motionless on one leg, looking upwards, and, to all intents and
purposes, not there. The kestrel came shooting up superbly, going at a
great pace on the wind, cutting the cold air like a knife, twisting and
turning her long tail tins way and that, but moving her quarter-shut
wings not one stroke. Right over him she dived, her wonderful eyes
stabbing down, so close that you could see her small, rounded head
turning and craning. But no thrush did she see. She "banked," hung,
swept round, and came back. Then she hovered, like a bird hung from
the sky by an invisible hair; and for our thrush she was indeed the
sword of Damocles, for the spot in the air where she hung was directly
over him. If anybody had shot her dead at that instant, she would have
fallen upon his back. At that instant, or the next, she might fall
upon his back, anyway, without anybody shooting her. Indeed, the
betting seemed a good few hundred to one that she would.
Very few human beings know the full meaning of the word "still"--not
even bluejackets!--but most of the wild-folk do. They have to. So did
the thrush, but never before had he kept so utterly, stonily, frozenly,
strickenly motionless. If he had moved an eyelid even, winked, or
gulped too hard, it would have been all up with him. But he didn't and
it was not all up; though the kestrel seemed as if she were going to
hover there, in that spot, through all eternity. And when at last she
condescended to surrender to the wind and vanish like a falling star
into the horizon, our friend was as near nervous prostration and
hysteria as a bird can be. A very little longer and I believe he would
actually have died from sheer overstrain, instead of from kestrel.
Then the thrush fed. He did it against time, before dark, for if night
came and caught him with an empty crop, he froze. Perhaps he would
freeze, anyway; but no matter.
The hen-chaffinches, presumably at the end of a journey, or part way
along it, too, were in a like hurry, and for the same reason. He could
see them now only as faint splashes of white, as they opened tail and
wing to fight; but they could not fight _him_, and he savagely kept the
little clearing in the snow free of all save himself. It was as if he
knew that he was "up against it," and the fact had developed a grim
fierceness in his character.
An owl must have gone over about this time, because an owl did go over
that garden about the same time every night; but perhaps she was not
expecting thrushes in that gloom, or was in a hurry to keep an
appointment with a rat. Anyway, the owl did not develop.
Thereafter and at last the thrush went to sleep in a spruce-fir.
Dead silence reigned over the garden, and Cold, with a capital C,
gripped the land. Heaven help any bird who roosted on an empty stomach
on such a night! It would freeze to its perch before morning, most
like.
Indeed, our thrush had a neighbor, a hedge-sparrow just newly arrived
from "somewhere up north." It had come in after dark, and therefore
had no time to feed. The thrush just took his head out from under his
wing and opened one eye, as the poor little beggar perched close to him
for company. He could see it plainly in the petrified moonlight.
When next he opened one eye and looked, dawn was at hand, and the poor
little bird was still there. When at last, with shoulders humped and
feathers puffed, our thrush flew down to feed in the first pale-gold
glimmer of very-much-diluted sunlight, the hedge-sparrow did not move.
Now, in opening his wings, possibly from a vague idea of frightening
the hedge-sparrow away from the magic swept circle on the lawn close
by, and its bread, the thrush brushed heavily against that
hedge-sparrow, so that--oh, horror!--it fell, or swung over backwards,
rather, and hung head downwards, swaying slightly, like a toy acrobat
on a wire, before it fell, so rigidly and so stiffly immovable that one
expected it to shatter to pieces like glass as it hit the ground. It
did not, however. But it did not matter. The hedge-sparrow was quite,
quite dead before it fell, frozen stiff and stark in the night. And
none of the other birds seemed to care. Why should they? Such a fate
might overtake themselves.
The thrush, much tucked up, but still with some fight in him, was late.
Big flocks of peewits or green plover--he could see them between the
spruce-boughs--had gone drifting by, winking like floating silver, high
overhead, bound westward; and skylarks were passing over the garden,
one by one, heading southwest towards the warm, and chortling to each
other as they went. Starlings--some of them with extraordinarily
bright-yellow dagger-beaks, and some with dull beaks--were before him,
squabbling and sparring over the bread on the lawn. A robin dropped a
little chain of melancholy silvery notes, and a great titmouse bugled
clearly, "Ting-ling! Ting-ling! Ting-ling!" Some one opened a window
of the house giving on to the lawn, and the last house-fly blundered
out into the cold air; and a company of gnats--surely the most hardy of
insects--was dancing in the pale sunlight by the summer-house, _above
the snow_.
The opening of the window had erupted the starlings into the
surrounding trees, there to whistle and indulge in a "shiveree," such
as is dear to the heart of the excitable, social starling. And our
thrush was standing motionless in the middle of the swept circle on the
lawn almost at once. No one saw him go there. Indeed, unless the
observer looked closely, no one saw him at all, for even then he was,
unless he moved, difficult to see, and, whatever had been his custom
before, in those days he moved but little.
He had come at even to a garden given over to hen-chaffinches--no
cocks, as we said--but at dawn, or, rather, his later hour for rising,
he found the garden given over to song-thrushes, all pale beside him,
all slim, all snaky of build--Continental song-thrushes, most like, and
the same only come to those parts in very hard weather, for they come a
long way.
Our song-thrush, standing on his one leg, looked at them with one
shrewd eye. There were two of them in the snowless circle on the lawn,
which had been swept clear of the snow, that was now deep, before he
was up, and had also been replenished with bread. Two thrushes sat in
the spruce-fir, and one on the top of the summer-house, and every jack
of them was ravenous. He could expect no mercy from _them_. They must
live, if they could, and there was not enough food for all. And he
asked no mercy himself, either. Still, it was long odds.
Then he showed that he, even a bird, knew the laws of strategy, the
essence of which is surprise. He surprised everybody by suddenly
charging at the thrush on the lawn near him with a murderous ferocity
that took one's breath away. It certainly would have taken away that
of the other song-thrush, if our friend had not knocked it out of him
by the impact. By all the laws of precedence, of course, any one of
those others ought to have sent him, with his one leg, into headlong
retreat by merely threatening. But our friend was not concerned with
the laws of precedence, it seemed. He became a law unto himself, and a
most amazing "character" to boot. Also, he fought like several demons,
and, by sheer reckless fury, removed that dumbfounded rival of his from
the lawn in twenty-one hectic seconds.
Then he fed--it was enough only to glance, just glance, at the other
thrushes and the chaffinches, after that astounding exhibition of his
character. He fed, and, after he had stuffed full, he stood still a
little way off.
This was the signal for two of the thrushes in the spruce-fir to flap
down to the bread. One got there. The other saw what was coming, and
turned hastily back. The one that got there snatched up a piece of
bread. But he never ate it. Something hit him on the side. It felt
like the point of a skewer, but it was our thrush's beak, really, and
by the time he had recovered from that blow he found himself so busy
saving his eyesight that he was glad enough to drop his bread and go.
That, however, was not enough for our thrush. He appeared to "see
red," and with a terrible cruel, relentless "redness." He followed the
retreating foe to the spruce-fir, flying heavily and awkwardly by
reason of his smashed leg. He perched beside him on the branch he
settled upon, nearly overbalancing, and perilously swaying and
wobbling, with wings wildly flapping, and he drove that thrush to
another branch, with such a rain of pecks that the feathers flew. Nor
was even that enough. He followed up the attack, and hustled the
thrush from that other branch, so that he flew down the snowed-up road.
Then our cripple, spinning in a whirl of snow, hurled himself upon the
other thrush in the tree, and drove him out of it into the road.
But even that did not suffice him, for devils seemed to have possessed
him, and the thought of opposition sent him crazy. He blundered into
the privet-hedge, and unearthed a half-frozen _confrère_, who fled,
squawking peevishly, leaving one tail-feather in our friend's beak; and
finally he flew down to the road.
In the road, he first of all buried his face in snow, then fell on his
side, deep snow not being, he discovered, an ideal medium in which to
get about on one leg. During that performance his rivals could have
abolished him five times over if they had had the heart to unite. But
they seemed to think otherwise, and had not the heart for anything.
They sat still, with that helpless abandon that afflicts fowls and
other birds in disaster, and they seemed about to starve practically on
the spot, if left alone.
Our thrush, however, did not leave them alone. They were a direct
threat to his only line of communication with life, so to
speak--namely, food. Wherefore, either they or he must go. Soon he
found that cart-ruts make convenient roads for the birds in the snow,
or perhaps it was the chaffinches, who were following one another in
lines along the cart-ruts, who showed him.
Then and there, in the road, our thrush seemed to go berserk. He
landed upon the thrush nearest to him, spread-eagled and hammering like
a feathered devil. There was a whirl of brown feathers and finely
powdered snow for about ten seconds, at the end of which time that
other thrush detached himself and fled, oven as his conqueror hurled
himself upon the next bird.
There were two here, side by side, but neither was quick enough to
parry our friend's lightning lunges, after he had beaten down their
guard with his wings; and they, too, got up and winged into the leaden,
frowning sky. The others did not wait. They had seen all they wanted
to, apparently, and would take no part in the play. They faded out
among the drifting snowflakes, over the still, white fields, and our
thrush was left to the lawn, and the bread, and the swarming
chaffinches, whom he easily kept aloof, and--yes, there was no getting
away from it--the one thrush on the summer-house who, you will note,
had never moved. But when he looked he found that thrush was not on
the summer-house, but on the lawn, eating bread; and when he flew down
to the lawn to investigate--he flew and landed very clumsily--he made a
discovery that seemed to surprise him; or did he already know it?
Anyway, the thrush on the lawn was a lady, and--well, what would you?
The cripple balanced as well as he could, and looked foolish. It was
all he could do.
The day passed swiftly, and faded out in blinding snow. Most of the
time the cripple stood motionless, watching his companion and guarding
his swept circle, and, as often as he could, he fed. And neither then
nor at any other time, except once when the gardener nearly trod upon
him before he would move, did he utter a sound. The last glimmer of
day showed him still at his post, motionless, all but invisible. But
he roosted, as a matter of fact, in the privet-hedge, on the south side
of the summer-house, and this time he was not alone.
The day had been trying enough, with its fights and its three cats,
which passed within reach of him, and could have slain him--for his
injuries made him slow to get under way--if they had not failed to see
him, because so still. The night, however, was a clouded terror.
Certainly he went to bed--if one may so call it--full, if not warm
exactly; but that was the only advantage. It snowed with ghastly,
relentless steadiness, and it blew like the hacking of sharp knives.
But through it all, because full fed, the cripple, with all his
handicap, and his lady companion lived; lived to see the hard dawn pale
tardily; lived to watch the kind gardener--under strict orders
assuredly, or he would never have done it--sweep a space clear on the
lawn and spread food for the birds; lived to ruffle his feathers and
fly down; and lived to see the thaw which came that afternoon, when the
warm sou'-wester came romping over the land, and winter's last stand
was overcome by the forces of spring, and all the wild breathed a sigh
of relief and went abroad gayly to feed.
But the cripple lived to see other things. For there came a day, about
a week later, when our cripple, who had been "keeping company" all the
time with his lady friend, heard the whole dawn awaken to a sudden
mighty chorus of thrush song. I don't know why they all chose to burst
into song thus as at a given signal, but they did, and the effect upon
the cripple and his companion was curious. He had just landed upon the
top of the summer-house on his one leg, in a particularly awkward and
unbalanced manner, and he perched, listening, as if rooted to the spot,
and with something nearly approaching horror in his eyes, it seemed to
me.
The female bird listened, too, for about a minute, and then, ignoring
the poor cripple as if he had never existed, hopped towards the
spruce-fir--atop of which a particularly fine and strong-voiced
songster was warbling--as if she were drawn by ropes. And--oh,
horror!--the songster came down to _her_.
The cripple never uttered a sound, not a song, or a call, or a sign.
He hurled himself straight at this new rival like a bolt shot from a
crossbow, and he fought. My word, how he fought! But this new
antagonist was no half-frozen, half-starved Continental song thrush.
He was a Britisher, thick-set, bullet-headed, thick-necked, who had
wintered, perhaps, in the south of Ireland or farther, and he fought
like a Trojan.
All up and down the lawn the fight raged, and in and out of the hedges,
into the mountain ash and out again, down to the ground and up again;
but in the end--ah, but it could have only one end!--the Britisher was
on the top of the summer-house, literally shouting his song of triumph.
And the cripple was on the ground at the foot of the hedge, beneath the
spruce-fir, lying on his side, blood-stained and panting. Nobody saw
him creep away. Nobody cared--certainly not his lady acquaintance, who
was too busy receiving glad eyes from the conqueror.
Also, nobody saw him die. Yet next morning he was dead, stiff and
still on the ground beside the summer-house. Some think that it was
the injuries he received in his last great fight that killed him. I do
not. I could find no wounds upon him sufficiently severe to sustain
that theory. I think he died of a broken heart. Don't you?
VII
"SET A THIEF"----
Cob arrived in a snowstorm of unparalleled ferocity. He came upon
extended vans sixty-nine inches from tip to tip, which he seemed as if
he were never going to flap. All black above, all white below, he was.
The fact was worth noting, because, as seen from below, he looked
neither black nor any other hue, but just indiscriminate dark, unless
he swerved against the little light, and then his white "hull" shone
like silver.
In his calm tacking, in his effortless play, in his superb mastery of
the furious gale, one realized that here was one of Nature's
masterpieces. He arrested the gaze with his serenity, and in his
majesty of flight marked himself as a bird apart.
Here was a bird accustomed to power, to respect, and to wield fear, as
a king might do; but he was no king, even among birds. He was a great
black-backed gull, immense, austere, and cruel, with eyes as cold as
the waves whose glitter they reflected, and a heart as implacable as
the storm that cherished it; sea-rover, pillager, pirate, swashbuckler,
son of the storm in whose fierce buffetings he rejoiced, master of the
gale upon whose fury he flourished--the very spirit of the ocean's
frontiers, arrayed in the spotless uniform of the sea, sailing under
her bold colors.
And then, as he suddenly came, the watcher, had there been one, would
have looked at him expectantly, for an eagle, bristling with weapons,
so to speak, fierce-eyed, mighty, and scowling, came flapping heavily
across the white-fretted bay. There is expression in birds, and most
have their feelings and their character stamped upon their whole body.
But there was no expression in Cob. His cold eyes continued to stare
with steady stoniness, his vast vans to waft an occasional shallow,
lazy quarter-flap, his spotless head to peer down at times. Once only,
as the real king of the birds, on his course, drew very near, so that
you could hear the deep, dry "hough! hough!" of the powerful wings, did
Cob open his red-stained--as it were blood--yellow beak, and give
utterance--one could call it no more--and so instantly close his beak
again and revert to his absolute expressionlessness that one had a job
to realize what, or who, in all that vast scene, had spoken.
"I'm-Great-Black-Back!" he said very quietly, quickly, gratingly, and
tersely; and then, as if expecting an answer, added, "Eh?" in a hollow
undertone.
The eagle's imperial head jerked round as he flew, and he shot a
stabbing, sheathed glance at the great sea-bird, as a king might at a
man in a crowd who begins to fumble at his hip-pocket. But, save for
that, he took no further notice, and beat on with his terrific,
piston-like, regular wing-beats; and the gull, that speckless,
dazzling, hardened, hard giant, laughed--laughed, I say, softly and to
himself, hoarsely and insolently: "How-how-how-how!" It was as if he
laughed in derision.
And then a strange thing happened. From the opposite stupendous
cliffs, draped in snow, bejeweled with icicles, frowning and desolate,
an ominous black shape flung itself furiously, and made straight for
the eagle, barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hollow bark
followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled down from the tottering
cliff-top, and flapped towards the eagle in the path of the first.
Bark echoed bark above the deep mutter of the breakers, and the echoes
along the cliffs answered both uncannily and mockingly.
They were a raven, disturbed from her wool-quilted nest, and her mate;
but if they had been hobgoblins straight from an evil dream, they could
not, in that immense, grim setting, have been much more impressive.
The great black-backed gull said no more, but wheeled on as if nothing
had happened.
The eagle said nothing, and tried to beat on as if nothing had
happened, too. He did not succeed, for the ravens who had been
addressing him most particularly soon addressed themselves personally
to him; and before he knew just how it all came about, they had
summoned a quite amazing and unexpected aerial acrobatic power, and
were shooting and diving, striking and flapping, about his regal head
in a manner that even _he_ could not pretend any longer to ignore. No
one, not even a king of all the birds, feels comfortable under the
imminent possibility of losing an eye--and such a haughty, wonderful
eye, too. Nor did the eagle. And he showed it. One presumes he might
have abolished the pair--one or both--but the eagle never let on what
he presumed. What he _knew_ was that he had nothing to gain in a fight
with such super-hooligans, and everything to lose, for one wound only
might mean a dead eagle _viâ_ starvation and a dead raven--what was a
dead raven worth, anyway, to him, or anybody else?
Therefore the eagle changed his mind about continuing his course, which
would have taken him above the ravens' nest. He did it grandly, and
without giving the impression that the ravens had anything to do with
it--he could have squeezed the life out of them with one awful
handshake, if his heart had been as big as his claws. But they had
something to do with it. And they knew it. So did Cob, who laughed
again, hoarsely and as one appreciating a joke, while he wheeled and
wheeled over the following waves, seeing all things and never appearing
to see anything.
Then at last, when the king of all the birds had sunk, like a speck of
floating burnt paper, away over the far, white-mantled hills, the
ravens suddenly evaporated into nowhere. Probably no one had seen them
go except Cob, and Cob was by now a lonely, dwindling speck away over
the restless ocean. Then he was not. He was coming back, swinging
along with great, easy, shallow half-flaps, so sublimely lazy that he
seemed merely to swim through the gale. But he covered distance; there
was speed as well as majesty in his flight, for all that.
In a very short time he was above the cliffs, silent, sinister, almost
stealthy. One of the ravens came back suddenly, diving over the crest,
half-demented with anxiety to cover her eggs from that stony stare of
the sea-rover; and Cob, seeing where she had come from, surrendered
himself to the gale, hurtled down-wind, veered, tacked, circled,
rocking, and came down in a series of his oblique plunges--smack-bang
into the middle of a gory dinner-party, consisting of the male raven,
five gray or hooded crows, and one silver herring-gull, feasting upon
the carcass of a dead sheep.
Every head went up, every eye blinked, every wing half-opened, every
beak shut tight as Cob, whom everybody had thought to be miles away by
that time, threw forward his wings, umbrella-fashion, flung them up,
hat-fashion, fanning wide his tail, dropped his giant webbed feet, and
came to anchor with a rush. Then he folded those wonderful pinions of
his, foot by rustling foot, stared stonily at the amazed, mute company
around him, and, throwing back his immaculate, smooth, low-browed,
spotless head, laughed to the winds, hoarsely, loudly, wildly--a rude,
baleful, transport of mirth:
"How-how-how-how-how!"
The raven did not laugh. He had to feed his sitting wife--not counting
his big self--in that bitter weather, and he was pluming himself upon
having turned the eagle from sight of this gift banquet from Providence
as well as his nest. The gray crows saw no cause for merriment,
remembering how big the great gull was, and how small are these little,
long-wooled, black-faced hill sheep. Moreover, sheep do not often
oblige by getting turned turtle in a cleft of rock, and being unable to
right themselves before poor, starving, wild hunters--I won't swear
who, but it was not the raven _this_ time--can come and peck their eyes
out.
Cob looked at them again--all five of the gray crows sitting staring
straight down their own black gouge-beaks, hunched, cold, out-at-heels,
and dejected. Then he laughed again--burst into another wild, jeering
fit of merriment, and fell to work.
First of all, he pointed out to the raven--his beak was the
pointer--that he was sitting upon the choicest portion of that sheep,
and must make way therefrom _instantly_. Next, he turned his head and
looked--only looked--at a gray crow that had presumed, upon the turning
of his broad, black back, to recommence feeding, and that hooded crow
moved one yard in one second--out of reach. And next, Cob, who
apparently loved discipline and cherished good manners, started his
banquet, and allowed the others to start theirs.
But it was an unholy feast. Cob tugged and tore like a butcher without
any knives. At times he nearly fell backwards, when the meat gave way;
at times he bolted, and gulped, and choked horribly; at times he was
nearly standing upon his head, and at other times upon his tail; and,
in case the others should find the woolly outside, where they alone
could feed, too easy, he was continually breaking off, to rush--a
red-headed demon from hell now--at the raven, or glare at the crows and
remove them yards, as if his eyes could kill. As for the herring-gull,
he raced and danced in a crazy circle round his giant clansman,
apparently smitten with delirium at the luscious titbits he was obliged
to watch vanishing down Cob's bright throat.