Children of the Wild Part 11

"For the youngster of so huge a mother, the snowhouse baby was quite absurdly small. But this defect, by sticking closely to his business, he remedied with amazing rapidity. In fact, if his mother had cared to stay awake long enough to watch, she could fairly have seen him grow. But, of course, this growth was all at his mother's expense, seeing that he had no food except her milk. So as he grew bigger and fatter, she grew thinner and lanker, till you would hardly have recognized this long, gaunt, white fur bag of bones for the plump beast of the previous autumn.

"But all pa.s.ses--even an Arctic winter. The sun began to make short daily trips across the horizon. It got higher and higher, and hotter and hotter. The snow began to melt, crumble, shrink upon itself. Up to within a couple of hundred yards of the hidden snowhouse, what had seemed to be solid land broke up and revealed itself as open sea, crowded with huge ice cakes, and walrus, and seals. Sea birds came splashing and screaming. And a wonderful thrill awoke in the air.

"That thrill got down into the snowhouse--the roof of which was by this time getting much thinner. The cub found himself much less sleepy. He grew restless. He wanted to stretch his st.u.r.dy little legs to find out what they were good for. His mother, too, woke up. She found herself so hungry that there was no temptation to go to sleep again. Moreover, it was beginning to feel too warm for comfort--that is, for a polar bear's comfort, not for yours or mine--in the snowhouse. She got up and shook herself. One wall of the snowhouse very civilly gave way a bit, allowing her more room. But the roof, well supported by the rock, still held.

The snowhouse was full of a beautiful pale-blue light.

"Just at this particular moment a little herd of walrus--two old bulls and four cows with their fat, oily-looking calves--came sprawling, floundering and grunting by. They were quite out of place on land, of course, but for some reason known only to themselves they were crossing over the narrow neck of low ground from another bay, half a mile away.

Perhaps the ice pack had been jammed in by wind and current on that side, filling the shallow bay to the bottom and cutting the walrus off from their feeding grounds. If not that, then it was some other equally urgent reason, or the ma.s.sive beasts, who can move on land only by a series of violent and exhausting flops, would never have undertaken an enterprise so formidable as a half-mile overland journey. They were accomplishing it, however, with a vast deal of groaning and wheezing and deep-throated grunting, when they arrived at the end of the crevice wherein the snowhouse baby and his mother were concealed.

"Lifting their huge, whiskered and tusked heads, and plunging forward laboriously on their awkward nippers, the two old bulls went by, followed by the ponderous cows with their lumpy, rolling calves. The hindermost cow, a few feet to the right of the herd, came so close to the end of the crevice that the edge of the snow gave way and her left nipper slipped into it, throwing her forward upon her side. As she struggled to recover herself, close beside her the snow was heaved up, and a terrible, grinning white head emerged, followed by gigantic shoulders and huge, claw-armed, battling paws.

"This sudden and dreadful apparition startled the walrus cow into new vigor, so that with a convulsive plunge she tore herself free of the pitfall. For a couple of seconds the old bear towered above her, with sagacious eyes taking in the whole situation. Then, judiciously ignoring the mother, she sprang over her, treading her down into the snow, fell upon the fat calf, and with one tremendous buffet broke its neck.

"With a hoa.r.s.e roar of grief and fury the cow wheeled upon her haunches, reared her sprawling bulk aloft, and tried to throw herself upon the slayer. The bear nimbly avoided the shock, and whirled round to see where her cub was. Blinking at the light and dazed by the sudden uproar, but full of curiosity, he was just crawling up out of the ruins of the snowhouse. His mother dragged him forth by the scruff of the neck, and with a heave of one paw sent him rolling over and over along the snow, a dozen paces out of danger. At the same time something in her savage growls conveyed to him a first lesson in that wholesome fear which it is so well for the children of the wild to learn early. As he pulled himself together and picked himself up he was still full of curiosity, but at the same time he realized the absolute necessity for keeping out of the way of something, whatever it was.

"He soon saw what it was. At the cry of the bereaved mother the two great walrus bulls had turned. Now, with curious, choked roars, which seemed to tear their way with difficulty out of their deep chests, they came floundering back to the rescue. The cub, a sure instinct a.s.serting itself at once, looked behind him to see that the path of escape was clear. Then he sat up on his haunches, his twinkling little eyes shifting back and forth between those mighty oncoming bulks and the long, gaunt, white form of his mother.

"For perhaps half a minute the old bear stood her ground, dodging the clumsy but terrific onslaughts of the cow, and dealing her two or three buffets which would have smashed in the skeleton of any creature less tough than a walrus or an elephant. But she had no notion of risking her health and the future of her baby by cultivating any more intimate acquaintance with those two roaring mountains of blubber which were bearing down upon her. When they were within just one more crashing plunge, she briskly drew aside, whirled about, and trotted off to join her cub. They were really so clumsy and slow, those walruses, that she hardly cared to hurry.

"For a few yards the two bulls pursued her; so she and the cub strolled off together to a distance of some fifty paces, and there halted to see what would happen next. Even creatures so dull-witted as those walrus bulls could see they would waste their time if they undertook to chase bears on dry land, so they turned back, grumbling under their long tusks, and joined the cow in inspecting the body of the dead calf. Soon coming to the conclusion that it was quite too dead to be worth bothering about, they all three went floundering on after the other cows, who had by this time got their own calves safely down to the water, and were swimming about anxiously, as if they feared that the enemy might follow them even into their own element. Then, after as brief an interval as discretion seemed to require, the old bear led the way back, sniffed at the body of the fat walrus calf, and crouched down beside it with a long _woof_ of deepest satisfaction. For it is not often, let me tell you, that a polar bear, ravenous after her long winter's fast, is lucky enough to make a kill like that just at the very moment of coming out of her den."

Uncle Andy knocked the ashes out of his pipe with that air of finality which the Child knew so well, and sometimes found so disappointing'.

"But what became of the snowhouse baby?" he urged.

"Oh," replied Uncle Andy, getting up from the chopping-log, "you see, he was no longer a snowhouse baby, because the snowhouse was all smashed up, and also rapidly melting. Moreover, it was no longer winter, you know; so he was just like lots of other wild babies, and went about getting into trouble, and getting out again, and growing up, till at last, when he was almost half as big as herself and _perfectly_ well able to take care of himself, his mother chased him away and went off to find another snowhouse."

CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE SILK WING

The first of the twilight over Silverwater. So ethereal were the thin washes of palest orange and apple-green reflection spreading over the surface of the lake, out beyond the fringe of alder bushes, so bubble-like in delicacy the violet tones of the air among the trees, just fading away into the moth-wing brown of dusk, that the Child was afraid to ask even the briefest questions, lest his voice should break the incomparable enchantment. Uncle Andy sat smoking, his eyes withdrawn in a dream. From the other side of the point, quite out of sight, where Bill was washing the dishes after the early camp supper, came a soft clatter of tins. But the homely sound had no power to jar the quiet.

The magic of the hour took it, and trans.m.u.ted it, and made it a note in the chord of the great stillness. From the pale greenish vault of sky came a long, faint tw.a.n.g as of a silver string, where the swoop of a night hawk struck the tranced air to a moment's vibration. A minute or two later the light splash of a small trout leaping, and then, from the heart of the hemlock wood further down the sh.o.r.e, the mellow _hoo-hoo-hoo-oo_ of a brown owl.

The Child was squatting on the mossy turf and staring out, round-eyed, across the water. Suddenly he jumped, clapped both grimy little hands to his face, and piped a shrill "Oh!" A bat's wing had flittered past his nose so close that he might have caught it in his teeth if he had wanted to--_and_ been quick enough.

Uncle Andy turned, took his pipe from his mouth with marked deliberation, and eyed the Child severely.

"What on earth's the matter?" he inquired, after a disapproving pause.

"I thought it was trying to bite my nose," explained the Child apologetically.

"There's not very much to bite, you know," said Uncle Andy, in a carping mood at having had his reveries disturbed.

"I know it's pretty little, and turns up--rather," agreed the Child; "but I don't want anything to bite it."

"Nonsense!" said Uncle Andy. "Who'd want to?"

"It was that bat!" declared the Child, pointing to the shadowy form zigzagging over the fringe of bushes at the edge of the water. "He came down and hit me right in the face--almost."

"That bat bite you!" retorted Uncle Andy with a sniff of scorn. "Why, he was doing you the most friendly turn he knew how. No doubt there was a big mosquito just going to bite you, and that little chap there snapped it up in time to save you. There are lots of folk beside bats that get themselves misunderstood just when they are trying hardest to do some good."

"Oh, I see!" murmured the Child politely--which, of course, meant that he did not see at all what Uncle Andy was driving at. "_Why_ do bats get themselves misunderstood, Uncle Andy?"

His uncle eyed him narrowly. He was always suspecting the Child of making game of him--than which nothing could be further from the Child's honest and rather matter-of-fact intentions. The question, to be sure, was rather a poser. While he pondered a reply to it--apparently absorbed in the task of relighting his pipe--the Child's attention was diverted. And forever the question of why bats get themselves misunderstood remained unanswered.

The bat chanced at the moment to be zig-zagging only a dozen feet or so away, when from the empty air above, as if created on the instant out of nothingness, dropped a noiseless, shadowy shape of wings. It seemed to catch the eccentric little flutterer fairly. But it didn't--for the bat was a marvelous adept at dodging. With a lightning swerve it emerged from under the great wings and darted behind Uncle Andy's head.

The baffled owl, not daring to come so near the hated man-creatures, winnowed off in ghostly silence.

At the same moment a tiny, quivering thing, like a dark leaf, floated to the ground. There, instead of lying quiet like a leaf, it fluttered softly.

"What's that?" demanded the Child.

"_Hush_!" ordered Uncle Andy in a peremptory whisper.

The shadowy leaf on the ground continued to flutter, as if trying to rise into the air. Presently the bat reappeared and circled over it.

A moment more and it dropped, touched the ground for a second with wide, uplifted wings, and then sailed off again on a long, swift, upward curve. The fluttering, shadowy leaf had disappeared.

For once the Child had no questions ready. He had so much to ask about all at once. His eyes like saucers with interrogation, he turned appealingly to his uncle and said nothing.

"That was the little one--one of the two little ones," said Uncle Andy obligingly.

"But what?--why?--"

"You see," went on Uncle Andy, hastening to explain before he could be overwhelmed, "your poor little friend was a mother bat, and she was carrying her two young ones with her, clinging to her neck with their wings, while she was busy hunting gnats and moths and protecting your nose from mosquitoes. When the owl swooped on her, and so nearly caught her, she dodged so violently that one of the little ones was jerked from its hold. Being too young to fly, it could do nothing but flutter to the ground and squat there, beating its wings till the mother came to look for it. How she managed to pick it up again so neatly, I can't say. But you saw for yourself how neat it was, eh?"

The Child nodded his head vigorously and smacked his lips in agreement.

"But why does she carry them around with her that way?" he inquired.

"It seems to me awfully dangerous. I don't think _I'd_ like it."

He pictured to himself his own substantial mamma swooping erratically through the air, with skirts flying out behind and himself clinging precariously to her neck. And at the thought he felt a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach.

"Well, you know, you're not a bat," said Uncle Andy sententiously. "If you were you'd probably think it much pleasanter, and far _less_ dangerous, than being left at home alone while your mother was out swooping 'round after moths and June bugs.'"

"Why?" demanded the Child promptly.

"Well, you just listen a bit," answered Uncle Andy in his exasperating way. He hated to answer any of the Child's most innocent questions directly if he could get at them in a roundabout way. "Once upon a time"--("Ugh!" thought the Child to himself, "_this_ is going to be a fairy story!" But it wasn't). "Once upon a time," went on Uncle Andy slowly, "there was a young bat--a baby bat so small you might have put him into your mother's thimble. He lived high up in the peak of the roof of an old barn down in the meadows beside the golden, rushing waters of the Nashwaak stream, not more than five or six miles from Fredericton. We'll call him Little Silk Wing."

"_I_'ve been to Fredericton!" interjected the Child with an important air.

"Really!" said Uncle Andy. "Well, Little Silk Wing hadn't. And now, who's going to tell this story, you or I?"

"I won't interrupt any more!" said the Child penitently. "But why was he called Little Silk Wing, Uncle Andy?"