Children of the Wild Part 6

"This was very near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, crawled back into his hole.

"The white dog opened his mouth from ear to ear, and looked up at the Boy with an unmistakable grin. The Boy, half laughing, half sympathetic, went and peered into the hole.

"'I guess you'd better keep out of Old Wall-Eye's way after this!' said he.

"And Young Grumpy did. Whenever the one-eyed gander was in the yard, then Young Grumpy stayed in the garden."

CHAPTER IV

LITTLE SWORD AND THE INKMAKER

Out across the shining expanse of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue b.u.t.terfly, as blue as if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake. It was a foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from sh.o.r.e, and over that lonely, treacherous element which has such scant mercy for b.u.t.terflies. The turquoise wings dipped and rose, sometimes coming so close to the water that the Babe caught his breath, thinking the frail voyager's eyes were unable to distinguish between the crystal purity of the water and that of the air. At last a wing tip, or more likely the tip of the velvet tail, brushed the surface. It was only the lightest touch; and instantly, suddenly, as if startled by the chill contact, the azure flutterer rose again. In the same instant the water swirled heavily beneath her, a little sucking whirlpool appeared shattering the mirror, and circular ripples began to widen quickly and smoothly from the break.

"That was a big fellow!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. But the Babe said nothing, being too intent upon the aerial voyager's career.

For two or three moments the flake of sky fluttered higher. Then, as the ripples smoothed themselves out, she seemed to forget, and began to descend again as if lured downward by her own dainty reflection. Yet she had not quite forgotten, for now she only came within six or seven inches of the traitorous surface. Now her heavenly wings supported her for a moment almost motionless.

In that moment a splendid shape, gleaming like a bolt of silver, shot a clear foot into the air and fell back with a ma.s.sive splash. The turquoise b.u.t.terfly was gone.

"Oh--h!" cried the Babe, almost with a sob in his voice. He loved the blue b.u.t.terflies as he loved no others of their brilliant and perishing kindred.

"_Gee_!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. "But he's a _whale_!"

The Babe, in his surprise at this remarkable statement, forgot to mourn for the fate of the blue b.u.t.terfly.

"Why, Uncle Andy," he protested. "I didn't know whales could live here in this little lake."

Uncle Andy made a despairing gesture. "Oh," he murmured wearily, "a fellow has to be _so_ careful what he says to you! The next time I make a metaphorical remark in your presence, I'll draw a diagram to go with it!"

The Babe looked puzzled. He was on the point of asking what "a metaphorical" was, and also "a diagram"; but he inferred that there were no whales, after all, in Silverwater. He had misunderstood Uncle Andy's apparently simple statement of fact. And he felt convicted of foolishness. Anxious to reinstate himself in his uncle's approval by an unexpected display of knowledge he waived "metaphorical" aside, let "diagram" remain a mystery, and remarked disinterestedly:

"Well, I'm glad there ain't any _swordfish_ in Silverwater."

"Bless the child!" cried Uncle Andy. "Whatever has been putting swordfish into your head?"

"Bill!" replied the Babe truthfully.

"And what do you know about swordfish, then?" proceeded his uncle.

The Babe was much flattered at the unusual favor of being allowed to air his information.

"They're awful!" he explained. "They're as big as a canoe. And they've got a sword as long as your leg, Uncle Andy, right in their tail, so they can stab whales and porpoises with it, just carelessly, without looking round, so as to make pretend it was an accident. And they're quicker than greased lightning, Bill says. So you see, if there was one here in the lake, we couldn't ever go in swimming."

Uncle Andy refrained from smiling. He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe for half a minute, while the Babe waited for his verdict. At length he said, between puffs:

"Well, now, there's quite a lot of truth in that, considering that it's one of Bill's yarns. The swordfish does carry a sword. And he does jab it into things, whales, sharks, boats, seals, anything whatever that he thinks might be good to eat or that he does not like the looks of. And _you_ are quite correct in thinking that the lake would not be a health-resort for us if it was occupied by a healthy swordfish. But in one particular Bill has got you badly mixed up. The swordfish carries his sword not in his tail, but on the tip of his snout more like a bayonet than a sword. I don't think Bill has ever been at all intimate with swordfish--eh, what?"

The Babe shook his blonde head sadly over this instance of Bill's inaccuracy.

"And are they as big as Bill says?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes! He's all right _there_!" a.s.sented Uncle Andy. "When they are quite grown up they are sometimes as long as a canoe, a seventeen or eighteen foot canoe. And they _are_ quick as 'greased lightning'

all right!"

"But how big are they when they're little?" pursued the Babe, getting around to his favorite line of investigation.

"Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle Andy. "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing sword-fish."

"I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did not find things just hatched very interesting.

"I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly. "Of course when they are first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn. But _then_ things begin to hum."

"Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with antic.i.p.ation.

"Well," began Uncle Andy slowly, looking far across the lake as if he saw things that the Babe could not see, "in one way and another, partly by good luck and partly by good management, Little Sword succeeded in dodging his enemies till he had grown to be about two feet in length, without counting the six inches or so of sharp, tapering blade that stood straight out from the tip of his nose. He was as handsome a youngster as you would wish to see, slender, gracefully tapering to the base of the broad, powerful tail, wide-finned, radiant in silver and blue-green, and with a splendid crest-like dorsal fin of vivid ultramarine extending almost the whole length of his back. His eyes were large, and blazed with a savage fire. Hanging poised a few feet above the tops of the waving, rose-and-purple sea-anemones and the bottle-green trailers of seaweed, every fin tense and quivering, he was ready to dart in any direction where a feast or a fight might seem to be waiting for him.

"You see, the mere fact that he was alive at all was proof that he had come triumphantly through many terrible dangers, so it was no wonder he had a good deal of confidence in himself. And his shapely little body was so packed full of energy, so thrilling with vitality, that he felt himself already a sort of lord in those shoal-water domains.

"But with all his lively experiences, there were things, lots of things, which Little Sword didn't know even yet."

"I _guess_ so!" murmured the Babe, suddenly impressed with the extent of his own ignorance.

"For instance," Uncle Andy went on, ignoring the interruption, "he had not yet learned anything about the Inkmaker."

Here he paused impressively, as if to lure the Babe on. But into the latter's head popped so many questions all together, at the mention of a creature with so strange a name, that for the moment he could not for the life of him get any one of them into words. He merely gasped. And Uncle Andy, delighted with this apparent self-restraint, went on graciously.

"You're improving a lot," said he. "You're getting quite a knack of holding your tongue. Well, you're going to know all about it in half a minute.

"Little Sword caught sight of a queer, watery-pinkish, speckled creature on the bottom, just crossing a s.p.a.ce of clear sand. It was about twice as long as himself, with a pair of terrible big, ink-black eyes, and a long bunch of squirming feelers growing out of its head like leaf-stalks out of the head of a beet. He noticed that two of these feelers were twice as long as the rest, which did not seem to him a matter of the least importance. But he noticed at the same time that the creature looked soft and good to eat. The next instant, like a ray of light flashed suddenly, he darted at it.

"But swift as he was, the pale creature's inky eyes had noted him in time. His feelers bunched suddenly tight and straight, and he shot backwards, at the same moment spouting a jet of black fluid from beneath his beaked mouth. The black jet spread instantly in a thick cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword could not see through it at all. Instead of the soft flesh he had expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a ma.s.s of sticky anemones, shearing them from their base.

"In a fury, Little Sword dashed this way and that, trusting to luck that he would strike his elusive enemy in the darkness. But that enemy's eyes, with their enormous bulging surface and the jetty background to their lenses, could see clearly where the jewel-like eyes of the young swordfish could make out nothing. Little Sword, emerging into the half light at the edge of the cloud, was just about to give up the idle search, when something small but firm fastened itself upon his side, so sharply that it seemed to bite into the flesh.

"Little Sword's tense muscles quivered at the shock, and he gave a mighty leap which should, by all his customary reckoning, have carried him fifty feet from the spot. To his horrified amazement he did not go as many inches, nor the half of it! And then another something, small but terrible, fastened itself upon his shoulder.

"Then the black, murky cloud thinned quite away; and Little Sword saw what had happened. The pale creature, having reached a rock to which he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned savagely upon his rash a.s.sailant. Little Sword was the prisoner of those two longer tentacles. They were trying to drag him down within reach of the other feelers, which writhed up at him like a lot of hideous snakes."

"Ugh!" cried the Babe with a shudder. "But how did they hold on to him?"

"You see," said Uncle Andy, "every feeler, long or short, had a row of saucer-shaped suckers along its underside, like the heads of those rubber-tipped arrows which I've seen you shooting at the wall, and which stick where they strike. Only _these_ suckers could _hold on_, I can tell you, so fast that _you_ could never have pulled off even the littlest of them.

"Little Sword looked down into the awful eyes of the Inkmaker, and realized that he had made a great mistake. But he was game all through. It was not for a swordfish, however young, to give in to any odds. Besides, just below those two great eyes, which stared up at him without ever a wink, he saw a terrible beak of a mouth, which opened and shut as if impatient to get hold of him. This sight was calculated to encourage him to exert himself, if he had needed any more encouragement than the grip of those two, pale, writhing feelers on his flesh.

"Now, for his size, Little Sword was putting up a tremendous fight.

His broad, fluked tail and immense fins churned the water amazingly, and enabled him to spring this way and that in spite of all the efforts of the two long tentacles to hold him still. Nevertheless, he was slowly drawn downwards, till one of the shorter feelers reached for a hold upon him. He darted at it, and by a lucky plunge of his sword cut its snaky tip clean off. It twisted back out of the way, like a startled worm; and Little Sword lunged at the next one. He pierced it all right, but at a point where it was so thick that the stroke did not sever it, and the tip, curling over, fastened upon him. At the same moment another feeler fixed itself upon the base of his tail, half paralyzing his struggles.