Our schooner sailed once up and down the coast of Labrador, skirting it
for a distance of five hundred miles; but in these papers I sail back
and forth as many times as I please. Having, therefore, followed up the
ice, I am again at Sleupe Harbor, our first port, and invite thee to go
with us in a day's pursuit of Eider-Duck; for among these innumerable
islands the eider breeds, and not elsewhere in considerable numbers, so
far as we could learn, short of--somewhere in the remote North.
Bradford, this morning, June 15th, has hired the two Canadians to take
him to the bird-haunts in their own boat, and to shoot for him,--kindly
offering a place to the Judge and myself.
The word _Eider_ had long been to me a name to conjure with. At some
far-away period in childhood it got imbedded in my fancy, and in process
of time had acquired that subtilest, indefinable fascination which
belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all
this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to
sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of
allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an
immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through
memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being chords of
connection with times immeasurably bygone! only to be fed with ethereal
remembrance out of a youth scarcely less ancient than the stars! Pity
Tithonus no more; or pity him only because in him age had become the
enemy of itself, and spilled the wine from its own cup.
The wind was ahead, and blew freshly down through the wilderness of
islands, sweeping between granite shores along many and many a winding
channel; the boat careened almost to her gunwale, yielding easily at
first, but holding hard when well down, as good boats will; the waves
beat saucily against her, now and then also catching up a handful of
spray, and flinging it full in our faces, not forbearing once or twice
to dash it between the open lips of a talker, salting his speech
somewhat too much for his comfort, though not too much for the
entertainment of his interlocutors; while overhead the rifted gray was
traversed by whited seams, making another wilderness of islands in the
clouds. We had gone a mile, and were now sailing smoothly in the lee of
an island, when Bradford exclaimed, "See there! What's that? Why, that's
a 'sea-goose.' Can you get him for me?" (to the elder Canadian). I had
snuggled down in the bottom of the boat, and sprang up, expecting, from
the word "goose," to see a large and not handsome bird, when instead
appeared the tiniest tid-bit of swimming elegance that eye ever beheld.
Reddish about neck and breast, graceful as a swan in form and motion,
while not larger than a swallow, light as the lightest feather on the
water, turning its curving neck and dainty head to look,--it seemed more
like an embodied fancy than a creature inured to the chill of Arctic
seas and the savagery of Arctic storms. What goose first gave it the
name "sea-goose" passes conjecture. "Sea-fairy" were more appropriate.
This was the Hyperborean Phalarope,--a big name for so tiny a creature.
Nuttall says that in 1833 great numbers of them appeared about Chelsea
Beach. Ruddy, airy, fairy, feathered Graces, they must seem in our
practical Yankee land like a mythology on wings, a flock of exquisite
old Grecian fancies, flitting, light, and sweetly strange, and almost
impossible, through the atmosphere of modern industries.
Soon a new attraction. It was a bird in the water quite near, about the
size of a pigeon, though slenderer, glossy black, save a patch of pure
white on the wing, and with an eye that glittered like a black jewel.
"Sea-pigeon," said the artist, and desired his skilful Canadian to
secure the prize. The other arose and took deliberate aim. The bird, now
not more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no
attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head
turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing
backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over
that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had
been; but _quicker_ than a flash that creature was under water and well
out of harm's way! The shot could have been scarcely out of the muzzle
before he had disappeared. To see such inconceivable celerity reminded
one that the wings of gnats, which vibrate fifteen thousand times in a
second, and light, that makes (_vide_ Tyndale) twenty and odd millions
of undulations in going an inch, are not without their fellow-wonders in
Nature. Meanwhile the whole performance was so cool and neat that I
could not afterwards help thinking of this creature as a humorist, and
picturing it as quietly chuckling to itself under water. With reason,
too; for above water was such a prolonged and ludicrous stare of
amazement from at least three pairs of eyes as might satisfy the most
immoderate appetite for the laughable.
This artful dodger was the Black Guillemot. It cannot be shot, if its
eye is on the fowler. Eager for "specimens," I tried my long, powerful
ducking-gun upon it an hour or two later, sufficiently to prove this.
The birds would wait and watch, all the while glancing from side to
side, and dip, dip, dipping their bills in the water with infinite wary
quickness of movement, and yet with an air of audacious unconcern; but
the pull at the trigger seemed to touch some nerve in them, and by the
same act you fired your shot at them and fired them under water.
The curious dipping of the bill just alluded to is mentioned as
characteristic of the Phalaropes, though I did not observe it, and is
thought to be a snapping-up of minute Crustacea. But in the case of the
Black Guillemot, I question if this be its true explanation. The bird
makes this movement only when on the alert. Several of them are
frolicking together; you show yourself, and instantly their bills begin
to dip,--each movement being quick as lightning, but with a second of
space between. I thought it partly an escape-valve for their nervous
excitement, and partly a keeping in practice of their readiness to dive.
To suppose them taking food under such circumstances,--one would fain
think himself more formidable in their eyes than that coolness would
imply.
In the afternoon, however, of this day--to anticipate a little--my
specimen was obtained. While the boat waited at the shore of a low
island, the Judge and I sauntered up the smooth, bare granite slope to
the ridge, and, looking over a breast-high wall of solid rock, saw a
flock of these birds in a cove on the opposite side.
"Shall I fire?" I said.
"You couldn't hit them; they are more than two gun-shots off. However,"
added the Judge, presently, "your Long Tom will _reach_ one gunshot, and
fire one and a half more; it will do no harm to try."
I fired at the farthest; they went under, but when they returned to the
surface one had come to grief. I walked leisurely towards them, and
stood on the shore, reloading; but they gave me no heed; they were
intent on their stricken comrade. Gathering around him, they began
pulling at him with their bills, trying to replace him in an upright
position. The poor fellow strove to comply, for he was not yet quite
dead; but quickly fell over again on the side. They renewed their
efforts, assiduously playing Good Samaritan to this brother who had
fallen among human thieves. At last they got impatient, and pecked at
him sharply, evidently looking on him as wanting in pluck. They had
seemed very human before; but when they began to be vexed at him because
he would not gratify their benevolence with the sense of success, I
really could see no reason why they should be masquerading there in
feathers, being as human as anybody!
It was an elegant bird, with its fine shape, its plumage of glossy jet
and snow, and its legs of bright scarlet, bright as name. Use it has,
too, for its flame-legs in the frigid seas it frequents; for it is found
in the uttermost North, and dares all the severities of Polar cold.
But we have got into the afternoon too quickly, and now return to our
morning pursuit of eider-duck. It was not long after the above spectacle
of magic disappearance that the elder Canadian rose, went forward, and
fired his piece. Two large birds, one black and white, the other brown,
sprang up from the water and flew briskly away,--flew, as I thought, out
of sight; the man meanwhile returning to his seat and the helm, with the
same composed silence, and the same attractive, inscrutable face as
before. But three hundred yards farther on we came to the male bird,
quite dead. I was near firing upon it, being led by its motion on the
waves to think it alive, and not in the least connecting it with the
bird. I had but just now seen flying off in all apparent health,--when
the Canadian, touching Bradford, and pointing, said quietly, "Dead," and
the latter shouted to me accordingly. Presently, as the boat swept past,
I stooped and drew it in,--a beautiful creature, with velvety violet
black accompanied by dark olive-green about the head, while the neck,
breast, and back were white as snow, and all the rest a glistening
black.
"An eider! King eider!" cried the Artist, joyfully. Then, "Isn't it a
king eider?" he said to the Canadian, holding it up.
The other nodded.
"Really a king eider!" murmured the Artist, as he now bent over it with
bright eyes.
It was not, but the male of the other species, though I knew no better
at the time. The king duck is one of the most Arctic of all Arctic
birds, and condescends to Lower Labrador only in winter, nor then
frequently. A temperature at the freezing-point is to him a mere oven,
which one should be a salamander to live in; with the thermometer thirty
or forty degrees lower, he is still sweltered; while his custom of
growing his own coat, though it saves him from shoddy, expense, and
Paris fashions, has the disadvantage that he cannot strip it off at
pleasure, not even when away from the ladies and the dinner-table. He is
fain, therefore, to keep well away toward the Polar North, where the
climate is more temperate and pleasing, leaving Newfoundlanders and
Labradorians to roast themselves, if they _will_ do so.
While the boat sailed on, still seeking the eider-island,--which at
first, so the Artist said, was "half a mile off," then "a piece
farther," then "right up here," then "just ahead," and now threatened to
keep ahead,--I nested myself again in the bottom, and renewed an old
boy-custom by studying the elder Canadian's physiognomy. It was
strangely attractive, and yet strangely impenetrable, a rare out-door
face, clean and firm as naked granite after a rain, healthful as
balsam-firs, and so honestly weather-beaten that one could not help
regarding it as a feature of natural scenery. All out-of-doors was
implied in it, and it belonged as much to the horizon as to the nearest
objects. The eye, with its unceasing, imperturbable search, never an
instant relaxing its intentness, and never seeming to make an effort any
more than the sky in looking blue, asserted this relationship, for by
the same glance it seemed to take in equally the farthest and the
nearest; only over us in the boat it passed always as over vacant space.
Yet any question was answered at once with quiet, willing brevity, not
as if he had been interrupted in his thoughts, or was recalled to a
recognition of our existence, but just as he would turn the tiller in
steering his boat,--while the eye still continued its conversation with
that impersonal, elemental company which he seemed to keep. I found it
out of my power to relate myself to him as an individual. In most faces
you study special character; but in him it was somewhat older and more
primitive,--somewhat which seemed to be rather existence itself than any
special form of it. One felt in him that same world-old secret which
haunts ancient woods, and would have asked him to utter it, were not its
presence the only utterance it can have. Alas, he that speaks must use
English, French, or some language which is partly conventional; and that
pre-Adamite or Saturnian vernacular in which we are all _trying_ to
speak has no verbal sign. Poets, indeed, contrive to catch it, one knows
not how, in the meshes of ordinary language, and only therefore are
poets; but to frame in it any question or answer suited to the wants of
the understanding is a feat beyond man's power. It is true that Mr.
Herbert Spencer, having, by diligent, heroic self-desiccation, got his
mind into the purely adult, dried-beef condition, well freed from all
boy-juices of imagination, has discovered that all Fact in this
universe, which cannot be verbally formulated and made a scientific
dogma, is without significance to man's spirit, however it may be
negatively implied as a vacant somewhat by his logic. For which
discovery the incomparable man will please accept my profoundest
ingratitude.
After "positive philosophy," the croak of ravens, the hoot of owls,
anything that has the touch, the charm, and infinite suggestion of
Nature and life, will be more than welcome; and in good time we have
reached the desired island.
Not to find eiders, though, but only Saddle-Back Gulls, a crowd of which
arose on our approach, and hovered about at safe, yet tantalizing
distance, keeping up their monotonous, piping scream. The saddle-back, a
large, powerful white bird, with a patch of black crossing it like a
saddle, is the great enemy of the eider, pillaging its nest and
devouring its young at every opportunity, and had probably driven the
ducks from this place. It is a pirate of pirates, a Semmes in the air,
cowardly toward equals, relentless toward the weak and unweaponed; and
the chief care of the mother duck is to protect her little brood from
these greedy confederates. One of the coolest, yet wariest rascals in
the world, it can scarcely be surprised, but lingers about, just beyond
gun-shot range, screaming, as if it said, "Why don't you fire?
Fire!--who cares?" I came at length to cherish toward them no little
animosity, and would willingly have played Kearsarge upon them, could
any challenge have drawn them from port. But during the whole cruise not
one of them consoled us with so much as a feather.
The flight of this bird meanwhile is magnificent,--so full of powerful
grace, of achieving leisure and ease. Nothing can be more striking than
its contrast with the labored propulsion of the duck. A few slow waves
of the wing, and there it is high in the air; then a droop, a decline,
but so light and soft, so exquisitely graduated, that the downward drift
of a feather seems lumpish and leaden in the comparison; then again up
it goes with such an ease as if it rose by specific levity, like smoke
from a chimney in a day of calm; and aloft it wheels, circles, floats,
and at length sails on its broad vans away, passing in a few minutes
over wide spaces, and yet, with its leisurely stroke, seeming engaged
only in airing its pinions. One might fancy it the very spirit of motion
imaged in a picturesque symbol.
In that delightful book, "Out-Door Papers," the author celebrates
charmingly the charm of birds; but I, who am more humanist than
naturalist, would say rather, What exhaustless fascination in their
flight!--for this appears to touch by some subtile suggestion upon the
hope or dream of man. I am, indeed, now--though always, please God, a
boy--not so young a boy as once, when I could be unhappy for the want of
wings, and deem, for a moment, that life is little worth without them;
yet never does a bird fly in my view, especially if its flight be lofty
and sustained, but it seems to carry some deep, immemorial secret of my
existence, as if my immortal life flew with it. Sweet fugitive, when
will it fly with me? Whenever it does,--and something assures me that
one day it will,--then the new heavens and new earth! Meanwhile the
intimation of it puts to the lip some unseen cup, out of which, in a
soft ecstasy of pain that is better than pleasure, I quaff peace, peace.
It is not always nor often that one is open to this supreme charm; but
it comes at times, and then to hope all and believe all is easy as to
breathe.
This mood also carries me farther than almost anything else into
childhood; for, in the height of it, I can go back by link after link of
remembrance, and see myself ... there ... and there ... and there again
... and at last deep into the rosy suffusion of dawn,--still looking up,
and intent on that airy motion. To this day I know birds better by their
flight than by their forms, unless it be the form of the wing.
I tried to see what it is which gives to the flight of some birds that
look of majestic ease. Partly it is due to the slow stroke, but more, I
thought, to the flexibility of the wing, and to the fact that this is
less directly up-and-down in its action than that of the duck, for
example. The chief effort of the duck is to sustain its weight.
Consequently the wing must lie flat (comparatively) upon the air, and be
kept straight out, economizing its vertical pressure; and hence the
noticeable stiffness and toilsomeness of its progression. The gull, less
concerned to sustain itself, uses the wing more flexibly, bending it
slightly at the elbow, and pressing back the outer portion with each
stroke. So a heavy swimmer must keep his hands flat, pressing down upon
the water to hold up his head; while one who swims very lightly handles
them more freely and flexibly, using them at pleasure to assist his
progress. Yet the matter refuses to be wholly explained, and remains
partly a mystery. Darwin, when in Patagonia, observed condors circling
in the air, and saw them sail half an hour by the watch without any
smallest vibration of the wings and without the smallest perceptible
descent. I used in boyhood to see bald eagles do the same for a
considerable period, though I never timed them exactly, and wonder at it
now as I did then.
Away now to another island, still seeking ducks. Arrived, the Canadians
land, in order, in Bradford's behalf, to have the first chance; while
the Judge and I, who pretend to no skill with the gun, remain awhile
behind. The island had the shape described in our first paper: a gentle
slope and rock-beach on one side,--a steep, broken, half-precipitous
descent on the other. Landing presently, I went slowly along the
slope,--slowly, for one's feet sank deep at every step in the elastic
moss, so that it was like walking on a feather-bed. Some patches of
shrubbery, two and a half or three feet high,--the first approach to
woody growth I had seen,--drew my attention; and it is curious now to
think what importance they had in my eyes, as if here were the promise
of a new world. I hastened towards them, forgetting the coveted ducks;
and the Canadian's gun, which sounded in the distance, did not reawaken
my ambition. Forgetting or remembering were probably much the same; for
I had scarcely fired a gun in twenty and odd years, never had taken a
bird on the wing, and, besides, must now fire from the left
shoulder,--the right eye being like Goldsmith's tea-cups, "wisely kept
for show." But as I touched the shrubbery there was a stir, a rustle, a
whirr, and away went a large brown bird, scurrying off toward the sea.
Upon the impulse of the moment, I up gun, and blazed after. To my
amazement, the bird fell. I stumped off for my prize, actually achieving
a sort of run, the first for years,--pretty sure, however, that the
creature was making game of me rather than I of it, and would rise and
flirt its tail in my face when I should be near enough to make the
mockery poignant. No, the poor thing's game was up. It was a large bird,
of an orange-brown hue, mottled with faint white and shadings of black.
A powerful relenting came over me, and I could have sat down and cried
like a baby, had that been suitable for a "boy" of my years.
"Do you know that was pretty well done?" cried a voice.
It was Bradford, who was hurrying up. I had no heart to answer; I was
not jolly.
"Why, it's a female eider," he said, when near; "you've shot an eider on
the wing!"
_O tempora! O mores!_ then the Elder was glad!--all his compunction
drowned in the pleasure of connecting himself, even through the gates of
death, with a youthful fascination.
It now occurred to me--and the conjecture proved correct--that these
plats of shrubbery must serve as hiding-places for the duck. The
Canadians, whose behavior was all along mysterious, had forborne to give
us any hint. I was vexed at them then, but had no reason perhaps. This
was their larder, which they could not wish to impoverish. Besides,
fishermen and visitors on this coast are so sweeping and ruthless in
their destructions, that one might reasonably desire to protect the
birds against them. It is not so much by shooting the birds as by
destroying their eggs that the mischief is done. A party will take
possession of an island at night, carry off every egg that can be found,
and throw it into the sea,--then, returning next forenoon, take the
fresh eggs laid in the mean time for food. On the whole, I feel less
like blaming our guides than like returning to make apologies. Yet to us
also the ducks are necessary, for we have no fresh meat but such as our
guns obtain; and to one seeking health, this was a matter of some
serious moment.
The elder Canadian has also shot a duck, and, besides, a red-breasted
diver, a noble bird; and with these prizes we set sail for another
island, frequented by "Tinkers." The day meanwhile had cleared, the sun
shone richly, and we began to see somewhat of the glory, as well as
grimness, of Labrador. Away to the southwest, eminent over the lesser
islands, rose Mecatina, all tossed into wild billows of blue, with
purple in the hollows; while to the north the hills of the mainland
lifted themselves up to hold fellowship with it in height and hue.
"Tinker," we found, meant Murre and Razor-Billed Auk. These are finely
shaped birds, black above and white below, twice the size of a pigeon,
and closely resembling each other, save in the bill. That of the murre
is not noticeable; but the other's is singularly shaped, and marked with
delicate, finely cut grooves, the central one being nicely touched with
a line of white, while a similar thread of white runs from the bill to
the eye.
I notice it thus, because it suggested to me a reflection. Looking at
this bill, I asked myself how Darwin's theory comported with it. "The
struggle for life,"--are all the forms of organic existence due to that?
But how did the struggle for life cut these grooves, paint these
ornamental lines? "Beauty is its own excuse for being"; and that Nature
respects beauty is, to my mind, nothing less than fatal to the Darwinian
hypothesis. That his law exists as a _modifying_ influence I freely
admit, and accredit him with an important addition to our thought upon
such matters; that it is the sole formative influence I shall be better
prepared to believe when I see that beauty is not regarded in Nature,
but is a mere casual attendant upon use. The artist Greenough did,
indeed, strenuously maintain this last. But the sloth and the
bird-of-paradise are equally useful to themselves; if beauty were but an
aspect of use, these should be equally comely in our eyes. No; "the
struggle for life" has not grooved the bill of the auk, and painted the
tail of the peacock, any more, so far as I can see, than it has given to
evening and morning their scarlet and gold. And so my auk said to me,
"Any attempt to string existence upon a single thread has failed and
will fail, unless it be that thread which man can never formulate, never
stretch out into a straight line,--the Eternal Unity, God."
These birds have a catlike instinct of fidelity to old haunts, and,
having once chosen a habitat, adhere to it, despite many a year of
persecution. They prefer inaccessible cliffs, on every projecting shelf
and jut of which the eggs are laid, but also inhabit islands where are
many clefts, fissures, and holes made by tumbled masses of rock. This at
which we had arrived was not much more than a hundred feet high; and the
cliffs in which it terminated on one side were scarcely to be named
inaccessible. The number of birds upon it seemed to our novice-eyes
immense, but at a later period would have seemed trivial. They are
always flying about the shores, and have also a laudable curiosity,
which leads them to investigate when any strange form appears or any
strange noise is made in the neighborhood of their homes.
On landing, the Judge made off to the left, and was soon heard from,--as
it afterwards appeared, with immediate success. The Canadian and myself
took our station upon a broad platform some forty feet above the sea,
with steep rocks behind, and were soon busily engaged in--missing! It
was nothing but _bang! pish! bang! pshaw!_ for half an hour. It could
not be said that the birds were indifferent to the prospect of being
immortalized as specimens. On the contrary, they showed an appreciation
of the honor, and an open zeal to obtain it, which were worthy of the
highest commendation. But they very properly declined to be _bungled_
even into a taxidermist paradise. Nothing could be more admirably
orthodox than their resolution to be immortalized _secundum artem_; and
considering how many are ready to sneak, without the smallest regard to
desert or self-respect, into any attainable _post mortem_ felicity, this
honorable cut direct to all mere _auk_ward and heterodox inductions into
happiness begot in me toward these creatures sentiments of the highest
consideration. All the while they kept flying past, often near, but
always going through the air like a dart, as if they would say, "Take,
but earn!"
At first the effect of this superior behavior on their part was to
produce humiliation, and, along with this, a weak, nervous excitement,
and an attempt to reach my ends by mere determination. I accordingly got
to pulling upon them with a vehemence which probably disturbed my aim,
as if I had been drawing at a halibut rather than at a trigger. But the
gates which are appointed to fly open before a high behavior are but as
the barred gates of Destiny toward mere low strength. The gods and birds
were immitigable. I must do better, not merely do more.
Meditating on these matters, and moved by the lofty demeanor of my
challengers, I at length proceeded seriously to self-amendment.
Exchanging my large duck-shot for some of smaller size, I no longer
blurted at my auk when he was just abreast; but, deferentially allowing
him to pass, and then, aiming after him, as if I accepted his lead, I
gently suggested to him my desires; whereupon, in the most becoming
manner, he descended and plumped into the sea, without so much as
flapping a wing, or being guilty of the faintest impropriety. It was
beautiful. Continuing this behavior, I found my attentions uniformly
reciprocated. Once, indeed, when I fell into a shade of _brusquerie_,
the individual whom I had complimented stood upon his self-respect, and,
as I thought, flew away; but Bradford, who had courteously come up just
as I began to succeed, was so kind as to see him fall punctiliously into
the water, when he had gone far enough to suggest a reprimand of my
slight unseemliness. And now, when the Artist was Christian enough to
exclaim, "Why, Blank, I did not know you were such a shot!" I thought it
high time to rest on my (back and) laurels. Reposing, therefore, upon
the round leathern pillow which was my inseparable and invaluable
companion, I enjoyed my spine-ache _cum dignitate_ till the others were
ready to return.
On the way to the ship an eider sprang up from a steep ridge we were
passing, and fell in a second, Bradford exclaiming, "That's the best
shot to-day!" The yawl soon followed us. Ph---- had taken two eiders on
the wing; we had six in all. Others brought auks and murres; but the
Judge still led the van. Next morning the Colonel and Judge brought in
four eiders,--the last for the entire voyage. Others were afterward
seen, but only seen. The Parson, some weeks later, closed our intrusive
intimacy with them by an attempt to capture some of their young in the
water. It couldn't be done. They were only a few days old, but, rich in
pre-natal instruction, they always waited until the hand was just upon
them,--not to waste any part of their stay beneath water,--and
then--under in a moment. One saw that pirate saddle-back must needs
bestir himself in order to catch them, and one could appreciate the
sagacity of the mother duck in hurrying her brood, almost as soon as
they are born, into the water.
And so farewell, eiders! If all goes to my wish, you shall yet have a
place on other-world islands and seas, where saddle-backs shall not
pillage your nests, nor coat-backs point at you any Long Tom!
* * * * *
We give account only of what was characteristic, and therefore will now
jump five weeks of time and a hundred leagues of space. But since this
is a long leap, a few stepping-stones will be convenient. The Parson,
then, has brought in on the way a nice batch of velvet duck, noticeable
for their extremely large, oval, elevated, scarlet nostrils; we have
shot at seals, and _almost_ hit them in the most admirable manner; we
have hunted for an indubitable polar bear,--and found a dog and a
midnight mystification; we have played at chess, euchre, backgammon,
whist, debating-club, story-telling, nightmare,--one of our number
developing an incomparable genius for the last; we have played at
getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing,
and the other everything but his business,--and have lost the game; we
have played at catching trout, and found this the best joke of all.
There are beautiful brook-trout on the coast of Labrador. They say so;
it is so. Beautiful trout,--mostly visible to the naked eye! Not many of
them, but enough to gratify an elegant curiosity.
But here we are, July 21, lat. 54° 30'. Bradford has hooked an iceberg,
and will "play him" for the afternoon. Half a mile off is an island of
the character common to most of the innumerable islands strown all along
from Cape Charles to Cape Chudleigh,--an alp submerged to within three
hundred feet of the summit. Such islands, and such a coast! But this is
a notable "bird-island." So three of us are set ashore there with our
guns, the indefatigable Professor coming along also with his perpetual
net.
The island--which is rather two islands than one, for straight through
it, toward the eastern extremity, goes the narrowest possible
chasm--proved precipitous and inaccessible, save in a bit of inlet at
the hither opening of this chasm and on three rods of sloping rock to
the right. Like almost all its fellows, however, it raises one side
higher than the other; and conjecturing that the farther and higher face
would be the favorite haunt of these cliff-loving birds,--murres and
auks again,--I left my companions busily shooting near the landing, and
made my way up and across. It was no easy task, for the wild rock was
tossed and tilted, broken and heaped and saw-toothed, as if it
represented some savage spasm or fit of madness in Nature. But
clambering, sliding, creeping, zigzagging, turning back to find new
openings, and in every manner persisting, I slowly got on; while deep
down in the chasm on my left,--a hundred feet deep, and in the middle
not more than a foot wide, though champered away a little at the
top,--the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and
moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It
was awfully impressive,--so impressive that I reflected neither upon it
nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and
that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled,
sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was
no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy
creeping over the bare peaks of existence, while out of the blind heart
of the world issued an everlasting prayer,--a prayer without hope! And
this, too, if not boy's play, was a true piece of boy-experience. I can
recall--and better now by the aid of this half-hour--moments in
childhood when existence became thus awful, when it overpowered,
overwhelmed me, and when time, instead of melting in golden ripeness
into the fruitful eternity that lies before, seemed to fall back, doomed
forever, into the naked eternity behind. Goethe's "Erl-King," almost
alone in modern literature, touches truly, and on its shadowed side, the
immeasurable secret which haunts and dominates the heart of a child;
while Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood"
is our noblest suggestion of its illuminated obverse side.
At length I issued upon the opposite face of the island, and found
myself on a shelf of rock about three feet wide, with one hundred and
fifty feet, more or less, of vertical cliff beneath, and about the same
height of half-cliff behind and above. It was a pretty perch, and gave
one a feeling of consequence; for what pigmy perched on Alps ever failed
to consider his elevation one of stature strictly, and not at all of
position? The outer edge of the shelf rose, inclosing me as in a box, so
that I was safe as the owner of an annuity based upon United States
securities. Away to my right the perpendicular cliff rose higher still,
and, being there covered with clefts, cavelets, and narrow shelves, was
the peculiar home of the birds, who had taken possession of this island
on a long lease.
Their numbers were inconceivable. Two hundred yards off in the water was
an _island_ of them, an acre of feathery black. To the right I could see
them now and then ascending in literal clouds; and the sober Ph----, who
rowed along here beyond my view, saw the cliffs, as he looked up, white
for a half-mile with their snowy breasts, and could find no words to
express his sense of their multitude.
But so far as I was concerned,--for my comrades did better,--it was the
birds themselves that did the sporting that afternoon. They came
streaming by, never crowding together so that more than one could be
included in the chances of shot, but incessantly trailing along, and
scurrying past with the speed of an arrow. I peppered away, with little
result but that of spicing their afternoon's enjoyment for them; for the
wicked creatures took it all in the jolliest way, flinging themselves
past with a flirt and a wink, just as if I had been no lord of creation
at all. I had disdained to shoot them when at rest; for there seemed to
be some ancient compact between us, by which they were to have their
chance and I mine. But when one came and planted himself on a little jut
thirty yards to my right, and mocked me with a look of patronage,
seeming to regard me as the weaker party and to incline to my side, I
broke the pact, and, masking my hurt conceit under some virtuous
indignation against him as a deserter and traitor, turned and smote him
under the fifth rib.
And now it came upon me that I _must_ secure that bird. To shoot without
obtaining were mere wantonness. Yes, I would have him, and justify
myself to myself. To do it was difficult, even in Labradorian boy-eyes.
Between me and the auk the upper half of the cliff made a deep recess,
terminating in a right angle, with a platform of granite some
seventy-five feet below. Along both faces of this recess, nearly on a
level with myself, ran a shelf not more than six inches wide, with
vertical wall above and beneath; and on this I must go. I began,
therefore, working along this, proceeding with care, observing my
footing, and clutching with my hands whatever knob or crevice I could
find. But when near the angle, I found that the shelf terminated some
two feet short of its apex, and began again at about the same distance
beyond. Seeking about cautiously for finger-hold, I reached out my left
foot, and planted it on the opposite side, but could not stretch far
enough to make a place for the right foot when I should withdraw it. I
began debating with myself, whether, in case I should swing across and
rest on the left foot alone, I could work this along and make room for
the right. I knew that the process would have to be repeated on my
return; so I must estimate two chances at once.
And now for the first time, as I stood thus, some faint misgiving arose
in me, some faint question whether I was not doing one unjustifiable
thing to avoid doing another. It occurred to me that there was another
personage,--not a bird-seeking boy, like this one here, but a grave
man,--with whom I had an important connection, and who cherished serious
purposes and had many hopes of worthy labor yet to fulfil. Was I doing
the fair thing by _him_? He was not here, to be sure; I had left him
somewhere between Worcester and Labrador, with due pledge of reunion;
but even in his absence he was to be considered. Besides, he was my
master, and though he had permitted me to go gambolling off by myself,
on my promise to bring him back a more serviceable spine, yet his claim
remained, and I should be dishonorable to ignore it.
At first, indeed, these considerations seemed vague, far-fetched, little
better than affectations. The clear thing to be done was to get that
bird. This done, I could consider the rest. To admit any other thought
militated in some way against the singleness and compactness of my
being. Wise or unwise, what had I to do with far-off matters of that
sort? My business was to succeed in a certain task, not to be sage and
so forth. I actually felt a kind of shame to be debating any other than
the all-important question, Can I get my right foot over here beside the
left? Nor was it till certain faces pictured themselves to my mind, that
the heart took part with reason, and the tangential left foot returned,
rounding itself once more into the proper orbit of my life. I had been
standing there perhaps a minute.
It was an invaluable experience. It carried me farther into the heart of
the boy-world than I had gone for twenty-five years and more. And as the
boy-world is the big world, the life of too many being but another and
less attractive phase of boyhood, it supplied a gloss to the book of
daily observation, which I could on no account part with. The
inconceivable indifference of most men to considerations of speculative
truth became conceivable. The way in which the axioms of sages slip off
from multitudes, as mere vague "glittering generalities," good enough
for cherishers of the "intuitions" to lisp of by moonlight, but sheer
fiddle-dee-dee to firmly built men,--the commentary of the able lawyer
upon Emerson's lecture, "I don't understand it, but my girls do!"--all
this appears in a new light. Are not most men working along some cliff,
financial or other, after a bird? And do they not honestly regard it as
mere nonsense to be thinking about being sage and so forth, when the
real question is how to get the right foot across here beside the left?
I had gone back to my perch, where a rueful, puerile remorse tugged now
and then at my elbow, and said, "But that bird! You haven't given up
that bird?" when the Professor appeared on the apex of the island above,
shouting, "Here's a"--hawk, I thought he said, and caught up my gun. But
what? Fox? Yes,--"blue fox."
Now, then, up the cliff! Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber,
scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping--actually jumping, I!--over a
crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest
sturdy weeds--many thanks to them!--which had the consideration to be
there and to plant themselves firmly in the rock; at last I reached the
height, puffing like a high-pressure steam-engine.
"H-h-h-where--ff! ff!--h-is-ee?"
"Right over here. I've been chasing him this last half-hour. Finally,
the audacious little rascal would stick up his head over a rock, and
bark at me."
I soon had him; and was again struck with the vivacity which may be
exhibited by a creature whose life is really ended. As I fired, the
animal gave a loud "whish!" and sped away like the wind, disappearing
behind a jut of rock five or six rods farther away; but five feet from
that point I found it dead. This _post mortem_ activity, they told me,
was made possible by the small size of the shot. Perhaps, then, a
creature slain with a missile sufficiently subtile might go an
indefinite time without finding it out, supposing itself alive and well.
Institutions and politicians, we have all known, possess this power of
ignoring their own decease. Judaism has been dead these eighteen hundred
years; yet here are Jew synagogues in New York and Boston. Were the like
true of individuals, it might explain to us some lives which seem
inexplicable on any other hypothesis. I think, for example, of some
editors, who are evidently post-dating their decease; and when these go
on writing leading articles, and being sweet upon "our brethren of the
South," one does not say, "Disloyal," but only, "So long in learning
what has happened!"
My prize was the white fox, a year old, and not quite in adult costume.
How it got upon this island were matter for conjecture. Probably on the
ice.
Another skip,--and here we are upon another of these summits surrounded
by sea. The home of Puffins this is. The puffin is an odd little fellow,
smaller than the auk, but of the same general hue, with a short neck and
a queer bill. This is very thin from side to side, twice as wide up and
down as it is long, strongly marked with concentric scarlet ridges, and
altogether agrees so little with this plain-looking bird, that one can
scarcely regard it as belonging naturally to him, and fancies that he
must lay it aside at night, as people do false teeth. It is an easy bird
to take flying; for, on seeing you, it peaks its wings downward in a
manner indescribably prim and prudish, and scales past, turning its
stubby neck, and inspecting you with an air of comical, muddy gravity
and curiosity. My comrade, Ph----, got two dozen to my eight; but I was
consoled with a large Arctic falcon, which had been dining at
fashionable hours on a full-grown puffin, having set its table in a deep
gorge between vertical walls. It was of the kind called by Audubon
_Falco Labradora_, concerning which Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian
Institute, who has had the kindness to write to me, doubts whether it
may not be an immature stage of _Falco Candicans_, one of the two
undoubted species of Arctic falcons. Captain Handy, however, a very
observant and intelligent man, was sure, from the feeling of the bones,
that it must be an old bird.
Once more only I will ask the reader to accompany me. We had gone ashore
in a place called Stag Bay, not to hunt stags, but to seek a bear, to
whose acquaintance we seemed to have obtained a preliminary introduction
by trustworthy informations. Bruin, however, positively declined the
smallest approach to intimacy, refusing even to look at our cards, and
sending out the most hopeless "Not at home." Separating, therefore, we
strolled on the beach,--for a beach there actually was at this
place,--and observing some Piping Plovers, tiny waders, I made for them.
One of them stood as sentinel on a rock, and, thinking the ornithologist
might like him for a specimen, I fired. The large shot scattered around
him, the distance being considerable, without injury; but I insisted on
his being dead, and searched as if enough of searching would in some way
cause him to be so. It wouldn't, however; and I was about turning away,
when, a rod or two off, I saw him evidently desperately wounded. "Ah!
there is my bird, after all," I muttered, and started with a leisurely
step to pick it up. Terrified at my approach, the little wretch began to
hobble and flutter away, keeping about his original distance. I
quickened my pace; he exerted his broken strength still more, and made
out to mend his. I walked as rapidly as I could; but new terror lent the
poor thing new wings, and it contrived--I could not for my life
conjecture how--to keep a little beyond my reach. It would not do to
leave him suffering thus; and I coaxed myself into a quick run, when up
the little hypocrite sprang, and scudded away like a bee! Not the
faintest suspicion of its being otherwise than at death's door had
entered my mind until that moment, though I had seen this trick less
skilfully performed before.
Returning, I went to the top of the beach and began examining the coarse
grass which grew there, thinking that the nests must be hereabout, and
desirous of a peep at the eggs. I had hardly pushed my foot in this
grass a few times, when another wounded bird appeared but a few feet
off. The emergency being uncommon, it put forth all its histrionic
power, and never Booth or Siddons did so well. With breast ploughing in
the sand, head falling helplessly from side to side, feet kicking out
spasmodically and yet feebly behind, and wings fluttering and beating
brokenly on the beach, it seemed the very symbol of fear, pain, and
weakness, I made a sudden spring forward,--off it went, but immediately
returned when I pushed my foot again toward the grass, renewing its
speaking pantomime. I could not represent suffering so well, if I really
felt it. With a convulsive kick, its poor little helpless head went
under, and it tumbled over on the side; then it swooned, was dying; the
wings flattened out on the sand, quivering, but quivering less and less;
it gasped with open mouth and closing eye, but the gasps grew fainter
and fainter; at last it lay still, dead; but when I poked once more in
the grass, it revived to endure another spasm of agony, and die again.
"Dear, witty little Garrick," I said, "had you a thousand lives and ten
thousand eggs, I would not for a kingdom touch one of them!" and I
wished he could show me some enemy to his peace, that I might make war
upon the felon forthwith.
And in this becoming frame of mind I ended my chapter of "Boy's Play in
Labrador."