NOVEMBER is the month of mosses. Every fallen tree, every rotting stump,
every rock, the trodden paths, and even the hard face of the cliff, are
padded deep with velvet. The color ranges from clear emerald, out
through the tints to silvery, sage green, and back through the shades to
an olive brown, almost as dark as the earth itself. Round the shores the
driftwood is piled high on the beach. It looks like bleached bones of
monsters long dead, huge vertebrae, leg bones, skulls and branching
antlers. The trees are bare, the brakes dry and crumbling, but the north
point of the island, its one naked ugly spot of the summer, is now
covered with a blood-red carpet. A close-growing, grassy weed has turned
brilliant crimson and clothed it with beauty. Far away on the lake I am
guided home by that flare of color on the point.
The birds are gone, all but the crows, that perch on the tallest trees
and lift their hoarse voices in a mournful chorus. But now is the time
to go bird’s-nesting, to find the homes of all the vireos, warblers,
creepers, and sparrows that made the island their breeding ground. The
nests of the vireos, woven of birch bark, bits of hornet’s nests, grass
and scraps of paper, are easy to find, for the pretty, hanging baskets
are fastened in the crotches of the bushes and low saplings. The others
are not so readily discovered, and it was by merest accident that I came
across the home of the brown thrasher, who made the summer vocal with his
beautiful song. It was on the ground and so near the house that I wonder
that we did not walk into it. It is a mere bunch of twigs, so loosely
twisted together that it fell apart when it was moved.
Every afternoon I go faggotting, bringing in armloads of dry sumac and
fallen branches. They are not especially good for kindling, but now that
the deer season is on, no man will work; so until after November
fifteenth, the reign of the Hunter’s Moon, the brush pile must serve. It
takes constant gathering to collect enough to start the hardwood fires,
and a wet day sets me back sadly. I pile up as much as I can in the
empty sleeping shacks, to keep it dry, and I can only hope that the snow
will not come before someone has been induced to lay aside his gun and
cut a cord or two of driftwood kindling.
Butterflies are always coming in on the twigs. With their wings folded
flat together, showing only their dry undersides, they look so like old
withered leaves that it is only when the warmth of the room wakes them,
and they flutter off to the windows, that they can be recognized as
butterflies at all. One flew to the south window yesterday and crawled
there, beating his delicate wings against the glass all morning. He was
brown, tan and yellow on the upper side but underneath so like a dry,
woolly old leaf as to be an amazing bit of nature’s mimicry. As I looked
at his poor, torn wings and feebly waving antennæ he seemed suddenly the
very oldest thing, the lone survivor of a forgotten summer, a piteous
little Tithonus, to whom had been granted the terrible gift of
immortality, without the boon of an immortal youth.
At first I thought that he was being given a respite from the common fate
of butterflies, for I did not then know that the angle wings can last
over the winter, lying dormant in protected places, and that the last
brood of a summer can live until another spring. I even planned to
outwit nature by feeding this one and keeping him alive in the artificial
summer of the warm house. I made a sirup of sugar and water and offered
it but the butterfly would none of it, only crawling and beating his
wings in a vain effort to escape through the glass into the bleak
November sunshine. At length I carried him to the door, and he fluttered
off to a bush and clung there. After turning away for a moment I went
back to find him; he was gone; he had become a dead leaf again.
[Picture: “Peter the rabbit, is turning white very rapidly”]
Peter, the rabbit, spends most of his time at the door, waiting for a
chance crust. He fsits on his haunches, rocking gently back and forth,
making a soft, little knocking noise on the porch floor. If I am late in
coming out at mealtimes, he looks at me with so dignified an air of
patient reproof that I feel quite apologetic for having kept him waiting.
His meal finished, he washes his face and paws carefully, like a cat,
then sits in the sun, eyes closed, forepaws tucked away under his breast
and ears laid back along his shoulders. He is turning white very
rapidly. At first, only his tail, feet, breast and the ends of his ears
were lightly powdered, but now he looks as if he had hopped into a pan of
flour by mistake.
Other hares, now lean and wild, come out of the woods at dusk and try to
share Peter’s bread. But he turns on them fiercely, driving them back
over the hill, with an angry noise, something between a squeal and a
grunt. If anyone thinks a rabbit a meek, poor-spirited creature, he
should see Peter, when threatened with the loss of his dinner.
Evidently, he believes that he has pre-empted this territory and all that
goes here in the way of food, and he means to defend his claim.
Rufus, the red squirrel, torments Peter unmercifully, dashing across the
ground under his nose and snatching the bread from between the rabbit’s
very teeth. He is there and away before the rabbit knows what has
happened. Poor, slow little Peter stood these attacks in bewildered
patience for a time, but now he has worked out a plan for getting even
with the squirrel that serves him fairly well. He sits on his crust,
drawing it out inch by inch from under him as he nibbles, but even at
that Rufus gets about half. I am training the rabbit to take his food
from my hand, for nothing thrown on the ground is safe for an instant
from the little red-brown robber. It took some very patient sitting to
overcome Peter’s timidity, but after the first bit was taken the rest was
easy. Now he comes fearlessly to me as soon as I appear.
The squirrel is growing very tame too, but he will never be as tranquil a
companion as the rabbit. He lacks Bunny’s repose of manner. He is
sitting on the windowsill now, eating a bit of cold potato. He turns it
round and round, nibbling at it daintily. Now and again he stops to lay
a tiny paw on his heart—or is it his stomach? The area of his organs is
very minute and it may be either.
There is something very flattering in the confidence of these little
creatures of the island. How do they know that they may safely trust my
kindness? How can they be sure that I will not betray them suddenly with
trap or gun?
The rabbit came into the house yesterday, padding about noiselessly on
his cushioned toes. He stopped at each chair and stood on his hind feet,
resting his forepaws on the seat. He examined everything, ears
wriggling, nose quivering, tail thumping on the carpet. Suddenly he
discovered that the door had blown shut and then he went quite wild with
fear. He was in a trap, he thought, and tore round and round the room,
jumping against the window panes, dashing his head against the walls
until I feared that he would injure himself before I could reach the door
to open it. Poor little Peter, he is not valiant after all. He comes in
still, but always keeps close to the door, and the way of escape must
always be open.
The men on the mainland hunt over the islands, putting on the dogs to
drive off the game. When the ice holds, the hounds will come over of
their own accord to course the rabbits. I should like to feel that for
the term of my stay this one island could be a place of safety for the
animals that take refuge here, and so I have paid visits of ceremony to
the neighboring farms to explain that I shall spend the winter and to ask
that the dogs be kept off my preserve, as far as possible for the sake of
my pets. I may say that my wish has been respected in the kindest way,
and my neighbors have done their best to make the island a sanctuary for
the birds and beasts. The first assurance of each visitor has been, “I
tied up my dogs afore I started over.” It was the opening remark of an
early caller who strode into the room this morning as I was eating a late
breakfast. A reassuring salutation, for without it I might have feared
that the speaker had dropped in to do me a mischief, his appearance was
so very intimidating. He was tall and very lean, a sort of cross between
an Indian and a crane. His greasy, black hair hung in rattails on the
turned-up collar of a dingy red sweater. He wore a ragged squirrel-skin
cap, tail hanging down behind—which headgear he did not remove, and he
carried a murderous looking ax. Following came a boy of about sixteen,
whose smile was so friendly and ingratiating that I felt comforted when I
saw it. The two drew up to the stove, lit pipes, conversed, and in the
round-about course of their remarks I gathered that they had heard of my
need of kindling wood and had come to cut me a cord. Presently they
retired to a secluded spot on the shore and chopped away, emerging every
half hour or so to bring a load up to the house.
In this country men eat where they work, so toward noon I bestirred
myself to prepare what I considered a particularly good dinner for my
“hands.” I had a theory that my chances of getting future kindling cut
depended on the good impression made on these first workmen. I had
corned beef, potatoes, peas, and tinned beans. I made hot biscuit, cake,
stewed apples, and prepared the inevitable pot of strong tea. The man
drew his chair to the table with perfect self-possession, speared a
potato from the pot with his knife and remarked: “You ain’t much of a
cook, are you?”—adding, kindly, “I think I’ll just try yer tea.”
He assured me subsequently that he had no particular fault to find with
my dinner. He only meant to put me at my ease and to make conversation.
When he departed in the evening, after having cut and stacked an
incredible amount of wood, he assured me that he would be ready to work
for me at any time. I had only to “holler” and he would drop a day’s
hunting to come to my aid. So the dinner could not have been so
unsatisfactory after all.
News of the Great War has come to Many Islands. William Foret returned
from Glen Avon the other day with great tales of armed men guarding the
railroad bridges against the Germans. He also brought the information
that I am a German spy. He heard that at the station.
“That woman on the island is there for no good,” the loafers were saying.
“She’s a spy. She’s got a writing machine there an’ she’s sending off
letters every day.”
One inventive soul was even asserting that I am not a woman at all, but a
man in woman’s clothes and that there is a wireless station here.
But William stood up for me bravely.
“Spy, nawthin,” he scoffed. “What could she be a spyin’ on there on that
island? There’s nawthin’ there but rabbits. No, as I understand it,
she’s some sort of a book-writer off fer health. She’s got no wireless,
that I know, fer I’ve been over the ground there time and again.”
But the crowd was not convinced.
“She’d ought to be investigated,” they declared.
Then William rose to the occasion nobly. “She’s no German spy,” he said.
“She’s an all-right woman, and ef any man feels like makin’ any trouble
fer her, me an’ Black Jack and Yankee Jim stands ready to make it very
onhealthy fer him.”
“I told them,” added William, with a delighted grin, “that you’d a little
gun here an’ you’d use it on the first man that come on the island
without you knowed him fer a friend. But I didn’t say that you only
stood five feet five in yer boots and didn’t weigh over a hundred
pounds.”
Under the shield of William’s favor and the wholly undeserved reputation
of being a good shot, I continue to sleep o’ nights, but I have no fancy
for being investigated.
Last night a boat stopped at the shore, long after dark, and I was
startled for a moment until I heard a chant that rose at the dock and
continued up the trail to the house. Uncle Dan Cassidy had brought over
the mail and a Thanksgiving box from home, but he was taking no chances.
“Friends, friends, don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” he sang until he stepped on
the porch.
But while war and its rumors excite us, all topics pale in interest
before the fact that the herring have begun to run. Whether battles are
lost or won we still have to eat, a pig or a sheep does not last very
long and the fish are a great part of the winter food.
“They save the meat,” says Harry Spriggins.
So when the first silver herring came up in the net there was great
rejoicing. Then the little skiffs and punts started out, dancing and
curtseying on the waves. The nets were stretched across the narrows
between the islands, and, during the herring run, no other work was done.
The season is short; there is no time to waste. The run began this year
on the twelfth, the greatest catch was on the eighteenth, the fishing was
over on the twenty-eighth. The fish do not come up except at a
temperature of about thirty-four.
These are the bright, frosty days—days when the blood runs quick and the
air tastes like wine; when the water is deep-blue, the waves run high and
the whitecaps race in to the shores.
The little boats bob up and down, the long nets come up spangled with the
gleaming fish, and the tubs and boxes are piled high with the silver
catch. As the fishermen pass they stop at the island and throw me off a
herring or two. Every house on the mainland reeks; barrels and kegs
stand in every dooryard, and everywhere the women and children are busy
cleaning the fish.