flanks of the flashing host he dived, swimming sinuously and with
extraordinary swiftness like a seal. Rising gradually toward the
surface, he struck this way and that, with wide jaws and armed fore
paws, among the crowded ranks of the salmon. His object was to kill,
kill, kill, before the opportunity passed by, in order that there should
be many dead fish to drift ashore and be picked up at his leisure.
After a minute or two of this savage work, which turned the thronged
tide crimson all about him, he came to the surface for breath. The upper
ranks of the salmon were still flashing on every side, and half-leaping
out of water within the very sweep of his deadly paw, heedless of his
presence. His hunger being fierce upon him, he now seized a good-sized
fish, bit its backbone through to put an end to its troublesome
struggling, and devoured it as he swam along slowly with the host.
Suddenly, not a dozen feet ahead of his nose, a huge salmon seemed to be
lifted horizontally almost clear of the water. It writhed and thrashed
for a second in a sort of convulsion, then sank with a heavy swirl. The
bear stared curiously. He had never seen anything like that before. The
salmon had not jumped of its own accord, that was evident. It had
apparently been held up from below, firmly and steadily sustained as it
struggled, for that brief space of moments. To the wild creatures
anything new, anything unknown, is always either interesting or
terrifying. The white bear was unacquainted with terror, but he was
interested instantly. He swam toward the spot where the salmon had sunk.
The next moment something still more strange arrested him. A little to
one side of the spot where the salmon had behaved so curiously, a great
sharp-pointed spike of yellow horn, massive and twisted, was thrust up
about three feet above the water and instantly withdrawn. Blood clung
thinly in the convolutions of the horn. It was a mysterious and menacing
weapon. Filled with a curiosity that was now warming into wrath, the
bear made for the spot. There was something like defiance in that sudden
upthrust. Moreover, it seemed that some stranger was poaching on his
fishing-grounds. The bear's wrath flamed into fury in a few seconds.
Unable to see down into the disturbed and discoloured tide, he dived
deep, to get below the salmon and the blood, and see what manner of
rival it was with which he had to deal. Whatever it was, he was going to
drive it off or kill it. He would share his salmon with no one.
Meanwhile, just beneath the lowermost ranks of the horde, a big,
pallid-skinned, fish-like creature was swimming slowly this way and
that. Shaped something like a porpoise, with a big bluff head and
tremendously powerful flukes, it belonged evidently to the great kinship
of the whales. Its massive body was about fourteen feet in length. But
the strange thing about it, setting it wide apart from all its cetacean
kin, was a long, heavy, twisted horn or tusk, of yellow ivory, jutting
straight out from its upper jaw to a length of about four feet. It was
that most peculiar of all the whales, a narwhal.
From time to time this ominous shape would launch itself upward among
the salmon, transfixing some of the largest fish with lightning thrusts
of its tusk, and killing others by terrible, thrashing side-blows of the
weapon. Sometimes it would open its great mouth and engulf the most
convenient victim; but it did not seem ravenous. Its hunger was already
all but glutted, and its purpose seemed to be, mainly, to kill, in order
that food might still be abundant after the salmon had passed on up the
river beyond his reach.
When the white bear, swimming under water outstretched like an otter,
saw this threatening form, his veins ran fire. Darting downward, easily
as a mink might have done, he struck the unsuspecting narwhal in the
middle of the back just between the flippers. His mighty fore paws,
armed with claws like knife-blades, tore two gaping wounds in the
narwhal's hide, and the dark blood jetted forth. But the wounds went
little below the blanket of blubber which enclosed the narwhal
underneath his hide. Beyond the pain of those two tearing buffets, the
great sea-beast was little the worse of them. With a surge of his tail
he lunged forward, and turned furiously upon his assailant.
The bear, though rash in his arrogance and rage, was no mere headlong
blunderer. Though he mistook the narwhal for some kind of gigantic
seal, and therefore scorned him, he had not missed the possibilities of
that long, menacing horn. He was upon his foe again in an instant, not
giving him time to charge, and successfully planted another rending
stroke which disabled the narwhal's right flipper. Then, however,
finding that he could hold his breath no longer after such terrific
exertion, he darted to the surface, and hurriedly refilled his lungs.
To regain his breath took him but a moment, and instantly aware of his
peril while at the surface, he dived again to renew his attack. As he
dived, either his own craft or some subtle forewarning led him to twist
sharply to one side. But for this, his fighting would have ended then
and there, his heart split by the thrust of that giant tusk. As it was,
the mad upward rush of the narwhal missed its aim. The bear felt a
couple of salmon hurled in his face. Then the horn shot past his neck;
and a black mass smote him full in the chest, with a force that knocked
the wind out of him, and bore him, clawing and biting passionately, back
to the surface. His blows, of course, were delivered blindly, but one
struck home just above the narwhal's sinister little eye, wiping it out
of existence.
As the bear got his head above water, he choked and gasped, swimming
high for a few seconds in the struggle to recover his breath. Realizing
now to the full how dangerous an adversary he had challenged, he knew
that every second he remained at the surface was a deadly peril. But, at
first, the breath would not return to his buffeted lungs. With his nose
high in air he gave a longing look away across the tumult of the
journeying host, across the tranquil white water beyond, to the low,
desolate shore with its dirty ice-cakes. For the moment, he wished
himself back there. Then, as he regained his breath, and his great,
bellows-like lungs resumed their function, his courage and his fighting
fury also returned. The red light of battle blazed up again in his eyes,
and wheeling half-about with a violence that sent the water swirling and
foaming from his mighty shoulders and hurled a score of salmon upon each
other's backs, he dropped his head to dive once more into the fight.
The narwhal, for his part, had fared badly in that last encounter. With
one eye blinded, his head badly clawed, and the tough cartilage about
his blow-holes torn deeply by his adversary's teeth, he was bewildered
for the moment. But he was not daunted. His sluggish blood only boiled
to a blacker fury. Never before had he met anything like serious
opposition. The colossal sperm-whale, undisputed lord of the ocean,
never came into these cold northern waters; and the huge, blundering
whalebone whales he despised. He had transfixed and slaughtered the
helpless calves of this species under the very fins of their gigantic
but timorous mothers. He had pierced seals, and even, once, a walrus.
Terribly armed as he was, and swift, and powerful, he had never yielded
way to any other inhabitant of his cold and glimmering world.
For a few moments of agitated confusion, flurried by the pain of his
wounds, he swam straight ahead, just below the salmon. Then, recovering
his wits, he turned in a rage and looked about, with his one remaining
eye, for the bear. At first, unable immediately to readjust his vision,
he could not locate him; but presently, staring up vindictively through
the straight-swimming, blue and silver ranks of the journeying fish, he
saw the big white form swimming at the surface some little distance
away. Up through the thronged and swirling tide he darted on a long
slant, straight and swift as a hungry trout rising to a May-fly.
As the bear, with lowered head and great haunches uplifted began his
dive, he felt a terrible, grinding thrust in his left flank, and it
seemed as if a rock from the floor of the channel rose up and smote him,
half-lifting him from the water. The narwhal, his aim confused by the
blinding of one eye, had again failed to strike true. The point of his
tusk had caught the bear's flank on such a slant that it did not
penetrate to any vital organ, but ran up, perhaps an inch below the
hide, between the outermost curve of two of the upper ribs, and
reappeared a little behind the shoulder. The tremendous force of that
upward rush carried the great twisted horn right through to its very
base.
Having delivered what he felt must be a fatal and final blow, the
narwhal at once backed downward with powerful surges of his tail, trying
to withdraw his horn. But now he found himself in a deadly trap. The
bear, mad with pain, and held firmly, proceeded to enwrap his
adversary's whole head in a frightful embrace. Slashing, tearing,
ripping, with all four desperate paws at once, he was speedily shredding
the narwhal's head to fragments. With mad thrashings the narwhal
struggled to break loose, but in vain. Down he sank, till he lay upon
the bottom, that destroying bulk still fixed upon his head. When he
felt the solid ground beneath him he bent his mighty body like a bow,
and sprung it, with a force that nothing could resist. His horn tore
itself free, the bear was flung loose, and he lurched to one side with a
violence that threw the swimming salmon overhead into confusion and sent
great surges boiling to the surface. Then, blind, shattered, and jetting
blood in torrents from his gaping throat, he settled upon the bottom,
writhed feebly for a few minutes, and lay still.
[Illustration: "THEN, WITH THE LARGEST PRIZE IN HIS JAWS, HE SWAM SLOWLY
TO THE ROCK."]
The bear, plunging upward through the close ranks of the salmon, began
to cough hoarsely as soon as he got his head above water. It was some
moments before he could do more than keep himself afloat while he
regained his breath. Then he began slowly swimming round and round in a
circle, still full of battle rage, but not yet able to control his
lungs. At last, he felt equal to seeking a renewal of the fight. Once
more he dived, expecting at any instant to feel again that grinding
thrust, that resistless upward blow. Below the salmon throng he peered
about through the glimmer. Far down, he made out the shape of his
opponent, lying motionless on the bottom. Obviously, there was nothing
more to be feared from that still bulk, which seemed to sway gently in
the current. The victor returned to the surface.
Lifting his head high above the water, he scanned the whole empty,
pallid world. No enemy, no possible rival, was to be seen. Weak as he
was and weary, he killed two or three more of the ceaselessly passing
salmon just to reassure himself. Then, with the largest prize in his
jaws, he swam slowly to the rock, crawled ashore, and lay down in sullen
triumph to lick his wounds.
[Illustration: "LAY DOWN IN SULLEN TRIUMPH TO LICK HIS WOUNDS."]
The Little Tyrant of the Burrows
Along the edge of the woodland he found the young, green turf of the
pasture close and soft. As he paused for a moment with his long,
trunk-like nose thrust into it, his fine sense could detect nothing but
the cool tang of the grass-stems, the light pungency and sweetness of
the damp earth below. With a savage impatience of movement he jerked
himself a foot or more to one side, and again thrust his nose into the
turf. Here he evidently detected something more to his taste than the
sweetness of grass and earth, for he began to dig fiercely, biting the
matted roots apart, and tearing up the soil with his powerful little
fore paws. In a few seconds he dragged forth a fat, cream-coloured grub
about an inch and a half in length, with a copper-coloured head. The
grub twisted and lashed about, but was torn apart and eaten on the spot.
The victor ate furiously, wrinkling his flexible snout away from his
prey in a manner that gave him a peculiarly ferocious, snarling
expression.
Nearly six inches in length, with a round, sturdy body, short tail, very
short, sturdy legs, and fine fur of a clouded leaden gray, this fierce
and implacable little forager might have been mistaken by the careless
observer for an ordinary mole. But such a mistake on the part of any
creature not larger than a ground-sparrow or wood-mouse or lizard would
have resulted in instant doom; for this tiny beast, indomitable as a
terrier and greedy for meat as a mink, was the mole-shrew.
Having devoured the fat grub, and finding his appetite still unappeased,
the shrew at once resumed his vehement digging. His marvellously
developed nostrils had assured him that a little farther on beneath the
turf were more grubs, or well-conditioned earthworms, or the stupid, big
red-brown beetles called "May-bugs." In a few seconds only his hind
quarters were visible among the grass-roots. Then, only a twitch of his
short tail, or a kick of his hind claws. At this moment a broad, swift
shadow appeared overhead; and a hungry marsh-hawk, dropping like a shot,
clutched with eager claws at the mouth of the burrow. That deadly
clutch tore up some grass-roots and some fresh earth, but just failed to
reach the diligent burrower. Tail and hind legs had been nimbly drawn in
just in time, as if forewarned of the swooping peril; and the hawk flew
off heavily, to resume his quartering of the pasture.
Unruffled by his narrow escape, the shrew went on with his burrowing. He
ran his gallery very near the surface,--in fact, close under the roots
of the turf, where the grubs and beetles were most numerous. Sometimes
he would dip an inch or more, to avoid a bit of difficult excavation;
but more often he would press so closely to the surface that the thin
layer of sod above him would heave with every surging motion. The loose
earth, for the most part, was not thrust behind him, but jammed to
either side or overhead, and so vigorously packed in the process as to
make strong walls to the galleries, which zigzagged hither and thither
as the moment's whim or the scent of some quarry might dictate.
In the absolute darkness of his straitened underworld the shrew felt no
consciousness of restriction. His eyes tight closed, the thick earth
pressing upon him at every point, he felt nevertheless as free as if all
the range of upper air were his. The earthy dark was nothing to him,
for the nerves of his marvellous nose served all the purposes of sight
and hearing. It was, indeed, as if he heard, felt, smelled, and saw, all
with his nose. If the walls of the narrow tunnel pressed him too
straitly, he could expand them by a few seconds of digging. In fact, his
underground world, limited as it was, for the moment contented him
utterly. From time to time he would scent, through perhaps a
quarter-inch of earth, a worm or a grub ahead of him. Then he would
drive forward almost with a pounce, clutch the prey, and devour it
delightedly there in the dark.
Suddenly the earth broke away before him, and his investigating nose
poked itself through into another gallery, a shade larger than his own.
The fact that the gallery was larger than his own might well have made
him draw back, but his was not the drawing-back disposition. His nose
told him that the rival digger was a mole, and had but recently gone by.
Without a second's hesitation he clawed through, and darted down the new
tunnel, seeking either a fight or a feast, as fate might please to
award.
In his savage haste, however, the shrew was not discriminating; and all
at once he realized that he had lost the fresh scent. This was still
the mole's gallery, but there was no longer any sign that its owner had
very lately traversed it. As a matter of fact, several yards back the
shrew had blundered past the mouth of a branching tunnel, up which the
mole, ignorant that he was being pursued, had taken leisurely way. The
pursuer stopped, hesitating for a moment, then decided to push ahead and
see what might turn up. In half a minute a breath of the upper air met
him,--then a star of light glimmered before him,--and he came out at one
of the exits which the mole had used for dumping earth.
At this point the shrew seemed to decide that he had had enough of
underground foraging. He stuck his head up through the opening, and
looked over the green turf. The opening was close to a pile of stones in
the fence corner, which promised both shelter and good hunting. Having
hastily dusted the loose earth from his face and whiskers, he emerged,
ran to the stone heap, and whisked into the nearest crevice.
On a warm gray stone near the top of the pile, gently waving its wings
in the sunshine, glowed a gorgeous red-and-black butterfly. The
intensity of its colouring seemed to vibrate in the unclouded radiance.
Suddenly, from just beneath the stone on which it rested, slipped forth
the shrew, and darted at it with a swift, scrambling leap. The beautiful
insect, however, was wide awake, and saw the danger in good time. One
beat of its wide, gorgeous wings uplifted its light body as a breath
softly uplifts a tuft of thistledown. The baffled shrew jumped straight
into the air, but in vain; and the great butterfly went flickering off
aimlessly and idly over the pasture to find some less perilous
basking-place.
Angered by this failure, the shrew descended the stone heap and scurried
over to the fence, poking his nose under every tussock of weeds in
search of the nest of some ground-bird. Along parallel with the fence he
hunted, keeping out about a foot from the lowest rail. He found no nest;
but suddenly the owners of a nest that was hidden somewhere in the
neighbourhood found him. He felt himself buffeted by swift, elusive
wings. Sharp little beaks jabbed him again and again, and the air seemed
full of angry twittering. For a few moments he stood his ground
obstinately, wrinkling back his long snout and jumping at his
bewildering assailants. Then, realizing that he could do nothing against
such nimble foes, he drew back and ran under the fence. He was not
really hurt, and he was not at all terrified; but he was distinctly
beaten, and therefore in a very bad temper.
[Illustration: "THE BAFFLED SHREW JUMPED STRAIGHT INTO THE AIR."]
Since his return to the green upper world ill luck had persistently
followed his ventures, and now his thoughts turned back to the burrows
under the grass-roots. He remembered, also, that mole which had so
inexplicably evaded him. Keeping close to the fence, he hurried back to
the stone heap, on the other side of which lay the entrance to the
burrows. He was just about to make a hurried and final investigation of
the pile, on the chance that it might conceal something to his taste,
when his nose caught a strong scent which made him stop short and seem
to shrink into his skin. At the same instant a slim, long, yellow-brown
animal emerged from the stones, cast a quick, shifting glance this way
and that, then darted at him as smoothly as a snake. With a frantic leap
he shot through the air, alighting just beside the mouth of the burrow.
The next instant he had vanished; and the weasel, arriving just a second
too late, thrust his fierce, triangular face into the hole, but made no
attempt to squeeze himself down a passage so restricted.
The shrew had been terrified, indeed; but his dogged spirit was by no
means cowed or given over to panic. He felt fairly confident that the
weasel was too big to pursue him down the burrow, but presently he
stopped, scraped away the earth on one side, and turned around to face
the menace. Small though he was, the weasel would have found him a
troublesome and daring antagonist in such narrow quarters. When he saw a
glimmer of light reappear at the entrance of the burrow, he understood
that his big enemy was not going to attempt the impossible. Reassured,
but still hot with wrath, he turned again, and went racing through the
black tunnel in search of something whereon to wreak his emotions.
[Illustration: "WITH A FRANTIC LEAP HE SHOT THROUGH THE AIR."]
Now as the fates of the underworld would have it, at this moment the
lazy old mole who owned these burrows was returning from his tour of
investigation. He came to the fork where the shrew had gone by an hour
before. The strong, disagreeable, musky smell of the intruder arrested
him. His keen nose sniffed at it with resentment and alarm, and told him
the whole story, there in the dark, more plainly than if it had passed
in daylight before his purblind eyes. It told him that some time had
gone by since the intruder's passing. But what it could not tell him
was that the intruder was just now on his way back. After some moments
of hesitation the long, cylindrical, limp body of the mole scuffled out
into the main tunnel, and turned toward the exit. Its movement was
rather slow and awkward, owing to the fact that the fore legs were set
on each side of the body, like flippers, which was an excellent
arrangement for digging, but a very bad one for plain walking.
The mole had not advanced more than a yard or so along the main tunnel
when again that strong, musky smell smote his nostrils. This time it was
fresh and warm. Indeed, it was startlingly imminent. Elongating his soft
body till it was not more than half its usual thickness, the mole
doubled in his tracks, intent upon the speediest possible retreat. In
that very instant, while he was in the midst of this awkward effort to
turn, the shrew fell upon him, gripping and tearing his soft,
unprotected flank.
The mole was not altogether deficient in character; and he was larger
and heavier than his assailant. Seeing that escape was impossible, and
stung by the pain of his wounds, he flung himself with energy into the
struggle, biting desperately and striving to bear down his lighter
opponent. It was a blind smother of a fight, there in that pitch-black
narrow tunnel whose walls pressed ceaselessly upon it and hemmed it in.
From the smother came no sound but an occasional squeak of rage or pain,
barely audible to the lurking spiders among the grass-stems just
overhead. The thin turf heaved vaguely, and the grass-blades vibrated to
the unseen struggle; but not even the low-flying marsh-hawk could guess
the cause of these mysterious disturbances.
For several minutes the mole made a good fight. Then the indomitable
savagery of his enemy's attack suddenly cowed him. He shrank and tried
to draw away; and in that moment the enemy had him by the throat. In
that moment the fight was ended; and in the next the invader was
satisfying his ravenous appetite on the warm flesh which he craved.
When this redoubtable little warrior had eaten his fill, he felt a
pleasant sense of drowsiness. First he moved a few feet farther along
the tunnel, till he reached the point where it was joined by the smaller
gallery of his own digging. At this point of vantage, with exits open
both ways, he hastily dug himself a little pocket or side chamber where
he could curl himself up in comfort. Here he licked his wounds for a
minute or two, and carefully washed his face with his clever, hand-like
fore paws. Then with a sense of perfect security he went to sleep, his
watchful nose, most trusty of sentinels, on guard at the threshold of
his bedchamber.
While he slept in this unseen retreat, among the short grasses just
above his sleep went on the busy mingling of comedy and tragedy, of
mirth and birth and death, which makes the sum of life on a summer day
in the pastures. Everywhere the grass, and the air above the grass, were
thronged with insects. Through the grass came gliding soundlessly a
long, smooth, sinuous brown shape with a quick-darting head and a
forked, amber-coloured, flickering tongue. The snake's body was about
the thickness of a man's thumb, and his back was unobtrusively but
exquisitely marked with a reticulation of fine lines. He seemed to be
travelling rather aimlessly, doubtless on the watch for any small quarry
he might catch sight of; but when he chanced upon the fresh-dug hole
where the shrew had begun his burrowing, he stopped abruptly. His fixed,
opaque-looking eyes grew strangely intent. With his head poised
immediately over the hole he remained perfectly rigid for some seconds.
Then he glided slowly into the burrow.