the beavers lived their happy, uneventful life beneath the ice-roof. But
in this particular winter the untempered cold of December and January,
which slew many of the wood folk and drove the others wild with hunger,
broke suddenly in an unprecedented thaw. Not the oldest bear of the Bald
Mountain caves could remember any such thaw. First there were days on
days, and nights on nights, of bland, melting rain, softer than April's.
The snow vanished swiftly from the laden branches of fir and spruce and
hemlock, and the silent woods stood up black and terrible against the
weeping sky. On the ground and on the ice of pond and stream the snow
shrank, settled, and assumed a grayish complexion. Water, presently,
gathered in great spreading, leaden-coloured pools on the ice; and on
the naked knolls the bare moss and petty shrubs began to emerge. Every
narrow watercourse soon carried two streams,--the temperate, fettered,
summer-mindful stream below the ice, and the swollen, turbulent flood
above. Then the rain stopped. The sun came out warm and urgent as in
latter May. And snow and ice together dwindled under the unnatural
caress.
The beavers, in their safe seclusion, had knowledge in two ways of this
strange visitation upon the world. Not all the soft flood of the melting
snow ran over the surface of their ice, but a portion got beneath it, by
way of the upper brooks. This extra flow disturbed both the colour and
the temperature of the clear amber water of the pond. It lifted heavily
against the ice, pressed up the tunnels to the very edge of the dry
chamber of the lodge, and thrust ponderously at the outlets of the dam.
Understanding the peril, the wise little dam-builders sallied forth in a
flurry, and with skilful tooth and claw lost no time in enlarging the
outlets. They were much too intelligent to let the flood escape by a
single outlet, lest the concentrated flow should become too heavy for
them to control it. They knew the spirit of that ancient maxim of
tyrants, "_divide et impera_." By dividing the overflow into many feeble
streams they knew how to rule it. This done, they rested in no great
anxiety, expecting the thaw to end with a stringent frost.
Then, however, came the second, and more significant, manifestation of
peril. The snow on the ice-roof had vanished; and looking up through the
ice they saw the flood eddying riotously over the naked expanse. It was
a portent which the wiser elders understood. The whole colony fell to
work strengthening the dam where the weight of the current bore down
upon it, and increasing the outlet along the farther edges.
A thaw so persistent, however, and at the same time so violent,
overpassed their cunning calculations. One night, when all had done
their best and, weary, but reassured, had withdrawn into the warm
chamber of the lodge, something happened that they had never looked for.
In their snug retreat they were falling to sleep, the rush of the
overflow and the high clamour of the side vents coming dimly to their
ears, when suddenly they were startled by the water being forced up over
the dry floor of the chamber. The pressure of water beneath the ice had
suddenly increased. They were more than startled. They were badly
frightened. If the water should rise much higher they would be drowned
helplessly, for the ice lay close all over the pond. The younger ones
scurried this way and that with plaintive squeaks, and several dashed
forth into the pond in a panic, forgetting that there was no escape in
that direction. A moment later a low crashing penetrated to the dark
chamber; and the invading water retreated down the tunnel. The ice-roof,
worn thin, honey-combed, and upheaved by the pressure from below, had
gone to pieces.
It was the older and wiser beavers who had remained in the chamber,
terrified, but not panic-stricken. When the water retreated to its
normal level,--about two inches below the chamber floor,--they were
satisfied. Then, however, a louder and heavier note in the rush of the
overflow came to their ears, and their anxiety returned with fresh
force. Thrusting their whiskered noses inquiringly down the tunnel, they
observed that the water was sinking far below its proper level. Well
they knew what that meant. The dam was broken. The water, which was
their one protection from the terrors of the forest, was escaping.
This was the kind of an emergency which a beaver will always rise to.
Shy as they are, under ordinary circumstances, when the dam is attacked
their courage is unfailing. In a moment every beaver in the colony was
out among the swirling ice, under the broad, white moonlight which they
had not seen for so long.
It was at its very centre, where the channel was deepest and the thrust
of the water most violent, that the dam had given way. The break was
about ten feet wide, and not, as yet, of any great depth. It was the
comparatively narrow and unsubstantial crust of the embankment which had
yielded, disintegrated by the thaw and ripped by the broken edges of the
ice.
The vehemence of the torrent was rapidly cutting down into the firmer
body of the dam, when the beavers flung themselves valiantly into the
breach. In the face of the common danger they forgot all caution, and
gave no heed to any hungry eyes that might be glaring at them from the
woods on either shore. Without any apparent leadership in the work,
they all seemed to help each other in whatever way would be most
effective. Some dragged up the longest and heaviest poles from the pile
of stripped stuff, floated them carefully into the break, butt end
up-stream and parallel with the flow, and held them there doggedly with
their teeth and fore paws till others could come with more timbers to
hold the first lot down. Meanwhile, from the soft bottom along the base
of the dam, big lumps of mingled clay and grass-roots, together with
small stones to add weight, were grabbed up and heaped solidly upon the
layers of sticks for anchorage. This loose stuff, though deposited along
the upper ends of the sticks where the flow was least violent, and
swiftly packed down into the interstices, was mostly washed away in the
process. It was seemingly an even struggle, for a time, and the beavers
could do no more than hold the breach from deepening and widening. But
they were quite undaunted; and they seemed to know no such thing as
fatigue. Little by little they gained upon the torrent, making good the
hold of a mass of turf here, a few stones there, and everywhere the long
straight sticks upon which the water could get but slight grip. The
flood grew shallower and less destructive. More sticks were brought,
more stones, and clay, and grass-roots; and then a layer of heavy, clean
poles, over which the water slid thinly and smoothly without danger to
the structure beneath.
The dam was now strongest at this point, its crest being broader and
formed of heavier timbers than elsewhere. But no sooner had the hard-won
victory been secured, and the plucky little architects paused for
breath, than there came an ominous crackling from far over to the
extreme left of the dam, where a subsidiary channel had offered a new
vantage to the baffled torrent. The crackling was mingled with a loud
rushing noise. Another section of the crest of the dam had been swept
away. A white curtain of foam sprang into the moonlight, against the
darkness of the trees.
II
While the brave little dam-builders had been battling with the flood,
out there in the wide-washing moonlight, hungry eyes had been watching
them from the heart of a dense spruce thicket, a little below the left
end of the dam. The watching had been hopeless enough, as the owner of
those fierce, narrow eyes knew it was no use trying to surprise a
beaver in the open, when the whole pond was right there for him to dive
into. But now when the new break brought the whole colony swimming madly
to the left-hand shore, and close to the darkness of the woods, those
watching eyes glowed with a savage expectancy, and began slowly,
noiselessly, steadily, floating nearer through the undisturbed
underbrush.
The tremendous thaw, loosing the springs and streams on the high flanks
of Bald Mountain, had washed out the snow from the mouth of a shallow
cave and rudely aroused a young bear from his winter sleep. As soon as
he had shaken off his heaviness the bear found himself hungry. But his
hunting thus far had not been successful. His training had not been in
the winter woods. He hardly knew what to look for, and the soft slumping
snow hampered him. One panic-stricken white rabbit, and a few ants from
a rotten stump, were all that he had found to eat in three days. His
white fangs in his red jaws had slavered with craving as he watched the
plump beavers at their work, far out on the brightly moonlit dam. When,
at last, they came hurrying toward him, and fell to work on the new
break within thirty or forty yards of his hiding-place, he could hardly
contain himself. He did contain himself, however; for he had hunted
beaver before, and not with a success to make him overconfident. Right
by the termination of the dam, where the beavers were working, the woods
came down thick and dark to within eight or ten feet of the water.
Toward this point he made his way patiently, and with such control of
every muscle that, for all his apparent clumsiness, not a twig snapped,
not a branch rustled, any more than if a shadow were gliding through
them. He saw one old beaver sitting stiffly erect on the crest of the
dam, a wary sentinel, sniffing the still air and scanning the perilous
woods; but he planned to make his final rush so swift that the sentinel
would have no time to give warning.
But the fierce little eyes of the bear, dark and glinting red, were not
the only ones that watched the beavers at their valorous toil. In the
juniper scrub, a short distance up the bank of the pond, crouched two
big gray lynxes, glaring down upon the scene with wide, round, pale
greenish eyes, unspeakably sinister. The lynxes were gaunt with famine.
Fired with the savage hope that some chance might bring a beaver within
reach of their mighty spring, they had crept down, on their great,
furred, stealthy pads, to the patch of juniper scrub. Here they had
halted, biding their time with that long, painful patience which is the
price of feeding--the price of life--among the winter-scourged kindreds.
Now, when the beavers had so considerately come over to the edge of the
woods, and appeared to be engrossed in some incomprehensible pulling and
splashing and mud-piling, the two lynxes felt that their opportunity had
arrived. Their bellies close to the snow, their broad, soft-padded feet
stepping lightly as the fall of feathers, their light gray fur all but
invisible among the confused moon-shadows, their round, bright eyes
unwinking, they seemed almost to drift down through the thickets toward
their expected prey.
Neither the bear creeping up from below the dam, nor the two lynxes
stealing down from above it, had eyes or thought for anything in the
world but the desperately toiling beavers. Their hunger was gnawing at
their lean stomachs, the fever of the hunt was in their veins, and the
kill was all but within reach. A few moments more, and the rush would
come, up from the fir thickets--the long, terrible spring and pounce,
down from the juniper scrub.
The work of repairing the breach was making good progress. Already the
roaring overflow was coming into subjection, its loud voice dwindling to
a shallow clamour. Then, something happened. Perhaps the wary sentinel
on the crest of the dam detected a darker shade stirring among the firs,
or a lighter grayness moving inexplicably between the bushes up the
bank. Perhaps his quick nostrils caught a scent that meant danger.
Perhaps the warning came to him mysteriously, flashed upon that inner
sense, sometimes alert and sometimes densely slumbering, which the
forest furtiveness seems to develop in its creatures. However, it came,
it came. Dropping forward as if shot, the sentinel beaver brought his
flat tail down upon the surface of the water with a smack that rang all
up and around the borders of the pond, startling the quiet of the night.
In a fraction of a second every beaver had vanished beneath the shining
surface.
At the same moment, or an eye-wink later, a strange thing happened--one
of those violent surprises with which the vast repression of the forest
sometimes betrays itself. Maddened to see his prey escaping, the bear
made his rush, launching himself, a black and uncouth mass, right down
to the water's edge. Simultaneously the two lynxes shot into the air
from higher up the bank, frantic with disappointed hunger. With a
screech of fury, and a harsh spitting and snarling, they landed a few
feet distant from the bear, and crouched flat, their stub tails
twitching, their eyes staring, their tufted ears laid back upon their
skulls.
Like a flash the bear wheeled, confronting the two great cats with
uplifted paw and mouth wide open. Half-sitting back upon his haunches,
he was ready for attack or defence. His little eyes glowed red with
rage. To him it was clearly the lynxes who had frightened off the
beavers and spoiled his hunting; and interference of this kind is what
the wild kindreds will not tolerate. To the lynxes, on the other hand,
it was obvious that the bear had caused the whole trouble. He was the
clumsy interloper who had come between them and their quarry. They were
on the verge of that blindness of fury which might hurl them, at any
instant, tooth and claw, upon their formidable foe. For the moment,
however, they had not quite lost sight of prudence. The bear was master
of the forest, and they knew that even together they two were hardly a
match for him.
[Illustration: "CONFRONTING THE TWO GREAT CATS WITH UPLIFTED PAW AND
MOUTH WIDE OPEN."]
The bear, on the other hand, was not quite sure that he was willing to
pay the price of vengeance. His blood surging in the swollen veins, he
growled with heavy menace, and rocking forward upon his haunches he
seemed on the point of rushing in. But he knew how those powerful
knife-edged claws of the lynxes could rend. He knew that their light
bodies were strong and swift and elusive, their teeth almost as
punishing as his own. He felt himself the master; nevertheless he
realized that it would cost dear to enforce that mastery. He hesitated.
Had he made the slightest forward move, the lynxes would have thrown
caution to the winds, and sprung upon him. On the other hand, had the
lynxes even tightened up their sinews to spring, he would have hurled
himself with a roar into the battle. But as it was, both sides held
themselves in leash, tense, ready, terrible in restraint. And as the
moments dragged by, out on the bright surface of the pond small heads
appeared, with little bright eyes watching curiously.
For perhaps three or four long, intense minutes there was not a move
made. Then the round eyes of the lynxes shifted ever so little, while
the bear's eyes never faltered. The bear's was the steadier purpose,
the more tenacious and resolute temper. Almost imperceptibly the lynxes
shrank backward, gliding inch by inch. A swift side-glance showed them
that the way of retreat was open. Then, as if both were propelled by the
one vehement impulse, they bounded into the air, one whirling aside and
the other almost doubling back upon his own trail. Quicker than it takes
to tell it, they were fleeing like gray shadows, one over the bank and
through the juniper bushes, the other up along the snowy shore of the
pond, their discomfiture apparently driving them to part company. The
bear, as if surprised, sat up on his haunches to stare after them. Then,
with a hungry look at the beavers, now swimming openly far out in the
moonlight, he turned and shambled off to find some more profitable
hunting.
For a few minutes all was stillness, save for the rushing of the water
over the dam. The solitude of the night had resumed its white and
tranquil dominion as if nothing had ever occurred to jar its peace. Then
once more the watchful sentinel appeared, sitting erect on the dam, and
the diligent builders busied themselves to complete the mending of the
breach.
[Illustration: "ONCE MORE THE WATCHFUL SENTINEL APPEARED."]
The Terror of the Air
From all the lonely salt-flats and tide-washed, reedy shores of the wide
estuary, the flocks of the sea-ducks had flown south. After feeding for
days together amicably, golden-eyed and red-head, broad-bill and dipper,
all hobnobbing and bobbing and guttering in company, without regard to
difference of kin, they had at last assorted themselves into flocks of
the like species and wing power, and gone off in strong-flying wedges to
seek milder tides and softer skies.
Nevertheless, though the marshy levels were now stiffened with frost,
and ice fringes lingered thin and brittle behind each retreating tide,
and white flurries of snow went drifting over the vast, windy spaces of
wave and plain, some bold, persistent waifs of life clung to these bleak
solitudes. Here and there a straggler from the flocks, or a belated
arrival from farther north, fed solitary and seemed sufficient to
himself; while here and there a few hardy coots, revelling in the
loneliness and in the forbidding harshness of the season, swam and dived
among the low, leaden-coloured waves.
Across ten level miles of naked marsh-land another estuary made in from
the sea. On the shore of this estuary, so shallow that for leagues along
its edge it was impossible to distinguish, at high tide, just where the
water ended and the solid land began, a solitary surf-duck dabbled among
the gray, half-frozen grasses. Of a dull black all over, save for a
patch of clear white on his head and another on the back of his neck, he
made a sharp, conspicuous spot against the pallid colouring of the
marshes. For all his loneliness, he seemed to be enjoying himself very
well, active and engrossed, and to all appearances forgetful of the
departed flocks.
Suddenly, however, he stopped feeding, and sat with head erect and
watchful eyes, rising and falling gently with the pulse of the
sedge-choked flood. Either some unusual sight or sound had disturbed
him, or some drift of memory had stirred his restlessness. For several
minutes he floated, forgetful of the savoury shelled and squirming
creatures which his discriminating bill had been gathering from among
the oozy sedge-roots. Then with an abrupt squawk, he flapped noisily
along the surface of the water, rose into the air, and flew straight
inland, mounting as he went to a height far above gunshot.
The flight of the lonely drake was toward the shores of the other
estuary, ten miles southward, where in all likelihood he had some hope
of finding the companionship of his kin, if not a better feeding-ground.
Though his body was very heavy and massive and his wings ridiculously
short for the bulk they had to sustain, he flew with tremendous speed
and as straight as a bullet from a rifle. His wings, however small, were
mightily muscled and as tough as steel springs, and they beat the air
with such lightning strokes that the sturdy body, head and neck and legs
and feet outstretched in a rigid line, was hurled through the air at a
speed of something like a hundred miles an hour. As he flew, the
flurries of snow gathered into a squall of whirling flakes, almost
obscuring the waste of marsh-land that rushed past beneath his flight,
and shutting him off alone in the upper heights of sky.
Alone indeed he imagined himself, while the cold air and the streaming
snowflakes whistled past his flight. But keen as were his eyes, other
eyes keener than his had marked him from a loftier height, where the air
was clear above the storm strata. A great Arctic goshawk, driven by some
unknown whim to follow the edge of winter southward, was sailing on wide
wings through the high, familiar cold. When he saw the black drake far
below him, shooting through the snowflakes like a missile, his fierce
eyes flamed and narrowed, his wings gave one mighty beat and then
half-closed, and he dropped into the cloudy murk of the storm belt.
The drake was now about a hundred yards ahead of the great hawk, and
flying at perhaps ninety miles an hour under the mere impulse of his
desire to reach the other estuary. When he caught sight of the white
terror pursuing him, his sturdy little wings doubled the rapidity of
their stroke, till he shot forward at a rate of, perhaps, two miles a
minute, his wedge-shaped body and hard, oiled plumage offering small
resistance to the air even at that enormous speed. His only chance of
escape, as he well knew, was to reach the water and plunge beneath it.
But he could not turn back, for the terror was behind him. Straight
ahead lay his only hope. There, not more than two or three minutes
distant, lay his secure refuge. He could see the leaden gray expanse,
touched by a gleam of cold and lonely sunlight which had pierced the
obscurity of the squall. Could he reach it? If he could, he would drop
into the slow wave, dive to the bottom, and hold to the roots of the
swaying weeds till the terror had gone by.
A hundred yards behind came the hawk, moving like a dreadful ghost
through the swirl and glimmer of the snow. His plumage was white, but
pencilled with shadowy markings of pale brown. His narrowed eyes, fixed
upon the fugitive, were fiercely bright and hard like glass. His hooked
beak, his flat head, his strong, thick, smoothly modelled neck, were
outstretched in a rigid line like those of the drake.
The long, spectral wings of the great hawk beat the air, but not with
haste and violence like those of the fleeing quarry. Swift as his
wingbeats were, there was a surging movement about them, an irresistible
thrust, which made them seem slow and gave their working an air of
absolute ease. For all this ease, however, he was flying faster than the
fugitive. Slowly, yard by yard, he crept up, the distance from his
victim grew narrower. The drake's wings whistled upon the wind, a
strange shrill note, as of terror and despair. But the wings of the
pursuing destroyer were as noiseless as sleep. He seemed less a bird
than a spirit of doom, the embodiment of the implacable Arctic cold.
The astounding speed at which the two were rushing through the sky on
this race of life and death brought the gleam of the estuary water
hurrying up from the horizon to meet them. The terrible seconds passed.
The water was not half a mile ahead. The line of the drake's flight
began to slope toward earth. A few moments more, and a sudden splash in
the tide would proclaim that the fugitive was safe in a refuge where the
destroyer could not follow. But the noiseless wings were now just behind
him, just behind and above.
[Illustration: "THE NOISELESS WINGS WERE NOW JUST BEHIND HIM"]
At this moment the fugitive opened his beak for one despairing squawk,
his acknowledgment that the game of life was lost. The next instant the
hawk's white body seemed to leap forward even out of the marvellous
velocity with which it was already travelling. It leaped forward, and
changed shape, spreading, and hanging imminent for the least fraction
of a second. The head, with slightly open beak, reached down. A pair of
great black talons, edged like knives, open and clutching, reached down
and forward.
The movement did not seem swift, yet it easily caught the drake in the
midst of his flight. For an instant there was a slight confusion of
winnowing and flapping wings, a dizzy dropping through the sky. Then the
great hawk recovered his balance, steadied himself, turned, and went
winging steadily inland toward a crag which he had noted, where he might
devour his prey at ease. In his claws was gripped the body of the black
drake, its throat torn across, its long neck and webbed feet trailing
limply in the air.
In the Unknown Dark
His long, awkward legs trembling with excitement, his long ears pointing
stiffly forward, his distended nostrils sniffing and snorting, he stared
anxiously this way and that from the swirling, treacherous current to
the silent man poling the scow. The river, at this point nearly half a
mile wide, daunted him now that he saw it at such close quarters, though
all summer he had been viewing it with equanimity from the shore. A few
hundred yards above the comparatively quiet course of the ferry he saw a
long line of white leaping waves, stretching from bank to bank with
menacing roar, and seeming as it were about to rush down upon the slow
ferry and overwhelm it. When he looked toward the other side of the scow
the prospect was equally threatening. The roar from below was worse than
the roar from above, and the whole river, just here so radiant with the
sunset glow, grew black with gloom and white with fury as it plunged
through a rocky chasm strewn with ledges. The only thing that comforted
him at all and kept his fears within bounds was the patient, sturdy
figure of the man, poling the scow steadily toward shore.