The Haunters of the Silences Part 6

Presently a new terror came to sap his courage. A little way ahead the banks were high and the channel narrow; and the river, no longer able to relieve the freshet strain by spreading itself over wide meadows, became a roaring rapid. The squirrel heard that terrifying roar. He noted how swiftly it was approaching. In a half-panic he stared about, almost ready to dare the pickerel and make a try for sh.o.r.e, rather than be carried through those rapids.

In this extremity of terror he saw what, at other times, would have frightened him almost as much as hawk or pickerel. A rowboat slowly drew near, picking its way through the logs. The one rower, a grizzled old river-man, was surging vigorously, to avoid being swept down into the thunderous narrows. But as he approached, he noticed the trembling squirrel on the log. In a flash he took in the situation. With a sheepish grin, as if ashamed of himself for troubling about a "blame squirrel," he thrust out the tip of an oar toward the log, with a sort of shy invitation.

The squirrel, fortunately for himself, was one of those animals which are sometimes open to a new idea. He did not trust the man, to be sure.

But he trusted him more than he did the rapids ahead, and feared him less than he feared the pickerel. Promptly he skipped aboard the boat, and perched himself on the bow, as far away as possible from his rescuer. The man wasted no time on sentimentalizing, but pulled as hard as he could for sh.o.r.e. When near the bank, however, and out of the stress of the current, he permitted himself what he considered a piece of foolishness. He turned the boat about, and backed in till the stern touched land. He wanted to see what the squirrel, up there in the bow, was going to do about it.

The little animal made up his mind quickly. Scared but resolute, he darted along the gunwale. The rower, with both arms outspread, was directly in his way. He hesitated, gave a nervous chirrup, then launched himself high into the air. His little feet struck smartly on the top of the man's head. Then he was off up the bank as if hawk and pickerel and rapids were all after him together. A moment later from the thick top of a fir-tree came his shrill chatter of triumph and defiance.

"Sa.s.sy little varmint!" muttered the old river-man, looking up at him with indulgent eyes.

A Duel in the Deep

Though there was no wind, the wide surface of the estuary was curiously disturbed. In from the open sea came swiftly as it were a wedge of roughness, its edges lightly dancing, sparkling with blue-and-silver flashes. The strange disturbance kept on straight up the channel, leaving the placid shoals along-sh.o.r.e to s.h.i.+ne unruffled in the low, level-glancing Arctic sun.

Down along the flat, interminable sh.o.r.e, picking his way watchfully among the ragged ice-cakes of the tempestuous spring, came a huge white bear. His small, snaky, cruel head was bent downwards, while his fierce little eyes peered among the tumbled ice blocks for possible dead fish.

His long, loose-jointed body twisted sinuously as he moved--the only living creature to be seen up and down the level desolation of those bleak sh.o.r.es.

The white bear was an old male, restless, and of savage temper. Like many of his fellows among the older males, he had not been so fortunate as to slumber away the long, terrific, Arctic winter in the shelter of a snow-buried rock. All through the months of dark and tempest, of ghostly auroras and cold unspeakable, he had roamed the dead world and fought his fight with hunger. His craft, his strength, his fierce desperation in attack, had pulled him through. Lean and savage, he sniffed the oncoming of spring, and watched the ice go grinding out.

Presently his keen ears noted a faint sound, which seemed to blow in from the sea. As there was no wind, this was worthy of note. Lifting his black nose high above the ice-cakes, he sniffed and peered intently at the inrus.h.i.+ng wedge of tumbled water. His uncertainty was not for long.

The salmon were returning. This was the vanguard of the spring run.

For a few seconds the great white shape stood as if turned to stone, watching the radiant confusion. Here and there he saw a slender body flash forth for an instant, half its length above the sparkling water, as if striving to escape some unseen enemy. The school was making for the main channel, which ran between two low, naked islets of rock, perhaps half a mile apart. The nearest of these was about three hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e. As soon as the bear made sure that the salmon were taking this course, he galloped at top speed--a long, loose, shambling, but rapid pace--down along the sh.o.r.e till just abreast of the islet.

Then he plunged in and swam for it, his sharp black muzzle and narrow white head cleaving the smooth flood with almost incredible swiftness, and throwing off an oily, trailing ripple on either side. When he reached the islet the front of the salmon school was still some forty or fifty paces distant. He crossed the rocks, slipped smoothly down into the water again, and waited for the s.h.i.+ning turmoil to break upon him.

For some reason known only to the hosts of the salmon themselves, however, the s.h.i.+ning turmoil swerved as it approached the islet, crowding over toward the other side of the channel. The bear's hungry little eyes blazed savagely at this. He imagined the hordes had taken alarm at his dread presence,--a natural imagining on his part, since he knew of nothing but the old bull walrus that dared ever await his approach. But as a matter of fact the eager myriads of the salmon, thrilling with life and vigour and the mating fire of spring, were no more conscious of the savage animal than if he had been a rock or an ice-floe. The joy of the incoming rush was in their splendid sinews, and the lure of the shallow, singing rapids in their veins. To that exultant host an enemy, however formidable, was but an incident. The exhaustless fertility of their race derided fate.

With a grunt the bear launched himself through the whitish flood. On the flanks of the flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed by, in order that there should be many dead fish to drift ash.o.r.e 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce 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, ma.s.sive 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 fis.h.i.+ng-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 kins.h.i.+p of the whales. Its ma.s.sive 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, thras.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sailant.

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 ma.s.s smote him full in the chest, with a force that knocked the wind out of him, and bore him, clawing and biting pa.s.sionately, 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 sh.o.r.e 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. Slas.h.i.+ng, tearing, ripping, with all four desperate paws at once, he was speedily shredding the narwhal's head to fragments. With mad thras.h.i.+ngs 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 hoa.r.s.ely 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 pa.s.sing salmon just to rea.s.sure himself. Then, with the largest prize in his jaws, he swam slowly to the rock, crawled ash.o.r.e, and lay down in sullen triumph to lick his wounds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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 gra.s.s-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 gra.s.s 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, st.u.r.dy body, short tail, very short, st.u.r.dy 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 appet.i.te still unappeased, the shrew at once resumed his vehement digging. His marvellously developed nostrils had a.s.sured 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 gra.s.s-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 gra.s.s-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 suns.h.i.+ne, glowed a gorgeous red-and-black b.u.t.terfly. 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 a.s.sailants. 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.