from a water-breathing to an air-breathing animal would have accomplished
itself imperceptibly. It is likely indeed, that, for a short period, while
his gills were decrepit, and his lungs infantile, he might have breathed
air and water alternately and at will. Now, however, his gills were, for
all practical purposes, useless; his lungs, ready but unpractised. The
necessity of air-breathing was forced on him at a moment's notice.
Small wonder that he commenced by overdoing matters. To begin with he
distended himself so that he could not sink at all. Then he sank with
far too small a reserve, and struggled to the surface spluttering and
half-drowned. It was only after much tribulation that he adjusted matters
to a nicety, diving with just sufficient air-supply to last his purpose,
and emerging at the proper moment. A silver bubble, the waste product of
his life, marked his downgoings and uprisings.
What made him quit the water altogether? For days he had lain
half-submerged on a mass of starwort, his limbs idly anchored off his
body, his quaint, puckered face and goggle eyes fixed immovably on
infinity. He was, to all appearance, carved in stone when the impulse took
him; and then--it was as if the swimming instinct had left him--he
commenced to _crawl_ across the natural bridge of pond-weed to the bank.
Nor can I tell you where he went. Sometimes you may meet his kind in dark,
damp corners, wedged between stones, or in the crannies of fallen tree
trunks. Sometimes it is the gardener that brings word of him. "A' dug the
spade a fut deep and turned he up, the poisonous effet, a' soon stamped on
he!" Sometimes it is the housemaid. "Please m'm there's lizards in the
cellar, I dursn't go near." Sometimes a halfpenny head-line. "Can Life be
Indefinitely Prolonged? Startling Discovery in a Lump of Coal." But,
wherever he may have got to, I can assure you of this, that for three
whole years he stayed there and never willingly saw the light of day.
Nature looked after him in his seclusion, Nature brought him such food as
he required, and Nature never forgot him, but guided him back in due
course to the brook in which he first saw light.
* * * * *
He was a dingy object from above. His eyes, it is true, had kept their
tadpole lustre, but his coat had darkened to a dusky olive, and the only
vivid colour about him, his orange waistcoat, was invisible as he crawled.
Even if it had been visible it would not have been to his disadvantage. Of
all the colours in Nature there are none more warning than contrasted
black and orange. Show me a creature of this colour combination, and you
will show me something that is dangerous or nauseous or poisonous. It was
this, perhaps, that was his salvation as he crawled from his land retreat
back to the water he had left three years before. Perhaps it was simply
his insignificance, for the journey was made by night, and he was crawling
in and out of thickly twisted grass stems. Perhaps, though, it was his
appearance, which, I will freely admit, was at this time, repulsive. A low
set ridge along the centre of his back, and a faint violet tinge upon his
sides were all that told of the glory that was to be.
[Illustration: HE GLIDED INTO THE WATER SLOWLY.]
He glided into the water slowly, and, as it were, ashamed. But he
need not have been. In three years' seclusion he had swelled to fair
proportions. He was no longer of necessity the hunted, in most cases
now he was to be the hunter. As his head parted the surface, myriads of
frightened atoms fled panic-stricken before him. Each lash of his tail
scattered a microscopic community, and, as he progressed, the sense of
mastery grew upon him. Food was here, and in plenty. He had only to open
his mouth and take his fill. Yet he had no appetite. For the first few
days of his water existence he sat amid the weed, rising only at rare
intervals to the surface for air, and eating nothing. He was feeling the
sudden change. His skin was tense and drawn all over, so tense, indeed,
that each time he opened his mouth he felt the strain of it. Nor was the
discomfort in his mouth alone. His coat was stretched to bursting-point
along his back; his limbs seemed cased in gloves a size too small. A crawl
ashore brought no immediate relief, but helped him indirectly. As he
brushed between two grass stems, the skin of his lips split asunder, and,
when he entered the water again, that friendly element gently forced its
way into the gap. Every forward movement that he made now eased his old
worn skin a little backwards.
[Illustration: HIS OLD SKIN HUNG BEFORE HIM.]
First his head came free, and its old covering lay in tattered rags upon
his neck. He pulled his hands out next, leaving their casing as the
fingers of a turned glove. Next came his body's turn, for this he had to
squeeze himself between the weed-stalks. Lastly, he cleared his legs and
tail.
His old skin hung before him on the starwort, white-gleaming and
transparent, a perfect, neatly folded model of himself. Of himself, did I
say? It scarcely did his present splendour justice. Along his back now
rose the budding undulations of a crest. His flanks had lost their sombre
olive shade, and were suffused with mottlings of velvet black, mottlings
that turned to purple as they crept across his orange front.
[Illustration: THE TADPOLES WERE LAZILY BROWSING ON THE STARWORT.]
Even these beauties paled before his tail--a ribbon whose jet black centre
shaded into violet, and whose edges were flushed with crimson.
[Illustration: THE VERY STICKLEBACKS FOUGHT SHY OF HIM.]
Had he not been consumed with hunger, he might well have lingered in
complacent admiration of himself. But hunger such as he had never felt
before rose superior to his æsthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter
in ravenous haste.
He had not far to go--a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.
They were in a patch of sunlight, lazily browsing on the starwort, mild
as any sheep, with foolish, staring eyes, gaping suckers, and bodies that
gleamed as if sprinkled with gold dust. For three days he settled in their
neighbourhood, growing each day sleeker and more gorgeous. His orange
waistcoat took a warmer hue, the crimson deepened on his tail and tipped
the summits of his festooned crest. In six days' time he was a very
perfect newt, decked and caparisoned for love or war. The very
sticklebacks fought shy of him. One, it is true, charged him with spines
erect--he had a nest to guard and would have charged a pike--but even he,
for all his burnished panoply of emerald and vermilion, shrank back and
bristled defiance from a safe distance. As for the shoal, they scattered
in flashing rainbow-tinted disarray at his approach.
He was master of his surroundings, but there came a time when tadpoles
palled upon him. For one thing, they were becoming daily more bony. Those
with hind legs developed were difficult to swallow; those with front legs
also were hopeless. A change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for
this, he came into collision with the water-spider.
[Illustration: HE BRISTLED DEFIANCE FROM A SAFE DISTANCE.]
Now, the water-spider lived by himself in a bubble of his own making. His
legs were stout and long and hairy, his countenance was horrible, and his
bite a thing to be avoided. When the newt first saw him he was devouring a
caddis-worm. Vanity had been the worm's undoing. Instead of casing itself
with tiny sticks and pebbles and sojourning at the bottom, as Nature
ordained, it had put on a gaudy livery of starwort leaves. Trusting
to this elegant protective mimicry, it boldly sought the surface. The
disguise availed it nothing. The spider drove its fangs through the flimsy
covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The
bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider's leap from its
bubble, the glint of its shears as they met in the wretched creature's
neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce
eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning
that seemed intelligent of Nature's devices, and pulled it out, as any
angler would, tail foremost.
[Illustration: SCATTERED IN FLASHING, RAINBOW-TINTED DISARRAY.]
[Illustration: THE WATER-SPIDER LIVED BY HIMSELF IN A BUBBLE OF HIS OWN
MAKING.]
[Illustration: WHEN THE NEWT FIRST SAW HIM HE WAS DEVOURING A
CADDIS-WORM.]
It was not so much animus against the spider as a longing for the worm
that brought about the conflict. For the newt to snap at it was certainly
unpardonable. Had he anticipated the resultant display of force, he would
have hesitated. He had judged the spider solely by his size. When he felt
six legs firmly fixed about his face, when he felt the cunning leverage of
two more added to the pull, and a hideous pair of jaws drawing closer and
closer, he dropped the worm, a useless martyr in Nature's scheme, and bit
for freedom. The spider lost a foot, but left its mark, and the spider's
hairy foot was not worth eating.
[Illustration: SNATCHED AN INFANT DRAGON-FLY FROM THE JAWS OF THE
WATER-SCORPION.]
In his next robbery he was more judicious. He snatched an infant
dragon-fly from the jaws of the water-scorpion, devoured it with pleasure,
and then turned his attention to the water-scorpion himself. He found him
flat and tasteless. The water-boatman was more succulent, but, with only
one soft spot, difficult to do justice to. It was the same with all the
larger creatures. He was reduced to stickleback fry, small larvae, and
even juveniles of his own race. But nothing touched the tadpole, whose
unkind destiny it is to furnish half the water-world with food. Had it
not been for a diversion, he would have left the water in disgust.
[Illustration: THE WATER-BOATMAN WAS DIFFICULT TO DO JUSTICE TO.]
[Illustration: IT WAS A CASE OF MUTUAL ATTRACTION.]
* * * * *
Probably it was a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest
before her, comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with
an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none,
and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher
we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become
a feminine necessity. Her coat was a pale olive green; her front light
orange. Her charm was in herself.
[Illustration: THE GIDDY VORTEX OF NEWT SOCIETY.]
[Illustration: SOMETIMES THEY TRAVERSED THE MIDDLE DEEPS.]
For newts they made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had
their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant.
When she was occupied with the cares of a family, and spent her days
and nights in deftly fashioning starwort cradles for her eggs, it
was irritating that he, whose duty it was to frighten the marauding
sticklebacks, should have preferred to rush away into the giddy vortex of
newt society. It was more than irritating when, by way of showing that her
cradles were insecure, he opened six and devoured the contents himself.
She profited by the experience, however, and the next series were
exquisitely finished. The egg was placed in the exact centre of the leaf,
the leaf was folded over, and sealed, tip to base, with all the strength
of her hind feet. Her mouth put the finishing touch.
When she had visited some half-dozen stalks, and left each adorned
throughout its length with a neat series of symmetrical bows, she felt
that her task was done and that she was at liberty to accompany him.
Together they learnt the brook from end to end. Sometimes they walked
along the bottom, stirring to right and left of them a host of low-class
life, slimy leeches, dingy crustaceans of every imaginable kind. Sometimes
they traversed the middle deeps, brushing against the beetles and the
boatmen and the water-snails. Sometimes they sunned themselves on the
surface, snapping idly at the measurers and whirligigs.
It was the flood that parted them. For three days it had rained
unceasingly on the surface of the brook. As they rose to breathe, their
noses were lashed by pigmy waves. Each raindrop made its own widening
eddy, its own pattering sound. Rain on the roof is noisy enough to those
beneath, but rain on the water is deafening.
[Illustration: SOMETIMES THEY SUNNED THEMSELVES ON THE SURFACE.]
In the brook, as I have said, it rained for three days. In one part or
another of the valley it rained for a week. The meadow-land gave its
surplus to the brook, and the brook sought the river for relief. But the
river was already filled to overflowing, so that brook and river met each
other halfway, and the life in each was intermingled.
[Illustration: A ROACH SNAPPED IDLY AT HIM.]
[Illustration: EACH LAMPERN WAS ANCHORED BY ITS SUCKER TO A ROUNDED
PEBBLE.]
Now, between brook-life and river-life there is a great gulf fixed. There
is no sideways in the river. All things that would stay at rest obey the
current. The fishes point their noses against it; the plants lie as it
guides them. Up or down is the law of quiet existence. The newt knew
nothing of this, and, when a rush of waters swept him into the river-bed
his natural instinct was to seek the bank. This laid him broadside and
helpless. A roach snapped idly at him as he floundered past the shoal. The
snap cost him his tail, and was probably his salvation. Without a tail
his biteable area was halved. A young trout missed him, and he pulled up
amid the lamperns in the shallows. The lamperns were too busily engrossed
to notice him. Each was fast anchored by its sucker to a rounded pebble.
Across their slender undulating bodies he struggled to the shore,
battered, bruised, and tailless, but alive. He entered the first brook he
came to, and there he remained a month in gloomy solitude, for he felt
that his chief glory had been taken from him. In a month's time his tail
had partially repaired itself. The new portion was stubby and colourless.
In another fortnight his crest had shrunk to half its former size. This
blow decided him. He left the water definitely. Where he went I cannot
tell you, nor do I know what happened to her, but I think they will meet
next year, and by that time his tail will be as beautiful as ever.
[Illustration: THE NEW PORTION WAS STUBBY AND COLOURLESS.]
THE PASSING OF THE BLACK RAT
(NOTE.--The old English black rat, for some three hundred years
predominant in this country, is now well-nigh extinct. He has been
superseded, some think exterminated, by the brown Hanoverian rat, a
more powerful and disreputable species, which made its appearance
in the course of the eighteenth century.)
The black rat sat back on his haunches, pricked up his ears, and listened.
It was something different to the faint lapping wash of the sewer;
different to the dull hum of the traffic. It was an uncanny, unfamiliar
scratching.
Every rat knows the scratching of his relations; but the black rat had no
relations.
Six weeks ago there had been at least two others of his kind in
existence--the one he had fought with, and the one he had most
unsuccessfully fought for. As a matter of fact, he had crawled away from
that encounter to die. Instead of dying, he had recovered. That his rival
was in reality the better rat he could not allow. Position is everything
in the rat _duello_, and position had not favoured him.
After a series of disastrous frontal attacks, he had limped behind the
old corn-bin, with half his mouth torn away, and his front paws mangled
and useless. He had bowed his head and waited sullenly for the _coup de
grace_. But the _coup de grace_ never came. There had been a diversion in
the rear, and into the cause of that diversion he had not troubled to
inquire.
He had seen neither him nor her since, and, until he had recovered from
his wounds, had hardly felt his loneliness. For a wounded rat, loneliness
is normal and necessary. Of late, as he sniffed dubiously round the old
familiar corners, the sense of desolation had forced itself upon him.
He recalled, dimly, the few weeks before his misfortune. Every day the
number of the tribe had lessened. First went the patriarch, white about
the muzzle, grizzled all over, tottering and feeble, but still of eminent
distinction--the black rat does not coarsen with age--then, one by one,
with fearless inconsequence, the younger ones; lastly, save two, his own
contemporaries.
* * * * *
The scratching seemed to get louder. The black rat glided, like a shadow,
towards it. It sounded from the bottom of the door.
[Illustration: FIRST THE PATRIARCH, WHITE ABOUT THE MUZZLE, GRIZZLED ALL
OVER, BUT STILL OF EMINENT DISTINCTION.]
Three sides of the cellar--for a hundred years the cellar had been the
rats' stronghold--were solid masonry. The fourth side was a wooden
partition. At one corner of this stood the door, close-fitted to its
sill and frame, and shrouded in cobwebs, which, in rats' memory, had
never parted. Along the wall opposite ran a six-inch shelf, and, at the
extremity of this shelf, where the fittings entered the brickwork, was
the entrance of the run.
Generations of rats had used that run. Its sides were smooth and polished
as a metal tube. Here it was narrower, there wider, but throughout its
length it was free and unimpeded.
For the most part it lay between wall and wainscot. At times it seemed
to pierce the masonry itself. Midway in the ascent the path of least
resistance had been towards the outer wall. Two round holes pierced its
surface--a brick's length dividing them. One can understand the making of
the first hole, but the making of the second? Fifteen feet below resounded
the busy traffic of the city. Did two tunnels converge by chance? did they
converge by design? or was the second made by some colossal rat, stretched
at full length, and trusting his life to his superhuman hearing? I can
only state the facts. I do not pretend to explain them.
From the second hole the run passed into the masonry once more, zigzagged
upwards into the storeroom, and ended.
From the storeroom there were countless exists--down the gutter into
the courtyard (a short cut to the shambles), beneath the flooring to the
scullery, and thence along the drain-pipe to the great sewer, through the
ventilator on to the roof--anywhere, everywhere.
* * * * *
The scratching was certainly louder. The black rat was stepping very
delicately, but a slippery corn-husk shot from underneath his foot, and
with the rustle of the corn-husk the scratching ceased.
Nothing but a rat could have heard that; it was certainly a rat, but who?
For ten minutes he waited, listening. Then he stole forward, until the
points of his whiskers brushed lightly against the door. Instantly there
was a movement on the far side--a four-footed movement. Caution against
such cunning seemed superfluous. He boldly forced his nose between door
and flooring and sniffed; but only for a second, for his nose had gone
farther than he meant; the bottom of the woodwork had been gnawed through
until it was a bare half-inch thick all along its length. He drew back
with a jerk, and waited another ten minutes, staring at the door and
thinking.
The silence on the far side grew unendurable. The black rat whisked round,
and rushed madly for the run. He gained the shelf by a beautiful swinging
leap, easy and silent as a cat's.
[Illustration: HE STOLE FORWARD UNTIL THE POINTS OF HIS WHISKERS BRUSHED
LIGHTLY AGAINST THE DOOR.]
For the first few yards, between brickwork and wainscot, the run was
clear enough; but, as it turned upwards to the floor above, something
seemed unfamiliar.
The light, which had always faintly shimmered from the hole in the outer
wall, was gone. As he drove forward headlong, he bruised his nose against
the cause of its disappearance. The wall had been repaired with concrete.
It was utterly ungnawable, and he slowly retraced his steps to the cellar.
He was just in time to hear the scratching recommence.
[Illustration: HE TRIED TO STEADY HIMSELF BY NIBBLING AT A STRAY
CORN-EAR.]
It drew closer and closer. It got upon his nerves. He tried to steady
himself by nibbling at a stray corn-ear. He dropped it before he had
fairly tasted it, and crept forward to the door once more. There was more
than one unknown at work. At times a light quiver ran the whole length of
the bottom ledge.
From a rat standpoint, it was the worst position conceivable. That
attack was impending was certain; it was equally certain that retreat was
impossible. Desperation, rather than bravado, determined him to reverse
the positions. In one spot the wood had been fined to a quarter of an
inch. Light filtered through, and cast a dull red shadow on the floor. It
was at that spot that he flung himself. As he touched it, every other
sound ceased. He had the field to himself, and he worked it to the best of
his ability. The splinters flew before his chisel teeth; he wrenched, and
scratched, and tore. Before five minutes were gone, the flimsy wooden
screen had been transformed into a neat three-cornered hole.
He thrust his head forward, and stared with all his eyes. At first
he could distinguish nothing. The far side of the partition was, in
comparison with his recent surroundings, brilliantly lighted. Gradually
the form of the enemy shaped itself before him. It was certainly a rat,
but what a rat! Until his muzzle had shot through the opening, it had been
facing him, waiting and watching. Now it had leapt backwards, and
presented a three-quarter rear view.
[Illustration: IT WAS THE MOST VULGAR, ILL-CONDITIONED BEAST HE HAD EVER
SET EYES ON.]
It was the most vulgar, ill-conditioned beast he had ever set eyes on.
Its muzzle was coarse and blunted; its ears were half concealed in
coarse-grained, unkempt hair; its tail, instead of tapering, like his own,
to an elegant infinity, was short and stumpy; its eyes were, to say the
least of it, insignificant. But its colour! a dirty, nondescript, khaki
brown!
The sight of it was enough, and he drove at it full tilt.
Appearances were undoubtedly against the brown rat, but it knew something
of tactics. With a lightness, such as one could hardly have expected, it
swung to one side, and, before his brilliant charge could take effect, had
got its back to the wall. He had made the same mistake again--the mistake
of brainless breeding all the world over. It mattered not whether he
approached from front, or right, or left, the same whirling flail of
fore-paws was ready for him. He leapt clean over its head, and was flung
back--by the brickwork. Whichever way he tried he had only half a foe to
aim at. Still he never flinched, happy in the conviction that blood must
tell.
Blood might have told against a single enemy. Against a score it availed
little. And a full score were advancing. The ungainly, stubby forms seemed
to rise from every crevice in the floor.
They came very slowly at first--a dirty cohort of khaki Hanoverians;
their muzzles uplifted and quivering at the scent of blood, their beady
eyes fixed seemingly on vacancy, but really on himself. He felt them
coming, and, for a moment, paused in his attack. The whole group might,
save for the restless nostrils, have been carved in stone; the duellists
eyeing each other warily, the scavenger ring waiting on events; but the
whiskers of each one trembled, and gave the whole group life.
It was the watchman's tread that broke the spell. The black rat knew
that tread well enough. He knew every tread in the warehouse; but to the
invaders it was unfamiliar. Before the footsteps had resounded twice, he
was left alone; the host had vanished as quickly as it came.
The black rat retreated in good order, and established himself once more
in a corner of the cellar. It was a mistake, but he wanted time to recover
himself, and time to think.