Kings in Exile Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: "And the writhing tentacles composed themselves once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless pa.s.ser-by."]

As the victim was drawn down to the waiting beak, among the bases of the tentacles, all the tentacles awoke to dreadful life, writhing in aimless excitement, although there was no work for them to do. In a few seconds the fish was torn asunder and engulfed--those inky eyes the while unwinking and unmoved. A darker, livid hue pa.s.sed fleetingly over the pallid body of the octopus. Then it slipped back under the shelter of the rock; and the writhing tentacles composed themselves once more to stillness upon the bottom, awaiting the next careless pa.s.ser-by. Once more they seemed mere inert trailers of weed, not worth the notice of fish or crab. And soon the anemones near by reopened their treacherous blooms of yellow and crimson.

Whether because there was something in the gold-and-azure fish that disturbed his inward content, or because his place of ambush had somehow grown distasteful to his soft, unarmored body, the octopus presently bestirred himself and crawled forth into the open, walking awkwardly on the incurled tips of his tentacles. It looked about as comfortable a method of progression as for a baby to creep on the back of its hands. The traveller himself did not seem to find it altogether satisfactory, for all at once he sprang upward nimbly, clear of the bottom, and gathered his eight tentacles into a compact parallel bunch extending straight out past his eyes. In this att.i.tude he was no longer clumsy, but trim and swift-looking. Beneath the bases of the tentacles, on the under side of the body, a sort of valve opened spasmodically and took in a huge gulp of water, which was at once ejected with great force through a tube among the tentacles. Driven by the strange propulsion of this pulsating stream, the elongated shape shot swiftly on its way, but travelling backward instead of forward.

The traveller had apparently taken his direction with care before he started, however, for he made his way straight to another rock, weedier and more overhanging than the first. Here he stopped, settled downward, and let his tentacles once more sprawl wide, preparatory to backing his spotted body-sac into its new quarters.

This was the moment when he was least ready for attack or defence; and just at this moment a foraging dolphin, big-jawed and hungry, shot down upon him through the lucent green, mistaking him, perhaps, for an overgrown but unretaliating squid. The a.s.sailant aimed at the big, succulent-looking body, but missed his aim, and caught instead one of the tentacles which had reared themselves instantly to ward off the attack. Before he realized what was happening, another tentacle had curled about his head, clamping his jaws firmly together so that he could not open them to release his hold; while yet others had wrapped themselves securely about his body.

The dolphin was a small one; and such a situation as this had never come within range of his experience. In utter panic he lashed out with his powerful tail and darted forward, carrying the octopus with him.

But the weight upon his head, the crushing enc.u.mbrance about his body, were too much for him, and bore him slowly downward. Suddenly two tentacles, which had been trailing for an anchorage, got grip upon the bottom--and the dolphin's frantic flight came to a stop abruptly. He lashed, plunged, whirled in a circle, but all to no purpose. His struggles grew weaker. He was drawn down, inexorably, till he lay quivering on the sand. Then the great beak of the octopus made an end of the matter, and the prey was dragged back to the lair beneath the weed-covered rock.

A long time after this, a shadow bigger and blacker than that of any albacore--bigger than that of any shark or saw-fish--drifted over the cove. There was a splash, and a heavy object came down upon the bottom, spreading the swift stillness of terror for yards about. The shadow ceased drifting, for the boat had come to anchor. Then in a very few minutes, because the creatures of the sea seem unable to fear what does not move, the life of the sea-floor again bestirred itself, and small, misshapen forms that did not love the sunlight began to convene in the shadow of the boat.

Presently, from over the side of the boat descended a dark tube, with a bright tip that seemed like a kind of eye. The tube moved very slowly this way and that, as if to let the eye scan every hiding-place on the many-colored bottom. As it swept over the rock that sheltered the octopus, it came to a stop. Those inert, sprawling things that looked like weeds appeared to interest it. Then it was softly withdrawn.

A few moments later, a large and tempting fish appeared at the surface of the water, and began slowly sinking straight downward in a most curious fashion. The still eyes of the octopus took note at once. They had never seen a fish behave that way before; but it plainly was a fish. A quiver of eagerness pa.s.sed through the sprawling tentacles, for their owner was already hungry again. But the prize was still too far away, and the tentacles did not move. The curious fish, however, seemed determined to come no nearer, and at last the waiting tentacles came stealthily to life. Almost imperceptibly they drew themselves forward, writhing over the bottom as casually as weeds adrift in a light current. And behind them those two great, inky, impa.s.sive eyes, and then the fat, mottled, sac-like body, emerged furtively from under the rock.

The bottom, just at this point, was covered with a close brown weed, and almost at once the body of the octopus and his tentacles began to change to the same hue. When the change was complete, the gliding monster was almost invisible. He was now directly beneath that incomprehensible fish; but the fish had gently risen, so that it was still out of reach.

For a few seconds the octopus crouched, staring upward with motionless...o...b.., and gathering himself together. Then he sprang straight up, like a leaping spider. He fixed two tentacles upon the tantalizing prey; then the other tentacles straightened out, and with a sharp jet of water from his propulsion tube he essayed to dart back to his lair.

To his amazement, the prey refused to come. In some mysterious way it managed to hold itself--or was held--just where it was. Amazement gave way to rage. The monster wrapped his prize in three more tentacles, and then plunged his beak into it savagely. The next instant he was jerked to the surface of the water. A blaze of fierce sun blinded him, and strong meshes enclosed him, binding and entangling his tentacles.

In such an appalling crisis most creatures of sea or land would have been utterly demoralized by terror. Not so the octopus. Maintaining undaunted the clutch of one tentacle upon his prize, he turned the others, along with the effectual menace of his great beak, to the business of battle. The meshes fettered him in a way that drove him frantic with rage, but two of his tentacles managed to find their way through, and writhed madly this way and that in search of some tangible antagonist on which to fasten themselves. While they were yet groping vainly for a grip, he felt himself lifted bodily forth into the strangling air, and crowded--net, prey, and all--into a dark and narrow receptacle full of water.

This fate, of course, was not to be tamely endured. Though he was suffocating in the unnatural medium, and though his great, unwinking eyes could see but vaguely outside their native element, he was all fight. One tentacle clutched the rim of the metal vessel; and one fixed its deadly suckers upon the bare black arm of a half-seen adversary who was trying to crowd him down into the dark prison. There was a strident yell. A sharp, authoritative voice exclaimed: "Look out! Don't hurt him! _I'll_ make him let go!" But the next instant the frightened darky had whipped out a knife and sliced off a good foot of the clutching tentacle. As the injured stump shrank back upon its fellows like a spade-cut worm, the other tentacle was deftly twisted loose from its hold on the rim, and the captive felt himself forced down into the narrow prison. A cover was clapped on, and he found himself in darkness, with his prey still gripped securely. Upset and raging though he was, there was nothing to be done about it, so he fell to feasting indignantly upon the prize for which he had paid so dear.

CHAPTER II

Left to himself, the furious prisoner by and by disentangled himself from the meshes of the net, and composed himself as well as he could in his straitened quarters. Then for days and days thereafter there was nothing but tossing and tumbling, blind feeding, and uncomprehended distress; till at last his prison was turned upside down and he was dropped unceremoniously into a great tank of gla.s.s and enamel that glowed with soft light. Bewildered though he was, he took in his surroundings in an instant, straightened his tentacles out before him, and darted backwards to the shelter of an overhanging rock which he had marked on the floor of the tank. Having backed his defenceless body under that shield, he flattened his tentacles anxiously among the stones and weeds that covered the tank-bottom, and impa.s.sively stared about.

It was certainly an improvement on the black hole from which he had just escaped. Light came down through the clear water, but a cold, white light, little like the green and gold glimmer that illumined the slow tide in his Caribbean home. The floor about him was not wholly unfamiliar. The stones, the sand, the colored weeds, the sh.e.l.ls,--they were like, yet unlike, those from which he had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away. But on three sides there were white, opaque walls, so near that he could have touched them by stretching out a tentacle.

Only on the fourth side was there s.p.a.ce--but a s.p.a.ce of gloom and inexplicable moving confusion from which he shrank. In this direction the floor of sand and stones and weeds ended with a mysterious abruptness; and the vague openness beyond filled him with uneasiness.

Pale-colored shapes, with eyes, would drift up, sometimes in crowds, and stare in at him fixedly. It daunted him as nothing else had ever done, this drift of peering faces. It was long before he could teach himself to ignore them. When food came to him,--small fish and crabs, descending suddenly from the top of the water,--at such times the faces would throng tumultuously in that open s.p.a.ce, and for a long time the many peering eyes would so disconcert him as almost to spoil his appet.i.te. But at last he grew accustomed even to the faces and the eyes, and disregarded them as if they were so much pa.s.sing seaweed, borne by the tide. His investigating tentacles had shown him that between him and the s.p.a.ce of confusion there was an incomprehensible barrier fixed, which he could see through but not pa.s.s; and that if he could not get out, neither could the faces get in to trouble him.

Thus, well fed and undisturbed, the octopus grew fairly content in his gla.s.s house, and never guessed the stormy life of the great city beyond his walls. For all he knew, his comfortable prison might have been on the sh.o.r.e of one of his own Bahaman Keys. He was undisputed lord of his domain, narrow though it was; and the homage he received from the visitors who came to pay him court was untiring.

His lordship had been long unthreatened, when one day, had he not been too indifferent to notice them, he might have seen that the faces in the outer gloom were unusually numerous, the eyes unusually intent.

Suddenly there was the accustomed splash in the water above him. That splash had come to him to mean just food, unresisting victims, and his tentacles were instantly alert to seize whatever should come within reach.

This time the splash was unusually heavy, and he was surprised to see a ma.s.sive, roundish creature, with a little, pointed tail sticking out behind, a small, snake-like head stretched out in front, and two little flippers outspread on each side. With these four flippers the stranger came swimming down calmly towards him. He had never seen anything at all like this daring stranger; but without the slightest hesitation he whipped up two writhing tentacles and seized him. The faces beyond the gla.s.s surged with excitement.

When that abrupt and uncompromising clutch laid hold upon the turtle, his tail, head, and flippers vanished as if they had never been, and his upper and lower sh.e.l.ls closed tight together till he seemed nothing more than a lifeless box of horn. Absolutely unresisting, he was drawn down to the impa.s.sive eyes and gaping beak of his captor.

The tentacles writhed all over him, stealthily but eagerly investigating. Then the great parrot-beak laid hold on the sh.e.l.l, expecting to crush it. Making no impression, however, it slid tentatively all over the exasperating prize, seeking, but in vain, for a weak point.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Without the slightest hesitation he whipped up two writhing tentacles and seized him."]

This went on for several minutes, while the watching faces outside the gla.s.s gazed in tense expectancy. Then at last the patience of the octopus gave way. In a sudden fury he threw himself upon the exasperating sh.e.l.l, tumbling it over and over, biting at it madly, wrenching it insanely with all his tentacles. And the faces beyond the gla.s.s surged thrillingly, wondering how long the turtle would stand such treatment.

Shut up within his safe armor, the turtle all at once grew tired of being tumbled about, and his wise discretion forsook him. He did not mind being shut up, but he objected to being knocked about. Some prudence he had, to be sure, but not enough to control his short temper. Out shot his narrow, vicious-looking head, with its dull eyes and punishing jaws, and fastened with the grip of a bulldog upon the nearest of the tentacles, close to its base. A murmur arose outside the gla.s.s.

The rage of the octopus swelled to a frenzy, and in his contortions the locked fighters b.u.mped heavily against the gla.s.s, making the faces shrink back. The small stones on the bottom were scattered this way and that, and the fine silt rose in a cloud that presently obscured the battle.

Had the turtle had cunning to match his courage, the lordship of the gla.s.s house might have changed holders in that fight. Had he fixed his unbreakable grip in the head of his foe, just above the beak, he would have conquered in the end. But as it was, he had now a vulnerable point, and at last the octopus found it. His beak closed upon the exposed half of the turtle's head, and slowly, inexorably, sheared it clean off just behind the eyes. The stump shrank instantly back into the sh.e.l.l; and the sh.e.l.l became again the unresisting plaything of the tentacles, which presently, as if realizing that it had no more power to retaliate, flung it aside. In a few minutes the silt settled. Then the eager faces beyond the gla.s.s saw the lord of the tank crouching motionless before his lair, his ink-like eyes as impa.s.sive and implacable as ever, while the turtle lay bottom side up against the gla.s.s, no more to be taken account of than a stone.

BACK TO THE WATER WORLD

BACK TO THE WATER WORLD

CHAPTER I

An iron coast, bleak, black, and desolate, without harborage for so much as a catboat for leagues to north or south. A coast so pitiless, so lashed forever by the long, sullen rollers of the North Atlantic, so tormented by the shifting and treacherous currents of the tide between its chains of outlying rocky islets, that no ship ever ventured willingly within miles of its uncompromising menace. A coast so little favored by summer that even in glowing August the sun could reach it seldom through its cold and drenching fogs.

Perhaps half a mile off sh.o.r.e lay the islands--some of them, indeed, mere ledges, deathtraps for ships, invisible except at low tide, but others naked hills of upthrust rock, which the highest tides and wildest hurricanes could not overwhelm. Even on the loftiest of them there was neither gra.s.s, bush, nor tree to break the jagged outlines, but day and night, summer and winter long, the sea-birds clamored over them, and brooded by the myriad on their upper ledges.

These islands were fretted, on both their landward and their seaward sides, by innumerable caves. In one of these caves, above the reach of the highest tide, and facing landward, so that even in the wildest storms no waves could invade it, the pup of the seal first opened his mild eyes upon the misty northern daylight.

Of all the younglings of the wild, he was perhaps the most winsome, with his soft, whitish, shadowy-toned, close, woolly coat, his round, babyish head, his dark, gentle eyes wide with wonder at everything to be seen from the cave mouth. He lay usually very near the entrance, but partly hidden from view by a ragged horn of rock. While alone--which was a good part of the time, indeed, like most fishermen's children--he would lie so still that his woolly little form was hardly to be distinguished from the rock that formed his couch. He had no desire to attract public attention--for the only public that might have been attracted to attend consisted of the pair of great sea eagles whose shadows sometimes swooped aross the ledge, or of an occasional southward-wandering white bear. As for the innumerable gulls, and gannets, and terns, and lesser auks, which made the air forever loud about these lonely islets, nothing could have induced them to pay him any attention whatever. They knew him, and his people, to be harmless; and that was all their winged and garrulous companies were concerned to know.

But to the little seal, on the other hand, the noisy birds were incessantly interesting. Filled with insatiable curiosity, his mild eyes gazed out upon the world. The sea just below the cave was, of course, below his line of vision; but at a distance of some hundred yards or so--a distance which varied hugely with the rising and falling of the tide--he caught sight of the waves, and felt himself strangely drawn to them. Whether leaden and menacing under the drift of rain and the brooding of gray clouds, or green-glinting under the sheen of too rare sunshine, he loved them and found them always absorbing. The sky, too, was worth watching, especially when white fleeces chased each other across a patch of blue, or wonderful colors, pallid yet intense, shot up into it at dawn from behind a far-off line of saw-toothed rocks.

The absences of the mother seal were sometimes long, for it required many fish to satisfy her appet.i.te and keep warm her red blood in those ice-cold arctic currents. Fish were abundant, to be sure, along that coast, where the invisible fruitfulness of the sea made compensation for the blank barrenness of the land; but they were swift and wary, and had to be caught, one at a time, outwitted and outspeeded in their own element. The woolly cub, therefore, was often hungry before his mother returned. But when, at last, she came, flopping awkwardly up the rocky slope, and pausing for an instant to reconnoitre, as her round, glistening head appeared over the brink of the ledge, the youngster's delight was not all in the satisfying of his hunger and in the mothering of his loneliness. As he snuggled under her caress, the salty drip from her wet, sleek sides thrilled him with a dim sense of antic.i.p.ation. He connected it vaguely with that endless, alluring dance of the waves beyond his threshold.

When he had grown a few days older, the little seal began to turn his attention from the brighter world outside to the shadows that surrounded him in his cave. His interest was caught at once by a woolly gray creature like himself, only somewhat smaller, which lay perhaps seven or eight feet away, at the other side of the cave, and farther back. He had not realized before that his narrow retreat was the home of two families. Being of a companionable disposition, he eyed his newly discovered neighbor with immense good-will. Finding no discouragement in the mild gaze that answered his, he presently raised himself on his flippers, and with laborious, ungainly effort flopped himself over to make acquaintance. Both youngsters were too unsophisticated for ceremony, too trusting for shyness, so in a very few minutes they were sprawling over each other in great content.

In this baby comradeship the stranger's mother, returning to her household duties, found them. She was smaller and younger than our Pup's dam, but with the same kindly eyes and the same salty-dripping coat. So, when her own baby fell to nursing, the Pup insisted confidently on sharing the entertainment. The young mother protested, and drew herself away uneasily, with little threatening grunts; but the Pup, refusing to believe she was in earnest, pressed his point so pertinaciously that at length he got his way. When, half an hour later, the other mother returned to her charge, well filled with fish and well disposed toward all the world, she showed no discontent at the situation. She belonged to the tribe of the "Harbor Seals," and, unlike her pugnacious cousins, the big "Hoods," she was always inclined towards peace and a good understanding. There was probably nothing that could have brought the flame of wrath into her confiding eyes, except an attack upon her young, on whose behalf she would have faced the sea-serpent himself. Without a moment's question, she joined the group; and henceforth the cave was the seat of a convenient partnership in mothers.

It was perhaps a week or two later, when the islands were visited by a wonderful spell of sun and calm. It was what would have been called, farther south, Indian summer. All along the ledges, just above the mark of the diminished surf, the seals lay basking in the glow. The gulls and mews clamored rapturously, and squabbled with gay zest over the choicer prizes of their fishing. It appeared to be generally known that the bears, displeased at the warmth, had withdrawn farther north.

The sea took on strange hues of opal and lilac and thrice-diluted sapphire. Even the high black cliffs across the charmed water veiled their harshness in a skyey haze. It was a time for delicious indolence, for the slackening of vigilance, for the forgetfulness of peril. And it was just at this very time that it came the young seal's way to get his first lesson in fear.

He was lying beside his mother, about a dozen feet out from the mouth of the cave. A few steps away basked his little cave-mate--alone for the moment, because its mother had flung herself vehemently down the slope to capture a wounded fish which had just been washed ash.o.r.e. As she reached the water's edge, a wide shadow floated across the rocks.

She wheeled like a flash and scrambled frantically up the steep. But she was too late. She saw the other mothers near by throw their bodies over those of their young, and lift their faces skyward with bared, defiant fangs. She saw her own little one, alone in the bright open, gaze around in helpless bewilderment and alarm. He saw her coming, and lifting himself on his weak flippers, started towards her with a little cry. Then came a terrible hissing of wings in the air above, and he cowered, trembling. The next instant, with a huge buffet of wind in all the upturned faces, a pair of vast, dark pinions were outspread above the trembler; great clutching talons reached down and seized him by neck and back; and his tiny life went out in a throttled whimper. The nearest seal, the mother of the Pup, reared on her flippers and lunged savagely at the marauder. But all she got was a blinding slash of rigid wing-tips across her face. Then, launching himself from the brink of the slope, the eagle flapped scornfully away across the water toward the black cliffs, his victim hanging limply from his claws. And all along the ledges the seals barked furiously after him.

The Pup, whom death had brushed so closely, could not be persuaded for hours to leave the shelter of his mother's side, even after she had led him back to the cave. But now he found himself the exclusive proprietor of two mothers; for the bereaved dam, thenceforth, was no less a.s.siduously devoted to him than his own parent. With such care, and with so abundant nourishment, he throve amazingly, outstripping in growth all the other youngsters of his age along the ledges. His terror quickly pa.s.sed away from him; but the results of the lesson long remained, in the vigilance with which his glance would sweep the sky, and question every approach of wings more wide than those of gull or gannet.

It was not long after this grim chance that the Pup's woolly coat began to change. A straight, close-lying under-fur pushed swiftly into view, and the wool dropped out--a process which a certain sense of irritation in his skin led him to hasten by rubbing his back and sides against the rock. In an astonishingly short time his coat grew like his mother's--a yellowish gray, dotted irregularly with blackish spots, and running to a creamy tone under the belly. As soon as this change was completed to his mother's satisfaction, he was led down close to the water's edge, where he had never been allowed before.