Cannon, and perhaps the merry little bantam’s pluck appealed to the
grave fisher bird, for they became almost at once inseparable friends.
Cannon deserted his feathered acquaintances and spent his time in the
back-yard with Henry. When finally the invalid was well enough to hobble
down on the float, Cannon went with him and would stand beside him while
Henry, the heron, swooped joyfully upon minnows and silver smelt and
gobbled them down with a zest he had never displayed when fishing in the
washtub. Such became the intimacy of the tall Henry and the diminutive
Cannon that Henry would even share his catch with Cannon, dropping down
upon the float a small, wriggling fish for Cannon’s delectation.
We noticed that at first the bantam rooster eyed askance the flapping
tidbits offered by his friend. He was not accustomed to such lively
food, but little by little he learned to peck and devour the fish with
the same relish that Henry showed for them. He became a feathered
parasite, depending almost entirely upon the heron for his meals.
[Illustration]
It was such a pleasant friendship—comradeship between man and man always
is—and it was broken up, I am sorry to say, in the usual way—by a woman.
As Henry grew stronger, his leg and wing knit rapidly. And on the day
when the Old Fisherman removed the bandages and pronounced the patient
out of danger, we feared our heron friend would leave us. But he did
not. He had become accustomed to the float, to the cabin, to the yard,
and to Brother and me. Above all, there was Cannon, the bantam rooster.
So he stayed with us, flapping up into the firtree in the front yard at
night to roost, and fishing from the float or the beach in the daytime.
It was an idyllic state of affairs which might have lasted indefinitely
had it not been for Sironda, the Black Minorca hen.
[Illustration]
“Si” we sometimes called her for short, and we had known her from the
day of her birth. Even before that; for Brother and I had set the very
egg in the incubator from which she was hatched. She was a trim little
hen with shiny black feathers, a red comb that fell coquettishly over
one eye, and a “singing voice” that made her the prima donna among the
poultry. She was in every respect fitted to make an impressionable
cockerel forget the ties of friendship, and Brother and I have always
believed that she mapped out a campaign to that end after seeing how
well Cannon fared by trailing at Henry’s heels.
She took to wandering down upon the float, singing softly to herself and
ostensibly on the lookout for bugs, but, as we noticed, keeping an eye
upon Cannon and his fisher friend and always drawing nearer and nearer
to the pair.
[Illustration]
Finally she grew so bold as to come up to Cannon’s side, and when Henry,
the heron, next dropped a shining smelt upon the float, the bantam,
innately chivalrous, voiced a high-pitched invitation to Sironda to
partake of the dainty.
Cannon, watching her, was content to have her devour the juicy morsel,
but not so was Henry. He would fish willingly for Cannon, but not for
his lady friends, and with one hair-raising scream he opened his huge
bill, spread his wings and lunged for Sironda, who dropped the remnants
of the fish and fled down the float, half running, half flying, and
uttering hysterical cackles.
[Illustration]
Cannon watched her precipitous retreat with a surprised and worried
countenance; then he turned upon Henry. And though Brother and I could
not hear what was said, I am sure that there were fierce words between
them, for Henry had to knock Cannon down three times in rapid succession
before the irate bantam turned heel and followed Sironda up the float
and into the yard.
The rift in the lute had come, and it grew wider. For Sironda became
bolder in her advances, and Cannon, flattered by her feminine wiles,
laid his fish—of Henry’s catching—at her feet. It was a triangle
situation which could end only in one way. For at the end of each
one-sided fight Cannon would stalk away with outraged dignity in every
ruffled feather, and Henry would gaze after him sadly and would
thereafter peck at the swarms of silver smelt solemnly and without zest.
[Illustration]
And so he left us. One day he tried his massive wings and sailed upward
and outward into the blue sky, circled in midair as if trying his
strength, and then flapped quietly away toward the Pointing Finger, and
as he flew, he uttered a mournful cry that trailed behind him like a
wisp of smoke.
And Cannon, the thankless one, did not even know that he had gone. He
was scratching worms for Sironda. But I really think it broke Henry’s
heart, for he never came to our float again. And I am positive that he
became a woman-hater and remained a bachelor the rest of his life.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_His constant barking set the grown-ups against him._
]
_Part Six_
STOP THIEF
In the days when the roving fisher boats chugged into the little cove to
set their nets for salmon or silver smelt, we spent most of our time on
the bay. We knew every broad-beamed gray launch that rounded Green
Point, a mile away, and we knew most of the fishermen who owned them. We
would wait until the coughing engine was silent and the anchor was cast;
then we would hoist the sail of our tiny, round-bottomed skiff and,
using an oar for a rudder, skim out across the ruffled surface of the
bay to pay a visit to the swarthy-visaged men with heavy, grizzled
beards and rough, red hands. They always made us welcome in their
strange and guttural tongues, for we took them apples from the orchard,
and sometimes a glass of jelly or a loaf of home-made bread. And in
exchange they gave us curious souvenirs of their travels—dried starfish
of monstrous size, lovely, iridescent shells, and reed baskets bartered
from the Siwash Indians.
[Illustration]
The boat we knew best was called _Rosenzweig_, which, the Austrian
owners said, meant “Rose-branch.” These two fishermen, dark, powerful
men, anchored just beyond our float in the smelt and salmon seasons, and
we were fond of them. They let us help them haul in the nets, and more
than once Brother and I have stood in huge hip boots many sizes too
large, tugging at wet ropes heavy with seaweed, excitedly pulling at the
drag net and watching for the first glint of splashing silver in the
brown meshes which would tell us that the net was nearly to the beach
and filled with fish.
[Illustration]
We were always sorry to see the _Rosenzweig_ leave us, and it was always
a day of rejoicing when we sighted the little gray boat chugging around
the Point, its bow and stern piled high with seine and drag nets. The
two fishermen brought us a gift each time—we expected it. Sometimes it
would be a bunch of letters with Austrian stamps attached—Brother and I
were confirmed philatelists; sometimes it was a sugar-cured salmon, and
once they brought us a carved canoe paddle which they had purchased of a
Nittenat chief, far up the straits toward Alaska.
But the day of days was when, coming alongside their gray boat just as
the anchor splashed, we were greeted by Andrin, the elder brother, who
grinned delightedly and signified in his broken English that he had
something wonderful for us.
We clambered over the gunwale of the _Rosenzweig_, with its littered
deck and its heavy, perpetual smell of fish, seaweed, and tar calking,
and Karl, the younger fisherman, made us shut our eyes while he carried
something up from the hold and put it on the deck, something that
thrashed about wetly and barked in a high-pitched baby voice much like a
puppy’s.
[Illustration]
We opened our eyes and stared in amazement. For there, before us on the
deck, was a baby seal! He was wet and shiny brown, with great, bright
eyes that peered at us curiously, but without fear, and delicate
nostrils with neat, gentlemanly whiskers protruding from each side. With
his tiny fore-flappers he propelled himself along the deck, barking
constantly. Andrin threw him a piece of dried fish, which he caught in
the air and devoured instantly.
“We bring you nice present,” said Karl, showing his white teeth in a
smile, and he indicated the baby seal, who reared himself up as high as
he could on his front flappers and barked vociferously.
That we were delighted goes without saying. We had seen many seals from
a distance, but never had we thought to have one for a friend.
[Illustration]
Often one would pop out of the water in the wake of our boat as we rowed
to town, his wet, sleek head blackly silhouetted against the blue water.
And if we whistled or called, he would follow us indefinitely, for seals
have more than their share of curiosity. They are interested in strange
sounds and in bright colors. Once, when Brother was wearing a red
sweater, a seal followed our boat for nearly a mile.
[Illustration]
We had often known when they were near us in the Bay even without seeing
them. For when we saw a salmon jumping many times, in a series of
frenzied leaps, we knew it was not through sport, but because he was
pursued by a seal who would surely seize him the minute his strength
gave out. We had seen salmon nets spread in the water with only a row of
fish heads remaining in the meshes. Robber seals had neatly bitten off
the rest of the body. Once, while Brother and I were swimming far out
from the float, a smooth, heavy body brushed against mine, and I
screamed with fear. But an instant later a brown, wet head arose not
twenty yards away, and two bright eyes were turned on me inquiringly as
if to ask why I had been frightened.
You see, we were well acquainted with the seal family at long distance,
but never before had we been so close to one of the brown brethren.
I took a piece of fish from Karl’s hand and stooped toward the baby
seal, who turned his head from side to side, sniffed once or twice, and
then dragged himself along the deck to me, taking the friendship
offering gingerly from my outstretched fingers. A little later he found
a warm, sunny place on a pile of nets and turned over on his back,
scratching himself negligently with one of his fore-flappers.
[Illustration]
Karl said he would not take it amiss if we scratched him under the chin,
and indeed he did not. He stretched his head back and closed his eyes,
while we gently stroked the glossy fur, which, as it dried, became gray
rather than brown in color.
[Illustration]
The fishermen told us that the baby seal had attended a net-robbing
expedition with his mother. Both the lady seal and her baby had become
entangled in the nets. The mother had fought and had finally escaped.
But the baby they had loosed from the heavy meshes, and had taken him,
barking and protesting, on board the _Rosenzweig_, where they had kept
him in the hold, first as a prisoner and then as a pet, to bring to
Brother and me.
I know they were sorry to part with Alfred, as we christened the little
seal, but they needed the hold of their small boat for their catches of
fish. They could not afford to turn it permanently into a bath-tub for a
water-baby who could not live long away from the element to which he was
accustomed. So when the _Rosenzweig_ chugged away a few days later,
Alfred was left to our care, with a hundred instructions as to how to
regulate his diet and behavior.
The grown-ups were none too pleased at our latest pet, and it was a
tribute to Alfred’s winning ways that he finally established himself as
firmly in their affection as in ours. For there was no doubting his
intelligence, handicapped as it was by his unwieldy body that seemed
half fish and half animal.
[Illustration]
He learned to respond to his name sooner than most dogs, and he
displayed his love for us in a manner which was unmistakable. At first
we were afraid to let him go into the bay for fear he would swim away
and leave us. We did not know how large seals had to be before they
could earn their living in the water, but we chose to think—selfishly
perhaps—that Alfred was too small to make his way in a submarine contest
of wits against older and more experienced of his kindred.
[Illustration]
We need not have worried, however, for the baby seal adopted us in the
same spirit that we had adopted him. He evidently had no thought of
leaving us. The float in front of the cabin was his headquarters, and
from it he would slide off into the water, rolling and splashing like a
young dolphin, to return when he was tired or when we called him.
I can see him now, his small, sleek head, with its great brown eyes,
sticking up out of the water, at our call pointing for the float like a
periscope; lifting himself by his wet fore-flappers with their short,
clicking nails and dragging himself toward us, leaving in his wake a
trail of salt water.
It was his constant barking which at first had set the grown-ups against
him, so we made him refrain from it. He learned that when we said, with
finger upraised reprovingly, “Alfred, less noise!” he must be quiet, or
there would be no piece of dried fish for him, no bottle of milk, and no
gum-drops.
[Illustration]
It might not have been necessary to bring Alfred up on the bottle,
especially as the fishermen of the _Rosenzweig_ had been feeding him
dried fish ever since they had caught him, but our experience with other
baby animals had convinced us that milk was a pleasant if not absolutely
essential form of food. So we trained Alfred to drink from a bottle with
a rubber nipple, and he loved it. He broke the first two, banging them
down on the float, so Brother and I devised a padded bag for it. From
this Alfred daily took his milk, blinking his great, shining eyes at us
and pausing occasionally to bark. We came to know it for his sign of
approval.
[Illustration]
The gum-drops were given to him experimentally. Brother maintained that
the Esquimaux lived on them, and that Alfred, being a relative of
northern fur-bearing seals, would doubtless thrive on the same diet. His
reasoning may have been faulty in theory, but in practise it was
amazingly successful. Many a time did Brother and I row the three miles
to town for the special purpose of purchasing gum-drops for Alfred. He
seemed to know instinctively when we had the candy with us, for when, in
returning, we reached the Pointing Finger, half-way between Green Point
and the cove, we could make out a black speck on the float ahead of us,
a speck that wriggled and flopped and finally slid down into the water.
Then we would see a round dot against the blue little waves of the bay,
a dot that resolved itself into a sleek, brown head, and there would be
Alfred, swimming toward the boat, lifting himself as high out of the
water as he could, his eyes fixed upon us beamingly. We always made him
wait until we reached the float and moored the boat, then we would toss
him the candy a piece at a time, making him catch it in midair.
[Illustration]
As Alfred grew older and larger, we trained him to do some of the things
we had seen his kindred do in the circuses. And how eager he was to
learn! He put Brother and me to shame, for we hated lessons. He loved
them. We taught him to balance an indoor baseball on the tip of his
brown nose, and when he saw us coming down the float with his ball in
our hands, he would set up a hilarious barking and wriggle over to us,
his head moving up and down in an ecstasy of anticipation. There was no
barking, though, when he went through his tricks. If Alfred had been a
man, his power of concentration would have made him a millionaire. He
would sit, moment after moment, posing the ball on his nose, flexing his
body from side to side to keep the balance, his bright, intelligent eyes
fixed steadily on the leathern sphere.
[Illustration]
We taught him to “play dead,” to dive from a high springboard, and to
fetch us a stick that we threw into the water.
Some people say there is nothing in heredity. I am sure there is. I do
not pretend to be an expert on the question, but I can account in no
other way for Alfred’s deflection from the path of respectability. It
was certainly not because of lack of nourishment that he took to robbing
seine nets of salmon. I am rather inclined to think it was his mother’s
waywardness which was cropping out in him. At any rate, he took to
making nocturnal excursions, and in the morning we would find him on the
float, stretched out listlessly, his stomach actually distended by too
much food, and he would eye with disdain the padded bottle of milk and
the pieces of griddle cake we had brought for his breakfast.
[Illustration]
Still we did not suspect that our friend had become a net robber until
the Old Fisherman descended on us one morning with wrath in his eye. He
told us of having made the rounds of his salmon nets the night before to
find the bodies neatly snipped from half a dozen king salmon. He had
even caught the fish burglar in the act of amputating a Chinook salmon’s
silver body from its head, and the seal had stared at him in the lantern
light and had barked at him.
That it was Alfred, he was sure. Brother and I demurred that one seal
was much like another. But no, said the Old Fisherman; this was a small
seal, a seal unafraid of people, an impudent, half-grown seal—Alfred!
“And he chose the best fish o’ the lot,” he fumed. “If he’d taken a
dog-salmon, now—but no, he has to pick out the kings, the steel-heads
and the Chinooks!”
We faced Alfred and charged him with suspicion of robbery. It seemed to
us that he avoided our questioning eyes. He flapped over to his ball at
the side of the float and occupied himself in trying to hoist it on his
nose. It was perfectly clear to us that his conscience was clouded with
guilt.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
What to do? We loved Alfred dearly, but we loved the Old Fisherman, too,
and his living depended upon the hauls of fish he made. A scanty living
it was at best, and we could not bear the thought of being even
indirectly the cause of poverty descending upon him.
We built a wire cage in which we confined Alfred the next night, much
against his will. And the Old Fisherman reported in the morning that no
salmon had been stolen. But the following night heredity and appetite
proved stronger than the wire netting we had devised, and Alfred robbed
the seine net, near the Pointing Finger, of three large steel-heads.
The question of turning Alfred loose was a difficult one. We had never
restrained him in any way, and our float and the beach beside it were
the only homes he knew. The Old Fisherman spoke of killing, but that was
against the law, since the seals of Puget Sound are considered in the
same class with sea-gulls and other scavengers. Besides, Brother and I
would never have permitted such a thing. Alfred was our friend. Somewhat
of a reprobate, it is true, but after all, he had as much right to the
salmon in the Bay as had the Old Fisherman. It was not his fault that he
could not understand the man-made ethics by which human beings assumed
control over the water and its inhabitants.
[Illustration]
Then the next morning, as if in response to prayer, the _Rosenzweig_
came chugging around Green Point. Hardly had its anchor splashed when
Brother and I were easing our boat alongside and clambering up to the
smelly deck.
We told Karl and Andrin, all in a breath, how Alfred, the seal baby, had
grown up to be a salmon thief, just like his mother. We told how sorry
we were for the Old Fisherman, and how we could not seem to explain to
Alfred about controlling his appetite.
[Illustration]
Karl and Andrin took counsel with each other. We hung hopefully upon the
strange foreign sentences that we could not understand. Then Karl
grinned broadly. They were going to buy a new boat, he said, a bigger
boat. They could fix a sort of a tank for Alfred, wherein he could
submerge himself in water. There would be no question of fish; he would
have his fill of them. They had missed him, Karl said. He had been “such
a smart babee!”
So Alfred left us as he had come to us—on board the _Rosenzweig_. He
nuzzled against my hand like a dog as I gave him a gum-drop, and his
shining eyes were fixed on me with so much affection in them that I had
to blink hard to keep from crying. He had forgotten Karl and Andrin. His
heart was plainly in our keeping.
But the parting had to be. It was with sorrowful faces that we watched
the _Rosenzweig_ weigh anchor and commence to chug out into the current.
Brother and I stood on the float, trying to pretend to each other that
we weren’t down-hearted, when suddenly I spied between the boards
Alfred’s ball.
“Oh,” I cried, “he must have that to remember us by.”
We piled into the little white boat and, pulling on the oars with all
our might, set out in pursuit of the gray fishing launch. Our cries
finally reached Karl and Andrin, for the engine stopped, and in a few
minutes we came alongside.
[Illustration]
“Alfred’s ball!” we explained breathlessly. “He’d be lonesome without
it.”
[Illustration]
And at the sound of our voices, we heard a high-pitched barking from the
hold. It was Alfred, who was calling to us as best he knew how, begging
us not to leave him, asking us to please take him home with us—
We did not wait for the fishermen’s thanks. We were on the verge of
tears. So the engine started again its steady drumming, the propeller
churned the water into green and white whirlpools, and the _Rosenzweig_
made out towards the Straits, while our little boat rocked gently in her
wake.
[Illustration]
And then, as we sat there, a sleek brown head appeared out of the water
not a dozen yards from the stern—a shiny seal head with brilliant,
intelligent eyes. It was not Alfred, of course, but for an instant we
thought it might be. For the space of a few breaths the eyes watched us
intently, then the head disappeared from sight.
“I’ll bet it was Alfred’s mother,” said Brother solemnly, “wanting to
know what we’d done with her child.”
“Well,” said I, “what has happened is her own fault. If only she hadn’t
made a robber of him!”
[Illustration]
_Part Seven_
O’HENRY, THE QUAIL BABY
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
_If Clarence had been a man, he would have endowed orphanages._
]
_Part Seven_
O’HENRY
_The_
QUAIL BABY
It was upon the Hill Trail that Brother and I came to know O’Henry, the
Quail Baby. You would have liked our Hill Trail. It ran from the old
logging chute, just at the top of the hill above the cabin, straight
through woods of pine and fir until it ended at Bright Creek, two miles
distant, a turbulent little stream full of rapids and miniature
waterfalls, where the lady salmon fought their way up through the fresh
water to deposit their eggs. The Hill Trail was bordered by ferns and
salal bushes, with delicate, overhanging red huckleberry bushes and rows
of young alders who whispered to each other all day like children in
church. On either side of the brown ribbon that was the trail a carpet
of grass and green moss stretched back into the deep woods, and
tapestries of twin-flower vines and wild blackberry bushes hung from
stump and fallen tree. The sunlight slanted down through the tall pines
and touched the trail with tapering fingers of light as if it loved it.
Even in the hottest summer there was always a little breeze that stirred
the alders into sleepy gossip and set the pine trees humming gently to
themselves. There was the scent of pine-needles, of fallen leaves, of
wet moss.
[Illustration]
We loved the Hill Trail best on the drowsy days of summer, when the
shadows of the trees were long and cool, and the gentle splash of the
tiny waterfall deep in the woods came like distant music. It was on such
a day that we lay in the cool, deep moss near the Fairy Ring and stared
through interlacing branches at the blue patchwork sky. We heard the
tap-tap of a woodpecker not far away, the drowsy hum of a bee, and the
shrill twittering of a flock of juncoes who were flying overhead. Then
from afar came a call that we knew and loved, the deep woods call of the
quail, with its three clear notes which said, as we imagined, “Oh,
_Hen_-ry! Oh, _Hen_-ry!”
The Chinook Indians say that long ago a lady quail was unfaithful to her
mate, but afterward repented. Her husband never forgave her, however,
and would not come back to her, so now she goes through the forest
calling plaintively to him, “Oh, _Hen_-ry!”
[Illustration]
As we listened, the quail call came nearer, then a faint, almost
imperceptible scurry of leaves that told us that a bevy of the little
brown birds was close at hand. Indeed, closer at hand than we thought,
for at that instant a mother quail tripped out from the underbrush and
at sight of us stopped short with an imperative danger note, sounded, as
we suspected, in warning to the children who were following her. We had
not moved, but the mother heart was filled with terror. There was a whir
of wings, and she rose in the air for a short distance, then fell,
crashing heavily into a clump of fern.