Tales of the Wilderness Part 11

The female would then take fright, and flap her wings; but the male would look down calmly with his big, glistening eyes, watching the wolf slowly clamber, slip and fall headlong downwards, bringing a heap of snow with it, tumbling over and over and yelping in fright.

The twilight crept on.

IV

In March, as the days lengthened, the sun grew warmer; the snow darkened and thawed; the twilight grew balmy; and the wolf-packs stirred, while prey became more abundant, for now all the forest denizens felt the overwhelming, entrancing throb of Spring, and wandered through the glades, down the ravines and into the woods, powerless under the sway of the early Spring-time langour; and it was easy to catch them.

The male-bird brought all his kill to his mate--he ate little himself: only what she left him, usually the entrails, the flesh of the thoracic muscles, the skin and the head, although she usually pecked out the eyes as the most savoury portion.

The sun was bright. There was a soft, gentle breeze. At the bottom of the ravine the dark, turbulent brook rushed gurgling between the sharp outlines of its snow-laden banks.

It was cool. The male-bird sat roosting with his eyes closed, his head sunk deep into his shoulders. Outwardly he bore a look of great humility, of languishing expectation, and a droll look of guiltiness wholly unbecoming to his natural severity.

At dusk he grew restless. He stood up on his feet, stretched his neck, opened wide his round eyes, spread out his wings, beating the air with them: then closed them again. Curling up into a ball, drawing his head into his shoulders and blinking, he croaked:

"Oo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" The rueful cry scared the forest denizens.

And the echo in the ravine answered back:

"Oo-oo..."

The twilight was green, merging into blue. The sky was spangled with great glowing stars. The pine-trees exhaled an oily odour. In the night-frost, the brook at the bottom of the ravine grew still.

Somewhere, caught in its current, birds were crying. Yet all was in a state of watchful calm.

When at length the night set in, the male stealthily and guiltily approached the female in the nest, cautiously spreading his big, awkward feet, which were so clumsy on the ground . . . A great and beautiful pa.s.sion urged him to the side of his mate.

He perched beside her, smoothing her feathers with his bill, still with that droll absurd look of guilt. The female responded to his caresses; she was very soft and tender; but behind this tenderness could be detected her great strength and power over the male: perhaps she realized it herself.

In the language of instinct, she said to her mate:

"Yes, you may."

The male succ.u.mbed to his pa.s.sion, and she yielded to him.

V

It was thus for a week or ten days.

Then at last, when the male came to her one night-time, she said:

"No! Enough!"

She spoke instinctively, for another time had come--the time for the birth of her children.

The male-bird, abashed, as though conscience-stricken at not having divined the bidding of his mate earlier, went away from her only to return at the end of a year.

VI

From Spring-time, all through the Summer until September, the male and female were absorbed in the great, beautiful, indispensable task of breeding their young. In September the fledgelings took wing.

The Spring and Summer developed in their multi-coloured glory: they burned with fiery splendour; the pine-trees glowed with a resinous phosph.o.r.escence. There was the fragrance of wormwood. Chicory, blue- bells, b.u.t.tercups, milfoil, and cowslip blossomed and faded; p.r.i.c.kly thistles abounded.

In May the nights were deeply blue.

In June they were pale green.

The dawn broke in a blood-red flare like a great conflagration, and at night pale silvery mists moved along the bottom of the ravine, washing the tops of the pines.

At first the nest contained five grey eggs with green speckles. Then came the little birds, big-headed, with disproportionately large yellow mouths, their bodies covered with down. They chirruped plaintively, stretching their long necks out from the nest, and they ate voraciously.

They flew in June, though as yet clumsily, piping, and awkwardly fluttering their immature wings.

The female was with them all the time, ruffling her feathers, solicitous and petulant.

The male had no power of thought and hardly any of feeling, but within him was a sense of pride in his own work, which he carried on with joy. His whole life was dominated with an instinct which subjugated his will and his desires to the care of his young.

He hunted for prey.

He had to obtain a great deal, because both his fledglings and his mate were voracious. He had to fly sometimes as far as the river Kama, in order to catch seagulls, which hovered over the huge, white, unfamiliar, many-eyed monsters that floated over the water, puffing, and smelling strangely like forest fires--the steamers!

He fed his fledgelings himself, tearing the meat into pieces. And he watched attentively how, with wide open beaks, they seized the little lumps of meat and, rolling their eyes and almost choking in the effort, swallowed them.

Sometimes one of the fledgelings awkwardly fell out of the nest and rolled down the steep. Then he hastily and anxiously flew after it, bustling and croaking as though he were grumbling; he would take it cautiously and clumsily in his talons and carry it, a frightened fl.u.s.tered atom, back to the nest. There he would smooth its feathers with his great beak for a long time, strutting round it, standing high on his legs, and continuing his anxious croaks.

He dared not sleep at nights.

He perched on the end of a root, vigilantly peering into the darkness, guarding his nestlings and their mother from danger. The stars were above him. At times, as though scenting the fullness and beauty of life, he fiercely and ruefully uttered his croak--scaring the night.

VII

He lived through the Winter in order to live. Through the Spring and Summer he lived to breed. He was unable to think. He acted instinctively, because G.o.d had so ordained it. Instinct alone guided him.

He lived to eat in the Winter so that he should not die. The Winters were cold and cruel.

In the Spring he bred. Then the blood coursed warmly through his veins. It was calm; the sun was bright; the stars glittered; and all the time he longed to stretch himself, to close his eyes, to smite the air with his wings, and to croak with an unreasoning joy.

The birdlings flew away in the autumn. The old birds and the young bade adieu for ever with indifference. Rain came, mists swept by, the sky hung lowering over the earth. The nights were dreary, damp and dark. The old couple sat together in their nest, trying to cover themselves and sleep. They froze and tossed about in discomfort.

Their eyes gleamed with greenish-yellow lights.

Thus pa.s.sed the thirteen years of their life together.

X

Then the male-bird died.

His wing had been injured in youth, at the time he fought for his mate. As the years rolled on, he found it more and more difficult to hunt his prey: he had to fly ever farther and farther for it, and in the nights he could get no rest because of the overwhelming pain that shot right through the whole of his wing, and tormented him terribly.

Formerly he had not heeded the injury; now he found it grew exceedingly grave and painful.