old as the abbey of Truerne which once stood
under the shadow of the wood in the meadows below; and because it is
hollow enough to be the home of a family of brown owls, whose ancestors
had been tenants of the wood long before the monks became its owners.
These owls were some of Oliver’s best friends; he seldom saw them, nor
they him; but, boy and man, he had known them for more than half a
century, and knew them well to be discreet and quiet creatures, who did
no harm and gave no trouble to any one but vermin. There was
[Illustration: He is sitting and eating his dinner at the foot of his
favourite oak.--P. 212.]
a silent, mysterious sageness about their ways, which suited well with
the old man’s humour.
As he sat there eating and resting, the silence of the wood was broken
by the sudden squeak of a pig; and half turning his face in the
direction of the ride, Oliver saw an uplifted sapling descend on the
back of the squeaker, who raised his piteous voice again, and rushed
onwards down the path with his companions. They were followed by the
owner of the sapling, a tall man in a long greasy coat of a yellowish
colour; his face was fat and ruddy, and out of it there looked two small
cunning eyes, which followed the movements of his pigs to right and left
with merciless swiftness. It was the kind of face which men seem to
acquire who spend their lives in driving pigs and driving bargains, and
who are ever bullying animals and browbeating their fellow-men. Close at
his heels was another smaller man, a little wizened, discontented
farmer, whom Mr. Pogson, with his natural imperativeness, had pressed
into his service in driving his pigs to Northstow fair. An umbrella, as
decrepit as the farmer himself, was the weapon he used, without much
energy, when a pig chanced to stray in his direction.