realized that there was a world. Should he make a rush for it before the
enemy had regained courage? Even so, where should he rush to? Was he
likely to find an exit amid altogether strange surroundings? Could he
block the hole? Rats had done such things before now, but it was only
deferring the evil hour, and what time would he have to do it in? The
question was answered for him. The echo of the watchman's step had barely
ceased, before the hole at the base of the door was, for a moment,
obscured.
They came in jerky disorder. First a young, loose-limbed stripling. He
was barely out before he was back again, throwing up the pink soles of
his hind feet, and flicking the woodwork with his belated tail. Then a
kaleidoscopic succession of suspicious faces. The light danced on the
floor as each thrust his neighbour aside, thrust his head like lightning
through the opening, and as quickly withdrew it. They were masters of
scouting, these brown barbarians. Sometimes one, bolder or younger than
the rest, would steal a foot within the cellar. Sometimes, for minutes
together, all would be quiet, the light patch on the floor the only thing
amiss. The black rat never moved his eyes from that light.
It was an hour before the chieftain himself appeared. He squeezed through
the opening, but, for all his bulk, came quickly. Once clear, he dropped
upon his haunches, and knit his fists before him. The position showed him
at his best. Crouched or in motion, the clumsy angles of his body were
forced into relief. As he sat back, the curves softened, and, as far as
brown rat could be, he was imposing. For some moments he sat immovable,
facing the darkness, then he turned, and, with one eye always fixed behind
him, passed slowly out of sight.
There was a long silence after this. The light patch on the floor seemed
to grow in intensity. By its dull reflection, the black rat could just
distinguish his own whiskers. It fascinated him. He stole halfway across
the floor towards it, and paused. As he paused, it was blotted out once
more.
[Illustration: THE POSITION SHOWED HIM AT HIS BEST.]
He was being watched. Before he was back in his corner, three of the enemy
were through the breach. Five more followed. Then in quick confusion a
dozen. Then a dozen more. The Hanoverian army was spreading its wings.
Their actual number he never knew. Perhaps, for the credit of his family,
it was as well. Reflection would assuredly have put resistance, and even
hope, out of the question. As it was, he came forward with absolute
indifference. His breeding again stood him in good stead. Of all the host
he was the least uneasy. In the middle of the floor he stopped abruptly,
confronting the situation. Fifty rats were in the cellar now, and there
was not a rustle among them.
He had calculated exactly where to stop. It was a foot beyond the normal
take-off of the grown rat. He flung his head round, put all the force he
possessed into his hind legs, and leapt, upwards and backwards, towards
the shelf. He caught it with his fore-paws, scrambled on to it, and, for
the moment, was safe. He was only just quick enough. As his eyes turned,
the brown rats had rushed forward, and, even as he clutched the ledge, he
heard them pattering against the wall.
The floor below was a raging sea of rats; rats leaping over one another,
jostling, biting, tearing. To the silence of a moment before had succeeded
a babel of shrieks and hisses. But there were no jumpers among them like
himself. He passed quietly along the ledge above them, through the
entrance of the run, and up to its blocked extremity. There he braced his
back against the concrete and waited.
* * * * *
He waited for three days, his muzzle grounded, his eyes peering into the
darkness, his every sense alert. He ate nothing, he drank nothing--to all
appearance he never slept.
On the fourth day, he crept feebly halfway towards the cellar. Privation
was beginning to tell on him. His only hope was that the invaders might
have retired.
For the first few yards it almost seemed as if it was so. Neither in the
air nor on the ground could he detect the slightest vibration; but, as he
turned a sharp corner, the hope was dispelled. The whole run quivered with
the stealthy whisper of rats' footsteps. Faint squeaks and whimperings
echoed along it. The cellar was evidently still occupied in force; he was
cornered between starvation and insuperable odds. Yet there might be a
scrap of food this side of the cellar. He stole forward until another turn
revealed the ledge. In the centre of the ledge were three brown rats. The
farther one was cleaning itself, but the other two were feeding, and, at
the sight of the food, he lost all prudence. He was upon them before he
was perceived. The two dropped their provender, leapt blindly forward, and
fell clumsily to the floor below, but the third slid down the junction of
the walls.
The black rat realized what that meant. As he turned his head, he saw his
retreat cut off. Two more had scaled the corner behind him. He swung about
to face them, girded himself to charge, and, instead of charging, stopped
dead.
[Illustration: THE FARTHER ONE WAS CLEANING ITSELF.]
For the first time in his life he knew what fear was. Before him were his
immediate adversaries; his quick ears caught the crumbling of plaster
behind him. Rats were mounting that corner also.
Five feet below lay the floor. Its surface glistened with shifting beads
of light--light from rats' eyes.
He was between the devil and the deep sea--the floor was the sea, and the
devil was assuredly advancing towards him. Never before had he set eyes on
such a beast--ten inches from head to tail, brawny, misshapen, mangy, a
veritable Caliban of rats.
[Illustration: A VERITABLE CALIBAN OF RATS.]
The position was hopeless. All he could do was to die game. Caliban had
crept within a foot of him, and was pulling himself into position. But he
was too slow. Before he had raised his clumsy fore-paws from the ground,
the black rat's teeth had met in his throat. His huge frame quivered for
a moment, staggered, and lurched heavily off the shelf. He carried his
comrade with him.
First blood! what matter whose? Caliban lay where he fell, his eyes slowly
glazing. The eyes round him caught the reflection from his throat. He was
the hero of a hundred fights, and the puniest ratling had its share. The
floor was for the moment the centre of attraction.
Had it not been for the chieftain, the black rat might have regained the
run. But the chieftain had foreseen events. As Caliban fell he had
clambered up, and was now blocking the entrance.
He was grounded on his haunches, with uplifted paws, ready for anything.
The black rat drove at him, and was hurled backwards. Among rats the
chieftain is, of necessity, pluperfect master of defence. Again and again
he parried the attack, until Caliban was disposed of.
Then, in the middle of his rush, the black rat heard once more the
stealthy footstep in his rear, paused, half turned, missed his footing,
and fell.
Yet he accounted for four of those below, which made five altogether.
"THE FOX'S TRICKS ARE MANY; ONE IS ENOUGH FOR THE URCHIN"
(_Old Greek Proverb_).
Rain, and rain, and rain. For three days in succession the sun had
defaulted. Yet he had been doing his best behind the storm-clouds. That
very morning he had forced one straggling beam well through. It had been
completely thrown away, for every living thing was snugly tucked up under
cover. Now, as his time was getting short, he made one last despairing
effort.
Westward, the sky was banked with purple nimbus, towering in gloomy
magnificence aloft, but fined to nothingness on the horizon. The sun saw
his chance, and took it. As the storm-cloud was borne a trifle upwards, he
flashed his dying radiance beneath it.
At first the brightness was intolerable. The rain-drenched leaves were
bathed in liquid fire; the river surface gleamed like molten metal; the
undergrowth that fringed the bank became a tangled web of dazzling
light-points.
The effort was of short duration, yet, before the sun had sunk, the
things that loved the river had caught his message.
[Illustration: THE WATER-RAT CAME FROM A HOLE FIVE FEET ABOVE THE
RIVER-LEVEL.]
The cloud-bank lifted sullenly, and dispersed. Out of the east came a soft
summer breeze, stealing silently across the valley, and tilting the
balance of each dripping leaf. So the great drops of moisture slipped off
them to swell the river, and the drying of the earth commenced.
That is what brought them all out together.
The water-rat came from a hole five feet above the river-level. An
overhanging grass-tuft masked her exit. As a rule, she used the back
way--a gently sloping tunnel which led from nest to stream. But to-night
it was very still. She padded quietly to the water's edge, slid through
the reeds that bordered it, and sat upon a silted crescent of mud that lay
on their far side. She always sat there to commence with. From the bank
she was invisible; up stream and down she could see for fifty yards, and
the pith of the reed-stem, of all things in her menu most charming, lay
ready to her orange-tinted teeth.
The noctules came from the hollow in the old chestnut. Twenty of them
lived there together, because it was a convenient, roomy hollow. No one
knows how it started--perhaps the wood-peckers could tell you--but rain
had certainly finished its excavation. The entrance was some thirty feet
above the ground--dank, noisome, and forbidding; the end was near the
roots.
Of course the old chestnut was dying; but that did not concern the
noctules. Each evening they crawled up to prove the weather; each evening,
of late, they had shambled back again into the gloomy depths, cannoning
awkwardly against each other, snarling and grumbling. The temper of bats
is uncertain, and hunger does not improve it.
But to-night it was better. One by one the ghoulish muzzles emerged,
peered into the darkness, and were satisfied; then the clumsy,
ill-balanced bodies, entangled in loose-folded leathern cerements--the
noctule's wing-spread measures a full foot; lastly, the webbed curving
triangle of feet and tail.
[Illustration: THE NOCTULES CAME FROM THE HOLLOW OF THE OLD CHESTNUT.]
Each, as it blundered free, clung, for a space, head downwards to the
bark, then slacked the grip of its ten toes, unhooked its thumbs,
dropped, and flew. Never was flight more graceful, never more perfectly
controlled. For fear of the swallows, the summer beetles fly by choice at
twilight; even then they must needs fly low, for the noctule never misses,
and the crunch of his teeth in a beetle's horny back is all he knows of
music.
The stoat came from a tree which was even more decrepit than the chestnut.
It had been an elm once. For four centuries it had defied the elements,
towering full fifty feet in rugged, imperial grandeur. The elements had
outstayed it. All that remained was a caverned stump, whose jagged summit
pointed, like an accusing finger, to the sky.
But, from a stoat standpoint, the stump was unsurpassable. There were
three exits from the hollow base. Up the shaft there was yet another.
Thick brambles fringed it on every side, and in those brambles were many
birds' nests. The stump was an ideal nursery; as such the stoat had
employed it. He had left to its friendly protection his family of six,
with a young rabbit to keep them occupied. He, himself, was now in quest
of frogs.
The hedgehog bore on his back clear tokens of his last retreat. A dozen
withered leaves were clinging to his spines. The nearest pile of such lay
heaped against the hen-house. The hedgehog footed through the knotgrass
slowly, grubbing with his snout to right and left of him. Sometimes, when
cover failed, he broke into a bow-legged run.
The squirrel came from high up in the beech tree--the second fork from
the top. There he had built what he called a nest, but what humans, with
greater nicety of diction, call a drey. Speak not of squirrel's "nest" to
sportsmen; to speak of fox's "burrow" were hardly less heinous. The drey
was eminently satisfactory, for, in the summer months, it was completely
hidden. Yet three days inside it had been more than sufficient for the
squirrel. He was cold, hungry, and cramped in every limb. To quicken the
blood within him, he flung himself at lightning speed from bough to bough,
from tree to tree, up and down the branches, in and out the maze of
dripping foliage, until his every hair was tipped with a raindrop, and he
was almost weary. Then he paused a moment for breath and shook himself,
dog-fashion.
The mole's uneasy, crimson-pointed muzzle came from a hole right on the
water's edge. He was feeling for the water. Last night the swollen river
had forced its way a yard into his run, and he had blundered headlong into
it. Swimming is easy to the mole, but swimming in an inch-wide tube is
risky. So, to-night, he was cautious. It might have been fine all day,
or it might have been wet, for all he knew.
The grass-snake seemed to come up from the river bottom. His head suddenly
parted the water beneath the old pollard, and he swam slowly across the
stream, craning his neck before him. The pollard was inwardly rotten to
the core--a snug retreat for snakes, to which the only entrance was a
water-way.
The dormouse came from halfway up the hazel, and the wood-mouse came from
its roots. They, too, had been three days weather bound; but they were not
hungry. Each had its winter store to draw upon.
The moths and caterpillars and beetles, came from everywhere--crannies in
the brickwork, joints in the palings, crevices in the bark, from
neat-rolled envelope of leaf, from hollowed shelter of reed-stem, from
pigmy burrows in the ground.
* * * * *
It was the hedgehog who started it. The hedgehog has a keen sense of
humour, and, for that reason, he loves an argument.
"I will back my spines," said he, "against any means of defence in the
country." He curled himself into a forbidding spiky ball, and rolled
slowly down the bank towards the water. On the very brink he stopped and
uncurled himself. "Or any means of offence," he added.
This was too much.
"Spines!" sneered the stoat. "Spines might be some use if you had any pace
behind them. Where would they come in against a hare?"
[Illustration: IT WAS THE HEDGEHOG WHO STARTED IT.]
"Spines would be awkward in the shallows," murmured the water-rat, as she
swam quietly over to the far shore, keeping half an eye on the stoat, who
was also something of a swimmer.
"Spines!" squeaked the noctule from the safe height of a hundred feet.
"Why load yourself with spines? Why not fly like me?"
"Spines!" shouted the squirrel. "A pretty mess you'd make of it with
spines up here. Do you think every one spends their life grubbing after
ground beetles?"
"Spines!" purred the moths. "We gave up spines at quite an early stage.
Haven't you finished moulting, hedgehog?"
"Spines!" snapped the trout. "Give me a good set of fins."
Now this was exactly what the hedgehog had foreseen. As I have said
before, he had a keen sense of humour.
"I am willing to hear you all," said he.
So, because of his pleistocene lineage, and because of his popularity (the
comedian is always the more popular candidate), and because he had started
the discussion, he was voted to the chair.
[Illustration: THE NOCTULE SPOKE FIRST; HE OPENED HIS MOUTH AS THOUGH HE
WOULD EAT THE WORLD.]
The noctule spoke first. He leant his arm against the roughened bark,
hooked his thumb-nail into a crevice, and opened his mouth as though he
would eat the world. He was not beautiful, and his voice was three
octaves above F in alt. What reached the audience below was somewhat on
these lines--
"I and my kin are the only mammals that fly. Therefore I am superior to
the hedgehog. Flying is the best state of all. Even the humans do their
poor best to fly. Every part of me is modified for flight. My knees bend
the wrong way so as to better stretch my wing-membranes. My tail serves as
a rudder, and in the hollow pouch about it I can trap a beetle, ay, and
carry him where I will. My sense of touch is the most delicate in all the
world. _I_ never dash myself, like blundering bird, against a wire. If you
would know the secret, look at the trembling bristles on my muzzle, look
at the earlets within my ears, look at the sensitive wing-membrane between
my fingers. No quiver in the air escapes me. I have the sixth sense of the
blind, and yet I see."
Next spoke the stoat, the swash-buckler. He cleared his throat with a
short, rasping bark, glared round him, and began--
"I am the only flesh-eater among you all," said he. The hedgehog's smile
broadened, but he said nothing. "Therefore I have bigger game to tackle
than any of you. Therefore I am better armed. Scores of bats I have eaten
in my time. I could climb your chestnut if I cared to, noctule, and eat
the colony. I would, if you were not so evil-smelling." (This from the
stoat!) "Scores of water-rats have I eaten, too. Look at my long, lithe
body. What burrow is too small for it? Look at my teeth. What rodent has a
chance against them? I fear nothing, not even man himself. I can swim, I
can run, I can climb, I can hunt by scent, and I am cunning as a fox.
From my fur, when I am dead, comes the imperial ermine. Would you pit
yourself against me, hedgehog?"
[Illustration: NEXT SPOKE THE STOAT, THE SWASH-BUCKLER.]
"_I_ would," said the squirrel. Like the bats, he was some way off
the ground; also he had mapped up a clear course of forty yards among
the tree-tops, so he spoke recklessly. "The stoat is an amateur climber."
("Wait till I get to your nursery!" snarled the stoat.) "He has no idea
of taking cover. A treed stoat against a human is doomed. Look at his
black-smudged tail--only a trifle better than a weasel's. It reminds me
of my summer moult--but it's worse; and, in the summer, even I must trust
more to my hands and feet. I, the most skilful gymnast in the country,
save only the marten, and there are too few of them to count. Give me my
winter parachute, and see me then. Who can thread the woods like me? From
end to end I fly, skimming the tree-tops and never touching ground. Yet,
if the fancy takes me, I can cover land or water faster than any stoat.
From _my_ fur, when I am dead, comes the camel-hair brush."
[Illustration: "_I_ WOULD," SAID THE SQUIRREL.]
Next came the dormouse. "Sleep is the best defence of all," he said.
"Sleep and being very small indeed, and never coming out except after
sundown, and having great big eyes, so that you can see things like stoats
long before they see you. Offence I know nothing of, unless it's eating
beetles."
After him the wood-mouse. "Give me a good burrow underground," said he.
"Make it among branching roots, with half a dozen entrances and exits, and
I defy the weasel, let alone the stoat. But in the winter, when cover is
scanty, sleep and a store of nuts is best of all. Beans are no good--they
rot away. Earth-stored nuts, tight packed, are the sweetest things I
know."
"What of summer?" said the hedgehog.
"Weight for weight," said the mouse, "I can tackle anything that moves. As
for voles and house-mice, I can fight two at once. When I am giving much
away, I like my burrow handy."
[Illustration: TWO FIELDS AWAY YOU CAN SEE MY FORTRESSES.]
"Who talks of burrows?" said the mole. "Where is there tunnel-builder
like myself? Two fields away you can see my fortresses. You can see them
plainly, tunnelled maze and rounded nest and all. Some prying human has
turned his vacant mind to nature-study, and made a clumsy section of a
pair. Look at each in turn. Mark the one tunnel that leads upward to the
nest, mark the two galleries that surround it, mark that they wind in a
spiral, and are not joined by shafts at intervals. That would so weaken
the surroundings as to leave the nest an easy prey to scratching weasel.
Why is the spiral made? To cheat inquiry; a dozen tunnels join it from
the run; from it are a dozen exits to the surrounding field. _One tunnel
only leads into the nest._ Only the moles know that one. Alone I did it,
save for my wife, who hindered me. Alone I moved two hundredweight of
earth. Nor do my qualities end here. Were I fifty times as big, I would be
lord of creation. Where can you find fiercer courage than mine; where,
bulk for bulk, more mighty strength? What monster, think you, would an
elephant, built for burrowing, be? For my weight, I am the strongest thing
that lives. One creature, and one only, approaches me; that is the
mole-cricket. Let him speak for himself."
[Illustration: "WHO TALKS OF BURROWS," SAID THE MOLE.]
[Illustration: THE MOLE-CRICKET TURNED UP FROM NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR.]
The mole-cricket turned up from nowhere in particular, and his voice was
the tinkling of a silver bell. It would have taken a score of him to make
a mole.
"I am older than the mole," he said, "yet from him I take my name. In
dry ground I make poor progress; where it is muddy and swampy, I can run
through it, like a fish through water. When the mole came into being, he
borrowed the pattern of my fore feet--shovel and pick and spade in one.
Like me, he learnt to run backwards or forwards, and that is why his hair
has no set in it. Whichever way he goes, the clinging dust is swept from
off its surface. He comes from grubby depths as polished as a pin. And so
do I; but from a different cause. I am so highly polished that the damp
soil cannot cleave to me."
"Burrowing," said the hedgehog, "is a low form of defence. What says the
water-rat?"
"I burrow, too," said the water-rat. "If I have time, I burrow in the
water. I part the surface with the tiniest ripple, keeping my fore feet
close packed to my sides, and swim with hind legs only, below the surface,
neatly as a natterjack. If I were better treated, I should never burrow in
the banks at all. But I must have somewhere to go to when my breath fails
me. I eat the mare's tail and the pith of reed-stems. That does no one any
harm, not even a trout-preserver. But of all good viands, commend me to a
parsnip."
"This is neither defence nor offence," said the hedgehog.
"The only offensive thing I have is a pair of incisors," said the
water-rat. "They are orange-yellow and very strong. As regards defence, I
can do more in the water than most."
[Illustration: "NOT MORE THAN ME," THE YOUNG TROUT BROKE IN.]
"Not more than me," the young trout broke in. He flung his nose jauntily
against the surface, and the surface swung from it in widening eddies,
circle after circle. "I can be up to the weir and down again before you
are halfway across the stream. When humans build their destroyers, they
model them on me. I know that, because I have seen their clumsy models,
trout-shaped, save the mark!"
"That is enough from any one of your years," said the hedgehog. "Little
river-fishes run away from big river-fishes, and big river-fishes run away
from bigger river-fishes, and they all run away from the otter."
The jack that lived in the deep below the pollard grinned, but said
nothing. The jack knew better, but he never _says_ anything. But the
gudgeon and the troutling were terrified at the notion of bigger fishes,
and made straight for the weeds.
[Illustration: BUT THE GUDGEON AND TROUTLING MADE STRAIGHT FOR THE WEEDS.]
"What think the caterpillars?" said the hedgehog.
The caterpillars were studying moral invisibility in a hundred different
ways, for insect life is the most highly specialized of all. It was the
lobster-moth-to-be that spoke first. He bent his head backwards until it
touched his tail, folded the knee-joints of his skinny legs, and began--
[Illustration: IT WAS THE LOBSTER-MOTH-TO-BE THAT SPOKE FIRST.]
"It is all bluff," said he, "caterpillars are past-masters of bluff. Look
at the hawkmoths, fat, flabby, bloated things, with curly tails. Most of
them fling their heads back, arch their necks, and play at being snakes.
Some grow eyes upon them, not real eyes, but markings which serve as such,
enough to scare the average chuckle-headed bird. Sometimes they trust to
vein-markings on their bodies, which turn them into casual misshapen
leaves. Sometimes they liken themselves to twigs--"
"That is what we do," cried the loopers. Each branch of the oak had its
loopers, feeding cheerfully, transforming themselves to twigs, and
shamming death in quick succession.
[Illustration: MOST OF THEM FLING THEIR HEADS BACK, ARCH THEIR NECKS, AND
PLAY AT BEING SNAKES.]