It was in the first full, ardent rush of the Arctic spring.
Thrilling to the heat of the long, long days of unobstructed sun, beneath
the southward-facing walls of the glaciers, the thin soil, clothing the
eternal ice, burst into green and flowering life. In the sunward valleys
brooks awoke, with a sudden filming of grass along their borders, a
sudden passionate unfolding of star-like blooms, white, yellow, and blue.
As if summoned from sleep by the impetuous blossoms, eager to be
fertilized, came the small northern butterflies in swarms, with little
wasp-like flies and beetles innumerable. Along the inaccessible ledges of
the cliffs the auks and gulls, in crowded ranks, screamed and quarrelled
over their untidy nests, or filled the air with wings as they flocked out
over the gray-green, tranquil sea. The world of the north was trying to
forget for a little the implacable savagery, the deathly cold and dark,
of its winter’s torment.
The great, unwieldy, grunting walruses felt it, too, and responded to
it—this ardor of the lonely Arctic spring, astray in the wastes. On the
ledges of a rocky islet, just off shore, the members of a little herd
were sunning themselves. There were two old bulls and four cows with
their sprawling lumps of calves. All were in a good humor with each
other, lying with heads or foreflippers flung amicably across each
other’s grotesque bodies, and grunting, groaning, grumbling in various
tones of content as the pungent sunlight tickled their coarse hides. All
seemed without a care beneath the sky, except one of the old bulls. He,
being on watch, held his great tusked and bewhiskered head high above his
wallowing fellows, and kept eyes, ears, and nose alert for the approach
of any peril. One of the unshapely, helpless-looking calves, with its
mother, lay in a hollow of the rock, perhaps twenty feet back from the
water’s edge—a snug spot, sheltered from all winds of north and east. The
rest of the herd were grouped so close to the water’s edge that from time
to time a lazy, leaden-green swell would come lipping up and splash them.
The cubs had a tendency to flounder away out of reach of these chill
douches; but their mothers were very resolute about keeping them close to
the water.
Presently the little group was enlarged by one. Another old bull, who had
been foraging at the sea-bottom, grubbing up clams, star-fish, and
oysters with his tusks, and crushing them in the massive mill of his
grinders, suddenly shot his ferocious-looking head above the surface. For
all his gross bulk, in the water he moved with almost the speed and grace
of a seal. In a second he was at the rock’s edge. Hooking his immense
tusks over it, he drew himself up by the force of his mighty neck, flung
forward a broad flipper, dragged himself out of the water, and flopped
down among his fellows with an explosive grunt of satisfaction.
They were not, it must be confessed, a very attractive company, these
uncouth sea-cattle. The adults were from ten to eleven feet in length,
round and swollen-looking as hogsheads, quite lacking the adornment of
tails, and in color of a dirty yellow-brown. Sparse bristles, scattered
over their hides in rusty patches, gave them a disreputable, moth-eaten
look. Their short but powerful flippers were ludicrously splayed. They
had the upper half of the head small, flat-skulled, and earless; while
the lower half, or muzzle, was enormously developed to support the
massive, downward-growing tusks, twelve to fifteen inches in length. This
grotesque enlargement of the lower jaw was further emphasized by the
bristling growth of long stiff whiskers which decorated it, giving the
wearer an air of blustering irascibility. As for the calves, their podgy
little forms had the same over-blown look as those of their parents, but
their clean young hides were not so wrinkled, nor were they anywhere
disfigured by lumps and scars. They were without tusks, of course, but
the huge development of their muzzles, in preparation for the sprouting
of the tusks, gave them a truculent air that was ludicrously belied by
the mildness of their baby eyes. They rolled and snuggled against the
mountainous flanks of their mothers, who watched them with vigilant
devotion. The calf which lay farthest inland, apart from the rest, was in
some pain, and whimpering. That morning it had got a nasty prod in the
shoulder from the horn of a passing narwhal, and the anxious mother was
trying to comfort it, gathering it clumsily but tenderly against her side
and coaxing it to nurse. The rest of the herd, for the moment, was
utterly content with life; but the troubled mother was too much engrossed
with her little one’s complaints to notice how caressing was the spring
sun.
Meanwhile, not far away, was another mother who, in spite of the spring,
was equally ill-content. Down to the shore of the mainland, behind the
island, came prowling a lean white bear with a cub close at her heels.
The narrow bay between island and mainland was full of huge ice-cakes
swung in by an eddy of the tides. Many of these wave-eaten and muddied
floes were piled up on the shore along tide-mark, and as their worn edges
softened under the downpour of the sun, they crumbled and fell with small
glassy crashes. Hither and thither among them stole the fierce-eyed
mother, hoping to find some dead fish or other edible drift of the sea.
She had had bad hunting of late—the shoals of the salmon had been
inexplicably delaying their appearance on the coast—and she was feeling
the pangs of famine. To be sure, she was filling her stomach, after a
fashion, with the young shoots of rushes and other green stuff, but this
was not the diet which Nature had framed her for. And in her lack of
right nourishment she was pouring her very life itself into her breasts,
in the effort to feed her little one. He, too, was suffering, so scanty
was the supply of mother’s milk. Even now, as the great bear stopped to
nose a mass of seaweed, the cub crowded under her flank and began to
nurse, whimpering with disappointment at the too thin stream he drew. Her
fierce eyes filmed, and she turned her head far round in order to lick
him tenderly.
The stranded ice-floes yielded nothing that a bear could eat, and she was
ranging on down the shore, disconsolately, when all at once a waft of air
drew in from seaward. It came direct from the island, and it brought the
scent of walrus. She lifted her long, black-edged muzzle and sniffed
sharply, then stood as rigid as one of the ice-cakes, and searchingly
scrutinized the island. The cub, either imitating his mother or obeying
some understood signal, stood moveless also. One of the earliest lessons
learned by the youngsters of the wild is to keep still.
There was not a walrus in sight, but the bear’s nostrils could not
deceive her. She knew the huge sea-beasts were there, on the other side
of the island, and she knew they would be very much at ease on such a day
as this, basking in the sun. Walruses were not the quarry she would have
chosen. The great bulls, courageous and hot-tempered, the powerful cows,
dauntless as herself in defence of their young—she knew them for
antagonists to be avoided whenever possible. But just now she had no
choice. Her cub was not getting food enough. To her there was nothing
else in the world so important as that small, troublesome, droll-eyed,
hungry cub.
Keeping herself now well out of sight behind the ice-floes, with the cub
close at her heels, she stole down to the edge of the retreating tide.
The bay was too crowded with slowly-moving floes to be quite as safe for
the cub as she would have had it, but she could not leave him behind. She
kept him close at her side as she swam. He was a good swimmer, diving
fearlessly when she dived, his little black nose cutting the gray-green
water bravely and swiftly. In everything he imitated her stealth, her
speed, her vigilance, for he knew there was big game in this hunting.
The island was a ridge of some elevation, shelving down by ledges to the
sea. The white bear knew better than to climb the ridge and try to steal
down upon the walruses. She was well aware that they would be keenly on
the watch against any approach from the landward side. From that
direction came all they feared. When she arrived at the island, she swam
along, close under shelter of the shore, till she reached the extremity.
Then, behind the shelter of a stranded floe, she drew herself out, at the
same time flattening herself to the rock till she seemed a part of it.
Every movement the cub copied assiduously. But when she rose upon her
haunches, and laid her narrow head in a cleft of the ice-floe to peer
over, he kept himself in the background and watched her with his head
cocked anxiously to one side.
The walruses were in full view, not fifty yards away. For all the pangs
of her hunger, the mother bear never stirred, but remained for long
minutes watching them, studying the approaches, while the scent of them
came on the light breeze to her nostrils. She saw that the herd itself
was inaccessible, being well guarded and close to the water. If she
should try to rush them, they would escape at the first alarm; or if she
should succeed in catching one of the cubs in the water, she would be
overwhelmed in a moment—caught by those mighty tusks, dragged to the
bottom, drowned and crushed shapeless. But with gleaming eyes she noted
the cow and calf lying further up the slope. Here was her chance—a
dangerous one enough, but still a chance. She dropped down at last to all
fours, crouched flat, and began worming her way upward among the rocks,
making a covert of the smallest hummock or projection. The cub still
followed her.
It was miraculous how small the great white beast managed to make herself
as she slowly crept up upon her quarry. Her movements were as noiseless
as a cat’s. They had need to be, indeed, for the hearing of the walrus is
keen. There was not a sound upon the air but the heavy breathings and
gruntings of the herd, and the occasional light tinkle and crash of
crumbling ice.
At a distance of not more than twenty paces from the prey, the old bear
stopped and gave a quick backward glance at her cub. Instantly the latter
stopped also, and crouched warily behind a rock. Then his mother crept on
alone. She knew that he was quite agile enough to avoid the floundering
rush of any walrus, but with him she would take no risks.
Suddenly, as if some premonition of peril had smitten her, the mother
walrus lifted her head and stared about her anxiously. There was no
danger in sight, but she had grown uneasy. She lowered her head against
her calf’s plump flank, and started to push him down the slope toward the
rest of the herd.
Not a dozen feet away, an enormous form, white and terrible, arose as if
by magic out of the bare rocks. A bellow of warning came from the
vigilant old bull down below. But in the same instant that white mass
fell upon the cringing calf, and smashed its neck before it knew what was
happening.
With a roar the mother walrus reared herself and launched her huge bulk
straight forward upon the enemy. She was swift in her attack—amazingly
so—but the white bear was swifter. With astonishing strength and
deftness, even in the moment of delivering that fatal blow, she had
pushed the body of her prey aside, several feet up the slope. At the same
time, bending her long back like a bow, she succeeded in evading the full
force of the mother’s assault, which otherwise would have pinned her down
and crushed her. She caught, however, upon one haunch, a glancing blow
from those descending tusks, which came down like pile-drivers; and a
long red mark leaped into view upon her white fur. The next moment she
had dragged the prey beyond reach of the frantic mother’s next plunging
charge.
The rocky slope was now in an uproar. The other cows had instantly rolled
their startled young into the sea, and were tumbling in after them with
terrific splashing. The three bulls, grunting furiously, were floundering
in great loose plunges up the slope, eager to get into the fray. The
bereaved mother was gasping and snorting with her prodigious efforts, as
she hurled herself in huge sprawling lunges after the slayer of her
young. So agile was she proving herself, indeed, that the bear had enough
to do in keeping out of her reach, while half lifting, half dragging the
prize up the incline.
At last the body of the calf caught in a crevice, and the bear had to
pause to wrench it free. It was for a moment only, but that moment came
very near being her last. She felt, rather than saw, the impending mass
of the cow as it reared itself above her. Like a spring suddenly loosed,
she bounded aside, and those two straight tusks came down, just where she
had stood, with the force of a ton of bone and muscle behind them.
Wheeling in a flash to follow up her assault, the desperate cow reared
again. But this time she was caught at a disadvantage. Her far more
intelligent adversary had slipped around behind her, and now, as she
reared, struck her a tremendous buffet on the side of the neck. Caught
off her balance, the cow rolled down the slope, turning clean over before
she could recover her footing. The three bulls, in the midst of their
floundering charge up the hill, checked themselves for a moment to see
how she had fared. And in that moment the bear succeeded in dragging her
prize up a steep where the walruses could not hope to follow. A few yards
more, and she had gained a spacious ledge some twenty feet above the
raging walruses. A second or two later, in answer to her summons, the cub
joined her there, scrambling nimbly over the rocks at a safe distance
from the foe.
Realizing now that the marauder had quite escaped their vengeance, the
three bulls at length turned away, and went floundering and snorting back
to the sea. The mother, however, inconsolable in her rage and grief, kept
rearing herself against the face of the rock, clawing at it impotently
with her great flippers, and striking it with her tusks till it seemed as
if they must give way beneath the blows. Again and again she fell back,
only to renew her futile and pathetic efforts the moment she could
recover her breath. And from time to time the old bear, nursing the cub,
would glance down upon her with placid unconcern. At last, coming in some
sort to her senses, the unhappy cow turned away and crawled heavily, with
a slow jerky motion, down the slope. Slowly, and with a mighty splash,
she launched herself into the sea, and swam off to join the rest of the
herd a mile out from shore.