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[Illustration: _The Haunters of the Silences_]
[Illustration: THE LEADER OF THE CARIBOU HERD ... RETURNED THE
STALLION'S INQUIRING STARE WITH A GLANCE OF MILD CURIOSITY.--Page 122.]
The Haunters of
the Silences
A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE BY
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
_Author of
"The Kindred of the Wild," "Red Fox,"
"The Heart of the Ancient Wood," "The Forge
in the Forest," "The Heart That Knows," etc._
[Illustration]
_With many
Illustrations and
Decorations by_
CHARLES
LIVINGSTON
BULL
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_Copyright, 1905, 1906, by_
THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY
_Copyright, 1906, by_
HARPER AND BROTHERS
_Copyright, 1906, by_
PERRY MASON COMPANY
_Copyright, 1906, 1907, by_
THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
_Copyright, 1906, by_
THE CENTURY COMPANY
_Copyright, 1904, by_
THE NEW YORK HERALD COMPANY
_Copyright, 1907, by_
THE S. S. MCCLURE CO.
_Copyright, 1907, by_
THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY
_Copyright, 1907, by_
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
* * * * *
ENTERED AT STATIONER'S HALL, LONDON
_All rights reserved_
First impression, May, 1907
[Illustration: To Charles Livingston Bull]
[Illustration]
Prefatory Note
The present collection of stories dealing with creatures of the
wilderness differs from its companion volumes, "The Kindred of the Wild"
and "The Watchers of the Trails," in one important particular. It
contains certain studies and depictions of a sphere of wild life which
presents peculiar difficulties to the observer, viz.: the life of the
dwellers in the deep sea. Our investigation of these remote kindreds is
at best spasmodic, and conducted always at the extreme of disadvantage;
and the knowledge which we may gain from such investigation must always
remain in a measure fragmentary. It is not easy for any observer to be
intimate with a sawfish; and the most ardent naturalist's acquaintance
with an _orca_, or "killer" whale, must be essentially a distant one, if
he would hope to put his observations upon record. Needless to say, my
own knowledge of the orca, the shark, the narwhal, or the colossal
cuttlefish of the ocean depths, is not of the same kind as my knowledge
of the bear, the moose, the eagle, and others of the furtive folk of our
New Brunswick wilderness. When I write of these latter I build my
stories upon a foundation of personal, intimate, sympathetic
observation, the result of a boyhood passed in the backwoods, and of
almost yearly visits, ever since my boyhood, to the wild forest regions
of my native province. But when I write of the kindreds of the deep sea,
I am relying upon the collated results of the observations of others. I
have spared no pains to make these stories accord, as far as the facts
of natural history are concerned, with the latest scientific
information. But I have made no vain attempt at interpretation of the
lives of creatures so remote from my personal knowledge; and for such
tales as "A Duel in the Deep," "The Terror of the Sea Caves," or "The
Prowlers," my utmost hope is that they may prove entertaining, without
being open to any charge of misrepresenting facts. On the other hand, in
certain of the stories dealing with the results of my own observation
and experience, I have dared to hope that I might be contributing
something of value to the final disputed question of animal psychology.
For such stories, which offer in the form of fiction what my
observations have compelled me to regard as fact, I have presented my
case already, in the prefaces to "The Watchers of the Trails" and "Red
Fox." To those prefaces I would add nothing here; and from the
conclusions therein stated I have nothing to retract. I would merely
take this occasion to reaffirm with confidence the belief, which I find
shared by practically all observers whose lives are passed in the
closest relationship with animals,--by such vitally interested
observers, for instance, as keepers, trainers, hunters, and
trappers,--that the actions of animals are governed not only by
instinct, but also, in varying degree, by processes essentially akin to
those of human reason.
C. G. D. R.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Contents of the Book
[Illustration]
PAGE
The Summons of the North 3
The Last Barrier 31
Answerers to the Call 70
The Prisoners of the Pitcher-plant 84
The Prowlers 92
A Stranger to the Wild 108
When the Logs Come Down 132
A Duel in the Deep 140
The Little Tyrant of the Burrows 153
The Ringwaak Buck 168
The Heron in the Reeds 194
In the Deep of the Silences 202
On the Night Trail 218
When the Tide Came over the Marshes 235
Under the Ice-roof 243
The Terror of the Air 261
In the Unknown Dark 268
The Terror of the Sea Caves 282
[Illustration]
A List of the Full-Page Drawings in the Book
[Illustration]
PAGE
"THE LEADER OF THE CARIBOU HERD ... RETURNED
THE STALLION'S INQUIRING STARE WITH
A GLANCE OF MILD CURIOSITY" (_See page 122_) _Frontispiece_
"SOME INEXPERIENCED SEAL HAD BEEN FOOLISH
ENOUGH TO LIE BASKING CLOSE BESIDE AN ICE-CAKE" 7
"SHE LED HIM FARTHER AND FARTHER ACROSS THE ICE" 13
"WOULD RUN GLEEFULLY TO SNAP THEM UP AND EAT THEM" 14
"SOME ONE ON DECK DISCERNED THE CROUCHING BEAR" 24
"HE SAW A BIG SUCKER SETTLE LAZILY WHERE THE
THRONGING FRY WERE THICKEST" 34
"HELD FIRMLY BETWEEN THE EDGES OF HIS GREAT BEAK" 42
"LEAPING HIGH OUT OF THE POOLS" 45
"VANQUISHED IN THEIR OWN ELEMENT BY THE MINK" 59
"AGAIN HE SHOT INTO THE SPRAY-THICK AIR ON THE FACE
OF THE FALL" 68
"SCUTTLED OFF INTO THE WOODS LIKE A FRIGHTENED WOODCHUCK" 74
"THE MOOSE CAME IN SIGHT UP THE BROOK CHANNEL" 79
"AT THIS MOMENT A PASSING SHRIKE SWOOPED DOWN" 85
"LAY MOTIONLESS BUT FOR THE EASY WAVING OF ITS FINS" 97
"ONLY THAT SHARP BLACK FIN, THAT PROWLED AND
PROWLED, KEPT ALWAYS IN SIGHT" 101
"DIRECTLY BENEATH THE SHARK THE STRANGER CAME" 105
"HE STRUCK OUT DESPERATELY, AND SOON CLEARED
THE TURMOIL OF THE BREAKERS" 111
"THE SOUTHWARD JOURNEYING DUCKS, WHICH WOULD DROP WITH
LOUD QUACKING AND SPLASHING INTO THE SHALLOWS" 121
"IT WAS THE COW MOOSE CALLING FOR HER MATE" 125
"THE PLUCKY LITTLE ANIMAL JUMPED AS FAR AS HE COULD" 136
"THEN, WITH THE LARGEST PRIZE IN HIS JAWS, HE SWAM SLOWLY
TO THE ROCK" 151
"LAY DOWN IN SULLEN TRIUMPH TO LICK HIS WOUNDS" 152
"THE BAFFLED SHREW JUMPED STRAIGHT INTO THE AIR" 158
"WITH A FRANTIC LEAP HE SHOT THROUGH THE AIR" 160
"TURN HIS NARROW, SNARLING FACE TO SEE WHAT THREATENED" 173
"WHEN HE STOPPED TO DRINK AT THE GLASSY POOL" 180
"NOISELESSLY FADED BACK THROUGH THE COVERT" 185
"THEN HE LEAPED THE FENCE AGAIN" 186
"HE WAS IN THE IRON CLUTCH OF A MUSKRAT TRAP" 198
"HIS COURSE TOOK HIM FAR OUT OVER THE SOUNDLESS SPACES" 203
"FOR ALL HIS SEEMING AWKWARDNESS HE MOVED AS DELICATELY
AS A CAT" 208
"THE WATER SPLASHED HIGH AND WHITE ABOUT HIM" 213
"THE SHREW-MOUSE ... DARTED OUT INTO THE LIGHT" 218
"HIS ROUND, SINISTER EYES GLARED PALELY INTO EVERY
COVERT" 220
"HE SAW THE GRAY FORMS OF THE PACK" 228
"A SNIPE WHICH FLEW TOO LOW OVER THE DITCH" 238
"MADLY JOYOUS, HE KILLED, AND KILLED, AND KILLED, FOR THE JOY
OF KILLING" 241
"WOULD WHISK SHARPLY INTO THE MOUTH OF THE BLACK TUNNEL" 247
"CONFRONTING THE TWO GREAT CATS WITH UPLIFTED PAW AND MOUTH
WIDE OPEN" 258
"ONCE MORE THE WATCHFUL SENTINEL APPEARED" 260
"THE NOISELESS WINGS WERE NOW JUST BEHIND HIM" 266
"HIS APPREHENSIVE EARS CAUGHT A CURIOUS SOUND" 274
"THE BIG OWL HAD BEEN DISTURBED AT ITS BANQUET" 277
"WHICH SEEMED TO SCRUTINIZE HIM STEADILY" 278
"THOSE SWIFT AND IMPLACABLE LITTLE WHALES WHO FEAR NO LIVING
THING" 296
"FAR OFFSHORE, ONE OF THESE MONSTERS CAME UP AND SPRAWLED UPON
THE SURFACE" 300
"UP DARTED A LIVID TENTACLE, AND FIXED UPON IT" 302
"A SINGULAR FIGURE, DESCENDING SLOWLY THROUGH THE GLIMMERING
GREEN" 304
[Illustration]
The Haunters of the Silences
The Summons of the North
I
In the mystic gloom and the incalculable cold of the long Arctic night,
when Death seemed the only inhabitant of the limitless vasts of ice and
snow, the white bear cub was born. Over the desolate expanses swept the
awful polar wind, now thick with fine, crystalline snow which volleyed
and whirled and bit like points of steel, now glassy clear, so that the
great, unwavering Arctic stars could preside unobscured over its
destructive fury. When the wind was still, not less awful than the wind
had been was the stillness, in which the unspeakable cold wrought
secretly its will upon the abandoned world. Sometimes the implacable
starlight would pale suddenly, and the lovely, sinister, spectral
flames of the aurora, electric blue, and violet, and thin, elusive red,
would go dancing in terrible silence across the arch of sky.
But the white cub--contrary to the custom of her kind his mother had
borne but the one, instead of two--felt nothing of the cold and the
unutterable desolation, saw nothing of the unchanging night, the
implacable stars, the heatless and mirthless dancing flames. In a lair
between two rocks, under seven or eight feet of snow, he lay snuggled
against the warm, furry body of his mother, safe hidden from the world
of night and cold. The mother, whose hot breathing kept open a little
arched hollow in the sheltering snow, spent practically all her time in
sleep, the ample layers of fat which the previous summer had stored upon
her ribs supplying food and fuel to her giant frame. The cub, too, slept
away most of the long unvarying hours, waking to nurse from time to
time, and growing with marvellous rapidity on the inexhaustible
nourishment which his mother's milk supplied.
Month followed month, as the night dragged slowly on toward spring and
dawn; and still the mother slept, growing thinner day by day; and still
the cub slept, and grew, and slept, day by day waxing fatter, and
larger, and stronger for the great and terrible battle of life which
awaited him beyond the threshold of the snow.
Except for the vast alternations of storm and calm, of starlight and
auroral radiance, there was nothing to happen in that empty and frozen
world. Such life as dared the cold and dark in those regions kept along
the edges of the sea, where the great waters kept air-holes open through
the incumbent ice. Thither frequented the walrus and the seals, and
there hunted stealthily the savage old he-bears, who were too restless
to yield themselves to the long winter sleep. But the wise mother had
wandered far into the inland solitudes before retiring for her winter of
sleep and motherhood. Over the place of that safe sleep and secret
motherhood no live thing passed, all winter long,--save once or twice a
small white fox, who sniffed cautiously at a faint, menacing scent which
stole up through the hard snow, and once or twice the wide, soundless
wings of a great white Arctic owl, winnowing southward to find the
vanished ptarmigan.
Late and lagging came the beginnings of the dawn,--and then, much later,
when dawn had grown into the long day, the beginnings of the Arctic
spring. Something called to the heart of the old she-bear, and she heard
in the deep of her lair. Bursting through the softening and decaying
snow, she led her sturdy cub forth into the white outer solitudes, and
turned her steps eastward toward the seashore. She was gaunt,
loose-pelted, and unspeakably hungry; but she went slowly, while the cub
learned the new and interesting business of using his legs.
Along the shore the massive ice was still unbroken for miles out; but
where the currents and tides and storms had begun to vanquish it, and
the steel blue waves were eating into it hour by hour beneath the
growing sunlight, there the life of the north was gathering. Sea-birds
clamoured, and mated, and dived, and flew in circles, or settled in
flickering gray and white masses on every jutting promontory of black
rock. Along the blue-white ice-edge seals basked and barked, their soft
eyes keeping incessant watch against the perils that always lurked about
them. Huge bulks of walrus wallowed heavily in the waves, or lifted
their tusked heads menacingly to stare over the ice.
[Illustration: "SOME INEXPERIENCED SEAL HAD BEEN FOOLISH ENOUGH TO LIE
BASKING CLOSE BESIDE AN ICE-CAKE"]
Amid this teeming life, which the returning sun had brought back to
the ice-fields, the old she-bear, with her cub close at her heels, moved
craftily. She lurked behind piled-up ice-cakes, crept from shelter to
shelter, and moved as noiselessly as a wraith of snow on the hair-tufted
pads of her great feet. Sometimes her tireless hunting was promptly
rewarded, particularly when some inexperienced seal had been foolish
enough to lie basking close beside an ice-cake large enough to give
cover to the cunning hunter. Sometimes her sudden rush would take
unawares a full-fed gannet half-dozing on a rocky ledge. Sometimes a
lightning plunge and sweep of her armed paw would land a gleaming fish
upon the ice, a pleasant variation to the diet of red-blooded seal-meat.
And presently, as the long sunlight gathered warmth, and the brief,
swift heat of the Arctic summer approached, rushing down upon the ice as
if it knew how short must be its reign, the melting of the snow on
sheltered slopes and southward-facing hollows uncovered a wealth of
mosses, and lichens, and sprouting roots, most grateful to the bears'
flesh-wearied palates.
But not always was foraging a matter so simple. The mother bear had two
great appetites to supply, her own, and that of the vigorous youngster
beside her, who kept draining unremittingly at her sources of vitality
and strength. Sometimes the seals were unusually alert and shy, the
birds vituperative and restless, and the fish obstinate in their
preference for the waters far offshore. At such times, if there were no
greening hollows near by, where she might make a bloodless banquet, the
old bear would call to her aid those great powers of swimming which made
her almost as much at home in the water as the seal itself. Marking some
seals at rest by the edge of some far-jutting, naked ice-field, where
there was no possibility of her creeping upon them unobserved, she would
slip into the water in the seclusion of some little cove, and swim
straight seaward, swimming so low that only the tip of her muzzle was to
be seen. This moving speck upon the waters was not conspicuous even to
the keenest and most suspicious eyes. It might pass for a fragment of
ice with seaweed frozen into it, or for a bit of floating moss, save for
the fact that it moved steadily through the dancing of the waves, paying
no heed to tide or wind. As the seals were not expecting danger from the
direction of the sea, they were not inclined to scrutinize a thing so
insignificant as that steadily moving speck among the waves. Arriving
within well calculated distance of the unsuspecting baskers on the
ice-field, the old bear would fill her lungs, sink beneath the surface,
and swim forward with all speed. At the very edge of the ice she would
rise up, lunge forward, and strike down with her savage paw the nearest
seal, before any of them had time to realize the direction from which
death had burst upon them.
The old bear's triumph, however, was not always so complete. On one day
in particular she was confronted by an experience which almost left her
cub without a mother. The cub, watching solicitously from behind a
jagged hummock of ice, received a lesson which never faded from his
mind. He learned that in the wilds one must never let himself become so
absorbed in any occupation as to forget to keep a watchful eye for what
may be coming up behind one's back.
It was on one of the lean days, when all game was wide awake and the
lichen-beds far away. On the jagged ice off the mouth of an inlet lay
two walrus calves sunning their round, glistening sides while their
mothers wallowed and snorted in the water beside them. The old bear eyed
the calves hungrily for a minute or two. Then, ostentatiously turning
her back upon the scene, she slouched off inland among the hummocks and
rocks, the cub lurching along contentedly beside her.
Once hidden from the view of the walruses, she quickened her pace till
the cub had to struggle to keep with her, swung around the head of the
inlet, and crept stealthily down the other side toward the spot where
the calves were lying. The wind blew softly from them, her padded feet
made no sound, and she kept herself completely out of sight. Peering
warily from behind a tilted ice-cake, she saw that one of the cows had
crawled out of the water and lain down beside its calf for a noonday
doze. Then she drew her head back, and continued her careful stalking by
nose and ear alone.
At last she found herself within rushing distance. Not thirty yards away
she could hear the loud breathing of the drowsy cow on the ice, the
splashing of the one in the water. Turning upon the cub, she made him
understand that he was to stay where he was till she was ready for him.
Then gathering all the force of her muscles till she was like a great
bow bent, she shot forth from her place of hiding and rushed upon the
sleepers.
As the white shape of doom came down upon them without warning, the cow
and one calf awoke in intuitive panic and with astonishing and
instantaneous agility rolled off into the water. But the other calf was
not in time. One sprawling struggle it made toward safety, and gave
utterance to one hoarse bleat of despair, as if it knew that fate had
overtaken it. Then a heavy stroke broke its neck; and as its clumsy legs
spread out limp and unstrung upon the ice the bear clutched it and
started to drag it back from the water's edge.
At this moment she was aware of a huge lumbering bulk crawling up upon
the ice behind her. She took it for granted it was the dead calf's
mother, and paid no heed. Walrus cows she despised as antagonists,
though as game she held them in high consideration. She would attend to
this one in a moment; and then her larder would be amply stocked for
days.
An instant later, however, if she had deigned to look back, she would
have seen a gigantic gray and brown, warty-skinned bulk, surmounted by a
hideous face and grim, perpendicular tusks, rearing itself on huge
flippers just behind her. The cub, peering from his hiding-place, saw
the peril but did not comprehend it. The next moment the bulk fell
forward, crushing the bear's hind-quarters to the ice, while those long
tusks, which, fortunately for her, had failed to strike directly, tore a
great red gash across her right shoulder.
With a grunting squeal of rage and pain the bear writhed herself free of
the dripping mass of her assailant, and turned upon him madly. Blow
after blow she struck with that terrible fore paw of hers, armed with
claws like steel chisels. But the hide of the giant walrus was like many
thicknesses of seasoned leather for toughness; and though she drew blood
in streams at every tearing stroke, she inflicted no disabling wound.
His little, deep eyes red with fury, the bull rearing himself on his
flippers and lunging forward with awkward but irresistible force, like a
toppling mountain, seeking to crush his enemy and at the same time catch
her under the terrific downward thrust of his tusks. As he fought he
bellowed hoarsely, and panted with great windy, wheezy breaths, while
the walrus cows swam slowly up and down by the edge of the ice, watching
the struggle with their small, impassive eyes.
[Illustration: "SHE LED HIM FARTHER AND FARTHER ACROSS THE ICE."]
The old bear was lame and aching from that first crushing assault, and
her hind-quarters felt almost useless. Nevertheless she was much too
active for her clumsy adversary to succeed in catching her again at a
disadvantage. As she yielded ground before his blundering charges she
led him farther and farther across the ice, farther and farther from the
element wherein he was at home and invincible. Had she been herself
unhurt she would eventually have vanquished his ill-directed valour,
wearing him out and at last reaching his throat. But now she found
herself wearing out, with loss of blood and the anguish of her bruised
hind-quarters. As soon as she realized that her strength was failing,
and that presently she might fail to avoid one of her enemy's great
sprawling rushes, she was seized with fear. What would become of the cub
if she were killed? She wheeled swiftly, ran to where the cub stood
waiting and whimpering, nosed him solicitously, and led him away through
the blue and sparkling hummocks.
After this misadventure the mother bear did no more hunting for a week
or two, but kept inland among the sunny valleys, and nursed her wounds,
and fed on the young roots and tender herbage which sprouted hurriedly
wherever the snow left bare a patch of earth. On such clean and
blood-cooling diet her hurts speedily healed. Then with renewed vigour
and a whetted craving for red flesh-food, she went back to her keen
hunting of the seals. But the walruses she haughtily ignored.
The Arctic summer, meanwhile, with its perpetual sun, poured down upon
the world in swift, delicious heat; and the desolate world began to
laugh, with vivid greenery about the bubbling sources of the springs,
and sudden fringes of bloom, yellow and pink, along the edges of the
perpetual ice, and the painted fluttering of butterflies in every
southward-sloping hollow where there was earth enough to hold the roots
of flowers. The little winged adventurers would sometimes flit abroad
over the snow, questing perilously beyond the narrow confines of their
home. These rash wanderers, as a rule, would fall chilled, and die on
the snow before they could get back; and the cub, attracted by the
flecks of gay colour on the expanse of gray-white barrenness, would run
gleefully to snap them up and eat them.
[Illustration: "WOULD RUN GLEEFULLY TO SNAP THEM UP AND EAT THEM."]
Throughout the summer the cub and his mother kept very much to
themselves, seldom consorting with the other bears which roamed the
rocks and floes or came to the sunny valleys to feed on the ephemeral
herbage. The cub, meanwhile, having all the nourishment and care that
was usually divided between two, was growing swiftly in stature and in
the lore of the north. With his mother's example before him he learned
to hunt seals, to creep up on the dozing sea-birds, to scoop the unwary
fish from the sea, to waylay the stupid hare or the wary fox. But he was
peculiarly averse to swimming, and never entered the water except under
the compulsion of his mother's firm paw. The wise old bear, knowing how
much his success in the battle of life must depend on his mastery of the
water, would push him in from time to time, and keep him there in spite
of every whimpering protest. In this way he learned his needed lessons.
But his preference was all for land hunting, and it was obvious that
only the extreme of hunger would ever lead him to follow the seals in
their own element. As a matter of fact, since that memorable day when
his mother had been beaten by the great walrus, the cub had grown to
regard the sea as the peculiar domain of the walruses, and he felt a
certain diffidence about trespassing.
When the summer was beginning to fade away as hurriedly as it had come,
the cub was suddenly left alone in his grim world. It happened in this
way. On a certain hungry day, when his mother's hunting had been
unsuccessful, the wind brought over a ridge of rock a pungent and
ravishing smell of fresh blood. As cautiously as a cat the old bear
crept around the ridge, the cub creeping at her heels. The sight that
met them was one they had never seen before. Close at the water's edge
three men were busy skinning and cutting up a couple of seals. The cub
stopped short. A natural, inborn caution warned him that man was a
dangerous animal. But the old bear, to whom man was as unknown as to her
cub, had her intuitions obscured at that moment by her too eager
appetite. Moreover, she was in a bad temper, and felt that the strangers
were intruders upon her own hunting-ground. They were
insignificant-looking intruders, too, any one of whom she felt that she
could settle at a single stroke of her paw. A green gleam came into her
eyes, as with narrow, snaky head thrust forward and jaws half-parted
savagely, she stalked down upon the group, expecting to see it scatter
at her approach and leave her in undisputed possession of the prey.
As she drew near the men stopped work, stood up, and stared at her. For
a moment they did nothing. Then, seeing that she meant business, two of
them stepped aside and picked up what looked to her like two long
sticks, which glinted in the sun. One man took a stride forward and
pointed the stick at her in a way which seemed like a challenge. With a
grunt of anger she charged straight at him.
From the point of the stick burst a flash and a roar, with a little puff
of blue smoke that drifted off like a ghost over the waves. It might
have been the ghost of the old bear herself, fading reluctantly back
into the grim and desolate earth from which she had sprung; for at the
instant of its appearing she plunged forward upon her nose and lay
motionless, with a bullet through her brain.
It was a perfect shot; but the man who had made it took it as a matter
of course. In a few moments the limp and warm body was being treated
like that of the seal, for the pelt was a fine one and fresh bear-meat
was a delicacy not to be despised by Arctic travellers. But the cub was
not a witness of this red work of the shambles. When he saw his mother
fall he shrank back in overwhelming terror behind the rocks, then turned
and ran with all his might till he could run no longer. Finding himself
in a little sheltered valley where he and his mother had often fed
together on the sweet herbage, he crouched down under a rock and lay
shivering for hours, afraid even to whimper.
At first the white cub suffered torments of loneliness and vague fear;
but presently the more insistent torments of hunger gave him
forgetfulness of his loss, and in hunting for his meals he gradually got
himself adjusted to the new conditions. Naturally keen-witted and
adaptable, he prospered, and when the approach of the long Arctic night
began to throw its shadows over the ice and rocks his ribs were well
covered with fat. When the herbage in the little valleys was all frozen
to stone and sealed away under the first hard-driven snow, he yielded to
a drowsiness which had been creeping into his nerves. With this
drowsiness came a stirring of vague memory, and he turned his steps
farther inland, far beyond the roar of waves and grinding floes, till he
reached a place of tumbled rock, and cleft ravine, and imperishable
ice. This was the place where he had been born; and here, in the very
same sheltered crevice, he curled himself up for his winter's sleep. He
was no more than fairly asleep, when the snow fell thick with the first
of the unbroken night, and covered him away securely.
II
Through the months of dark, and storm, and ghostly, dancing lights, and
immeasurable cold, the cub slept unstirring, and grew in his sleep. But
when he woke, at the very first hint of awaking spring, he was wide
awake all at once, and fiercely hungry. Fiercely he burst out from the
sheltering snow, and shook himself, and hurried through the mystic
glimmer of dawn to the seashore, where he hoped to find the seals.
He was trusting partly to memory, partly to instinct; but he did not
know that this year he was a little ahead of the season. The ice inshore
was still unbroken, and the journey to open water was leagues longer
than he had anticipated. His cunning sharpened by his appetite, he
stalked and killed an unwary seal beside its blow-hole, and lay there
among the tumbled hummocks for some days, alternately eating and
sleeping. Then, his strength and craft and self-reliance increasing
hourly, he pressed forward league upon league, under the ethereal,
bubble-tinted, lonely Arctic morning, seeking the open sea.
When, at last, he heard the waves breaking along the blue ice brink, and
the clamour of the sea-fowl, and the barking of the seals, he felt that
he had come home again. He forgot the solid land, here upon what seemed
as solid as any land. He forgot the little inland valleys, where
presently the snow would be melting and the tender grasses beginning to
sprout. Here was good hunting, and easy; and here he stayed, making his
lair among the up-tilted ice-floes, till the yellow and blue glory of
full day was pouring over the waste.
It happened that year that no storms came to shatter and eat away the
ice-fields along their outer edges. Only the tides and the slow assault
of the sun did their work; and presently a vast area of unbroken ice
parted from the land and went drifting southward in the grip of the
polar current.
For days the young bear was quite unaware of this accident. The
ice-field was too vast and too solid for its motion to convey any
warning. The sea-birds, of course, knew all about it; and in a few days
they disappeared, requiring solid ground for their nesting business. As
for the seals, if they knew they didn't care, holding the ice safer for
their domestic arrangements than the perilous and hostile shore. The
young bear found good hunting. No storms came to vex him. And the warmth
of summer fairly rushed to meet him. For several weeks he was altogether
content.
Meanwhile the sun and the sea were making inroads upon the strength of
the ice-field. One day when the bear was prowling along its edges, a
mass of perhaps a quarter-acre in area broke off, lurching on the long
swell. Astonished and a little alarmed, the bear hurried across, swam
the narrow but rapidly widening strait, and clambered out upon the main
field. The incident in some way stirred up a latent instinct, and he
became uneasy. Setting his pace northward and landward, he stalked
straight ahead for hours,--and where he expected a familiar ridge of
rocks he came upon open sea. Much disturbed, he kept on his vain search
for land, forgetting to eat, and soon had circumnavigated his voyaging
domain. There was no land anywhere to swim to. There was nothing to be
done but accept the situation with such composure as he could command.
The seals were still with him, and he was not compelled to go hungry.
Then came a storm, with blinding flurries of snow out of the north, and
huge waves piling upon the weakened ice; and the field began to break
up. The seals fled away from the turmoil. Frantic with terror, the bear
was again and again overwhelmed among the warring floes, and only by
sheer miracle of good luck escaped being crushed. Clever swimmer that he
was, again and again he succeeded in crawling out upon a larger floe,
ploughing its way more steadily through the tumult. But every such
refuge went to pieces after a time, crumbling into chaos under the
shocks of pounding wave and battering ice. At last, and not too soon,
when his young courage was almost worn out and his young strength all
but gone, he was so fortunate as to gain a particularly tough and
massive floe which withstood all the storm's assaults. It was almost a
young berg in its dimensions and solidity; and in its centre, crouched
in a crevice, the bear felt, for the first time since the uproar began,
something like a sense of security.
The drift of the current had by this time carried the ice so far south
that the unchanging light of the Arctic day was left behind. Each night,
for a little while, the sun dipped from sight below the naked horizon.
For three days the great floe voyaged on through unrelenting storm,
riding down the lesser ice-cakes, and taking the waves with ponderous
lurch and slide. Little by little the lesser ice disappeared, till the
great floe rode alone. Then the wind died down; and last of all the
waves subsided. And the bear found himself sailing a steel-blue,
sparkling, empty sea, under a cloudless sky and a sun that burned with a
warmth he had never known.
It was now came the terrific trial of hunger to the young bear. For days
together he had no taste of food, no comfort to his throat but the
licking of the ice and lapping of the fresh water in the pools. Once
only did he taste meat,--a blundering gannet which alighted within a
foot of his motionless head and never knew the lightning doom that smote
it. This made one meal; but no more birds came, and no seals appeared,
and no fish came near enough for the bear to have any hope of striking
them. Day by day he grew thinner and weaker, till it was an effort to
climb the slopes of icy domain; and day by day the floe diminished, till
it grew to be a race between the ice and the animal, as to which should
first fade back into the elements.
But here fate intervened to stop this unnatural rivalry. By this time
the ice had drifted down into the track of occasional ships; and one
day, as a tramp steamer was passing near the floe, some one on deck
discerned the crouching bear. The sea was calm, and the captain in a
mood of leisure; so a boat was lowered and the crew set out for a bear
hunt.
Having heard much of the ferocity of the polar bear, the men went well
armed and full of excitement. But the reception which they met disarmed
them. Too hopeless for fear, or hate, or wonder, the despairing animal
turned upon them a look of faint appeal which they could not
misunderstand. With a not unnatural distrust of such amenability they
lightly bound and muzzled him, and took him aboard ship. There the cook
admitted him to his special favour, gave him a little warm broth, and
gradually, by careful dieting, coaxed him back to health.
[Illustration: "SOME ONE ON DECK DISCERNED THE CROUCHING BEAR."]
The young bear, as soon as he recovered himself, became the admiration
of the whole ship's company. His coat was rich and fine, its whiteness
tinged with a faint golden dye. His teeth and claws were perfect, and in
the small, inscrutable eyes with which he followed the business of the
ship gleamed an unusual intelligence. Nevertheless, though he showed no
ill-temper, no one, not even his kind attendant the cook, could
penetrate his impregnable reserve. To each individual who approached him
he showed complete indifference, while, on the contrary, his interest in
whatever was going on seemed unfailing. Chained to an iron stanchion
near the galley, he would stand swaying from side to side and swinging
his narrow, snake-like head for hours. But nothing that took place, alow
or aloft, escaped his keen observation. His indifference was plainly not
stupidity, so every one on the ship, from the captain down, regarded him
with vast respect. When at length, after a quiet voyage, the ship
reached port, this respect was enhanced by the price which he commanded
from the directors of the zoological gardens.
Now began for the young bear a life which, after the first annoying
novelty of it had worn off, almost broke his spirit by its cramped
monotony. His iron cage was spacious,--for a cage,--and built under the
shadow of a leaning rock; and a spring-fed pool at the base of the rock
kept the heat of the southern summer from growing utterly intolerable.
But the staring, grinning crowds which passed endlessly before the bars
of his cage filled him with weary rage; and day by day a fiercer
homesickness clutched at his heart. The food which his keeper gave him
he ate greedily enough, but through some inexplicable caprice he scorned
the peanuts which the crowd kept throwing to him through the bars. He
saw the other bears, in neighbouring cages, devour these small, dry
things and beg for more; but he would have none of them. He was
ceaselessly irritated, too, by the noisy sparrows which would flit
impudently within a foot of his nose; and once in a while the stroke of
his inescapable paw would descend upon one of them, easing for the
moment his sense of injury. Such small trophies he would eat with a
relish which the choicest of his jailers' gifts could not excite. The
only moments when his homesick heart could even pretend to forget its
longing for the desolate spaces, the lifeless rock ridges, the little,
snow-rimmed flower valleys, and the call of the eternal ice, were when,
in the solitary lilac-gray of dawn, he wallowed unobserved in his
sweetly chilly pool, and dreamed that the barking of the seals from
their tank across the garden was the authentic voice of his lost home.
But the coming of the first drowsy attendants would shatter this
illusion, and send him back under his rock to stand sullenly swaying and
swinging his head all day.
In this way the summer dragged along, and then the fine, dry fall; and
instead of becoming reconciled the young bear grew more moody. His
appetite began to fail and his fine coat lose its live, elastic quality.
The keepers were disappointed in him. At first they had expected to win
him over easily, because of his apparent amenableness and that look of
intelligence in his eyes. But now they gave him up as an irreconcilable,
and set themselves to keep him from pining away.
When winter came with raw rains, and sleet, and some sharp frosts, the
exile sniffed the air hopefully for a few days, then relapsed into a
deeper gloom. Then came a flurry of snow. As the great flakes fell about
him he grew wild with excitement, running with uplift head about his
cage, plunging in and out of the pool, and rearing himself against the
bars in a sort of play. While the flurry lasted he saw no one, and
forgot to eat. But in a day this tender snow had vanished, and he found
no sufficient consolation in the thin ice which came afterward to
encrust the edges of his pool. He seemed to feel himself cheated in his
dearest hopes, and grew more obstinately dejected than ever; till
finally came days when nothing would persuade him from the deepest
corner of his den. Some of the attendants thought this meant no more
than the drowsiness which, in his own home, might precede the desire for
hibernation. But one, more understanding of the wild kindreds than the
rest, declared that it was the very disease of homesickness, and that
the exile was eating his own heart out for desire of his frozen north.
The city of the young bear's exile was not so far south but that
sometimes, once in a long while, it found itself in the track of a
wandering northern blizzard. One day, with terrific suddenness, on the
heels of a gusty thaw, such a blizzard came. In half an hour the pool
was frozen and a fine snow was drifting in fierce whirls about the cage.
The unhappy bear lifted his head and looked forth from his den. But he
was not going to let himself again be cheated. He had no faith in this
alien storm; and turning his back upon it, he once more buried his nose
between his paws.
Meanwhile the cold deepened swiftly; the wind grew savage and shrieked
over the cages and the roofs; and the snow, dry and hard like the driven
needles of the Arctic night, thickened so that one could not see ten
paces before his nose. Through the throbbing drift the attendants went
hurrying about the open cages, fixing shelter for the animals that
needed it. The cold, the savage noises of the wind, the sharp buffets of
snow that struck into his den, at last brought the bear to his feet. He
turned slowly, and came out into the storm.
He found himself, now, actually alone, and in what seemed almost his own
world. This storm was convincing. He could not refuse to believe in the
icy driven crystals which cut so deliciously upon his tongue and against
his open jaws. This was really snow, that whirled and heaped about him.
This was really ice, which crashed about him as he plunged in and out of
his pool. Around and around his cage he romped, biting the snow in
ecstasy, rolling in it, breathing it, whimpering to it. When his keeper
came and looked in at him with wonder, and spoke to him with
sympathetic comprehension, he neither saw nor heard. To his eyes the
storm was volleying over the illimitable fields of the ice. In his ears
the raving of the wind held the crash of grinding floes. To his heart it
was the summons of the north,--and suddenly his heart answered. He stood
still, with a strange bewilderment in his eyes, as if transfixed by some
kind of tremendous shock. Then he swayed on his legs; and sank in a
lifeless heap by the drifted brink of his pool.
The Last Barrier
I
In a circular hollow in the clean, bright gravel of the river-bar the
tiny egg of the great Quahdavic salmon stirred to life. For months it
had lain there among its thousands of fellows, with the clear, cold,
unsullied current streaming over it ceaselessly. Through the autumn the
wilderness sunshine and the bracing wilderness air, playing on the
unshaded shallows of the wide stream, had kept the water highly
vitalized,--though this was hardly necessary in that pure and spring-fed
current. When the savage northern winter closed down upon the high
valley of the Quahdavic it found difficulty in freezing the swift
current that ran rippling over the bar; and when, at last, the frost
conquered, gripping and clutching through the long, windless nights, it
was to form only a thin armour of transparent, steel-strong ice,
through which, as through the mantle of snow which made haste to cover
it, the light still filtered softly but radiantly at noon, with an
ethereal cobalt tinge.
The bar on which the parent salmon had hollowed their round gravel nest
was far up the Great South Branch of the Quahdavic, not many miles from
the little cold spring lake that was its source. The Great South Branch
was a stream much loved by the salmon, for its deep pools, its fine
gravel spawning-beds, the purity and steady coldness of its current, and
the remoteness which protected it from the visits of greedy poachers. In
all its course there was but one serious obstruction, namely, the Big
Falls, where the stream fell about twelve feet in one pitch, then roared
down for half a mile over a succession of low ledges with deep pools
between. The Falls were such that vigorous fish had no real trouble in
surmounting them. But they inexorably weeded out the weaklings. No
feeble salmon ever got to the top of that straight and thunderous pitch.
Therefore, as the spawning-bars were all above the Falls, it was a fine,
long-finned, clean swimming breed of salmon that was bred in the Great
South Branch.
When the tiny egg in the gravel stirred to life,--as the thousands of
other tiny eggs about it were doing at the same time,--there was no ice
sheet imprisoning the current, which ran singing pleasantly under a soft
spring sun. The deep hollow in the gravel sheltered the moving atoms, so
that they were not swept away by the current streaming over them. But
minute as they were, they speedily gathered a strength altogether
miraculous for their size, as they absorbed the clinging sacs of
egg-substance and assumed the forms of fish, almost microscopic, but
perfect. This advance achieved, they began to venture from behind and
beneath the sheltering pebbles, to dare the urgent stream, and to work
their way shoreward toward shallower waters where the perils which beset
young salmon would be fewer and less insistent.
The egg from which he came having been one of the first to hatch, the
tiny salmon mentioned in the opening paragraph was one of the first of
the host to find his strength and to start the migration shoreward from
the nest on the noisy bar. Perhaps a score started with him, trying the
current, darting back to shelter, then more boldly venturing again. A
passing trout, hungry and fierce-eyed, darted above them, heading up
against the current; but being so few and scattered, they escaped his
fatal attentions. Terrified, however, by the sudden shadow, they hid in
the gravel and for some time made no further trial of the dangerous
world.
When again the salmon atom adventured forth, he found himself in a
greater company. Hundreds more of the tiny creatures had left the nest
and were moving shoreward with him. As the defenceless throng advanced,
he saw a couple of what seemed to him gigantic creatures dashing hither
and thither among them, snapping them up greedily by twos and threes;
and he himself barely escaped those greedy jaws by shooting forward in
the nick of time. These seeming monsters were but young redfins, a
couple of inches in length, whom he would soon come to despise and chase
from his feeding-grounds.
[Illustration: "HE SAW A BIG SUCKER SETTLE LAZILY WHERE THE THRONGING
FRY WERE THICKEST."]
His superior development and speed having so well served him, he was now
a foot or more in advance of the throng, and so escaped another and even
more wide-ranging peril. A huge shadow, as vast as that of the trout,
swept down upon them, and as he shrank beneath a sharpedged stone he saw
a big sucker settle lazily where the thronging fry were thickest. With
round, horribly dilating and contracting mouth turned down like an
inverted snout, the big fish sucked up the little wrigglers greedily,
even drawing them out by his power of suction from their hidings in the
gravel. Of the hundreds that had started on the first migration from the
nest not more than three score were left to follow their frightened and
panting mite of a leader into the shallows where the big sucker could
not come.
Among the little stones close to shore, where the water was hardly more
than an inch deep, even the greedy young redfins would not venture.
Nevertheless there were plenty of enemies waiting eagerly for the coming
of the fry, and the little fellow whose one hour of seniority had made
him the pioneer of the shoal found all his ability taxed to guard the
speck of life which he had so lately achieved. Keeping far enough from
shore to avoid being stranded by some whimsical ripple, he nevertheless
avoided the depths that were sufficient for the free hunting of the
predatory minnows and redfins. Such of his kinsfolk as stayed farther
out soon served, the greater number of them, as food for the larger
river dwellers, while those who went too close inshore got cast up on
the sand to die, or were pounced upon, as they lay close to the
surface, by ravenous and unerring mosquitoes, which managed to pierce
them even through a film of water a sixteenth of an inch or more in
thickness. So it came about in a very brief time that of the countless
throng emerging from the nest on the bar there remained but a hundred or
so of the tiny fry to sustain the fortunes of that particular salmon
family.