"Wee Tim'rous Beasties" Part 11

Its use he learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him headlong into inky darkness. His gills crumpled in the rough embrace of the mud, and his eyes and sucker were choked with slime. It was only a desperate, convulsive, aimless wriggle that freed him. The next time he cleared his immediate surroundings, and shot a full six inches upwards, only to sink slowly to the ooze again, motionless, and exhausted. He had described an elegant parabola.

Day by day his excursions grew longer and higher. Nor were they without adventure. Sometimes he would be caught in the wake of a stickleback, and would reach the bottom spinning, or on his back. He was lucky to reach it at all. Sometimes a sunbeam's dazzling radiance would check him in mid-career, and his callow eyes would take an hour to recover. It was a month before his eyelids developed. Sometimes he would collide with others of his own kind, equally unskilled in steering, and sometimes a vague quiver in the water caused him instinctively to mimic death, and thus avoid death in reality.

In a week's time he had grown out of all knowledge. To be accurate, he had doubled in size. But, even then, it was only the copper gleam of his eyes that saved him from utter insignificance. The remainder of him, for the most part of jelly transparency, was invisible against his sombre surroundings. His sucker had taken the semblance of a mouth, his gills were longer and more feathery, the curves of his tail were more shapely, but still he was, as yet, the merest apology for a tadpole, and so he remained until his limbs grew. They came in front at first--froggy's come behind, he wants them to swim with--the most curious spindle-shanks of arms that can be imagined, with elbows always flexed, and fingers always stretched apart. In due course his legs followed, of like purpose and absurdity. For swimming he only used his tail, but for balancing and steering, his feet and hands. Would he rise to the surface, he must flick his tail, and turn his toes and fingers upwards. Would he seek the bottom, he must depress them. Would he lie motionless, suspended in mid-water, he must point them straight outwards from his sides.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIS SUCKER HAD TAKEN THE SEMBLANCE OF A MOUTH.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIS GILLS WERE LONGER AND MORE FEATHERY.]

It was the charm of a free-swimming existence that divorced him from a vegetarian diet. To be continually sucking in plant sludge was a low grubby business at the best. Besides, he was now furnished with a respectable pair of jaws, not to mention the rudiments of teeth. Daphne was his first victim. Daphne sounds somehow floral, but this Daphne was equipped with one eye and several pairs of legs, and practised abrupt jumpy flights through the water. In short, she was a branchiopod, to be vulgarly precise, a water-flea. The succulence of Daphne led to experiments on Cyclops--Cyclops is her first cousin--and the taste, once acquired, never left him.

It was in the pursuit of this latter that he lost a leg, and thus realized that the problems of existence before him were twofold: he must not only eat, he must avoid being eaten. It was probably a stickleback that took his leg. A more powerful enemy would have taken the whole of him. So intent was he on his quarry that he scarcely realized the severance until he found himself swimming in an aimless lopsided circle. Then he sought the friendly shelter of the weeds, and sat still to ruminate. The leg was undoubtedly gone--his right hind leg--it was nipped off close to his body.

He felt no pain, but, the moment he left his support, he realized that he was at a great disadvantage. The more studied his efforts to progress straight, the more certainly abnormal was his course. In letting himself sink slowly to the bottom he showed prudence. It was only at the bottom that he was likely to escape notice.

He stayed there for a succession of days, getting hungrier and hungrier, for it was only the smallest fry that came within his reach. It was lucky for him that his gills lasted out. It was a full month before a new leg commenced to fill the vacancy, and, by that time, they had shrunk from feathery exuberance to two ugly stunted tufts. It was the most painful period in his whole career. Every day his breathing grew more laboured.

Instinct told him to seek the surface, but, each time he made the effort, he capsized before half the distance was accomplished. In six weeks' time came relief. He had not yet secured a new leg, but the growing stump fulfilled its purpose. He reached, by strenuous efforts, the surface of the water, opened his mouth and _breathed the air_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE STAYED THERE FOR A SUCCESSION OF DAYS.]

But for his unfortunate accident, it is probable that the transformation from a water-breathing to an air-breathing animal would have accomplished itself imperceptibly. It is likely indeed, that, for a short period, while his gills were decrepit, and his lungs infantile, he might have breathed air and water alternately and at will. Now, however, his gills were, for all practical purposes, useless; his lungs, ready but unpractised. The necessity of air-breathing was forced on him at a moment's notice.

Small wonder that he commenced by overdoing matters. To begin with he distended himself so that he could not sink at all. Then he sank with far too small a reserve, and struggled to the surface spluttering and half-drowned. It was only after much tribulation that he adjusted matters to a nicety, diving with just sufficient air-supply to last his purpose, and emerging at the proper moment. A silver bubble, the waste product of his life, marked his downgoings and uprisings.

What made him quit the water altogether? For days he had lain half-submerged on a ma.s.s of starwort, his limbs idly anch.o.r.ed off his body, his quaint, puckered face and goggle eyes fixed immovably on infinity. He was, to all appearance, carved in stone when the impulse took him; and then--it was as if the swimming instinct had left him--he commenced to _crawl_ across the natural bridge of pond-weed to the bank.

Nor can I tell you where he went. Sometimes you may meet his kind in dark, damp corners, wedged between stones, or in the crannies of fallen tree trunks. Sometimes it is the gardener that brings word of him. "A' dug the spade a fut deep and turned he up, the poisonous effet, a' soon stamped on he!" Sometimes it is the housemaid. "Please m'm there's lizards in the cellar, I dursn't go near." Sometimes a halfpenny head-line. "Can Life be Indefinitely Prolonged? Startling Discovery in a Lump of Coal." But, wherever he may have got to, I can a.s.sure you of this, that for three whole years he stayed there and never willingly saw the light of day.

Nature looked after him in his seclusion, Nature brought him such food as he required, and Nature never forgot him, but guided him back in due course to the brook in which he first saw light.

He was a dingy object from above. His eyes, it is true, had kept their tadpole l.u.s.tre, but his coat had darkened to a dusky olive, and the only vivid colour about him, his orange waistcoat, was invisible as he crawled.

Even if it had been visible it would not have been to his disadvantage. Of all the colours in Nature there are none more warning than contrasted black and orange. Show me a creature of this colour combination, and you will show me something that is dangerous or nauseous or poisonous. It was this, perhaps, that was his salvation as he crawled from his land retreat back to the water he had left three years before. Perhaps it was simply his insignificance, for the journey was made by night, and he was crawling in and out of thickly twisted gra.s.s stems. Perhaps, though, it was his appearance, which, I will freely admit, was at this time, repulsive. A low set ridge along the centre of his back, and a faint violet tinge upon his sides were all that told of the glory that was to be.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE GLIDED INTO THE WATER SLOWLY.]

He glided into the water slowly, and, as it were, ashamed. But he need not have been. In three years' seclusion he had swelled to fair proportions. He was no longer of necessity the hunted, in most cases now he was to be the hunter. As his head parted the surface, myriads of frightened atoms fled panic-stricken before him. Each lash of his tail scattered a microscopic community, and, as he progressed, the sense of mastery grew upon him. Food was here, and in plenty. He had only to open his mouth and take his fill. Yet he had no appet.i.te. For the first few days of his water existence he sat amid the weed, rising only at rare intervals to the surface for air, and eating nothing. He was feeling the sudden change. His skin was tense and drawn all over, so tense, indeed, that each time he opened his mouth he felt the strain of it. Nor was the discomfort in his mouth alone. His coat was stretched to bursting-point along his back; his limbs seemed cased in gloves a size too small. A crawl ash.o.r.e brought no immediate relief, but helped him indirectly. As he brushed between two gra.s.s stems, the skin of his lips split asunder, and, when he entered the water again, that friendly element gently forced its way into the gap. Every forward movement that he made now eased his old worn skin a little backwards.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HIS OLD SKIN HUNG BEFORE HIM.]

First his head came free, and its old covering lay in tattered rags upon his neck. He pulled his hands out next, leaving their casing as the fingers of a turned glove. Next came his body's turn, for this he had to squeeze himself between the weed-stalks. Lastly, he cleared his legs and tail.

His old skin hung before him on the starwort, white-gleaming and transparent, a perfect, neatly folded model of himself. Of himself, did I say? It scarcely did his present splendour justice. Along his back now rose the budding undulations of a crest. His flanks had lost their sombre olive shade, and were suffused with mottlings of velvet black, mottlings that turned to purple as they crept across his orange front.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TADPOLES WERE LAZILY BROWSING ON THE STARWORT.]

Even these beauties paled before his tail--a ribbon whose jet black centre shaded into violet, and whose edges were flushed with crimson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VERY STICKLEBACKS FOUGHT SHY OF HIM.]

Had he not been consumed with hunger, he might well have lingered in complacent admiration of himself. But hunger such as he had never felt before rose superior to his aesthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter in ravenous haste.

He had not far to go--a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.

They were in a patch of sunlight, lazily browsing on the starwort, mild as any sheep, with foolish, staring eyes, gaping suckers, and bodies that gleamed as if sprinkled with gold dust. For three days he settled in their neighbourhood, growing each day sleeker and more gorgeous. His orange waistcoat took a warmer hue, the crimson deepened on his tail and tipped the summits of his festooned crest. In six days' time he was a very perfect newt, decked and caparisoned for love or war. The very sticklebacks fought shy of him. One, it is true, charged him with spines erect--he had a nest to guard and would have charged a pike--but even he, for all his burnished panoply of emerald and vermilion, shrank back and bristled defiance from a safe distance. As for the shoal, they scattered in flashing rainbow-tinted disarray at his approach.

He was master of his surroundings, but there came a time when tadpoles palled upon him. For one thing, they were becoming daily more bony. Those with hind legs developed were difficult to swallow; those with front legs also were hopeless. A change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for this, he came into collision with the water-spider.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE BRISTLED DEFIANCE FROM A SAFE DISTANCE.]

Now, the water-spider lived by himself in a bubble of his own making. His legs were stout and long and hairy, his countenance was horrible, and his bite a thing to be avoided. When the newt first saw him he was devouring a caddis-worm. Vanity had been the worm's undoing. Instead of casing itself with tiny sticks and pebbles and sojourning at the bottom, as Nature ordained, it had put on a gaudy livery of starwort leaves. Trusting to this elegant protective mimicry, it boldly sought the surface. The disguise availed it nothing. The spider drove its fangs through the flimsy covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider's leap from its bubble, the glint of its shears as they met in the wretched creature's neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning that seemed intelligent of Nature's devices, and pulled it out, as any angler would, tail foremost.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCATTERED IN FLASHING, RAINBOW-TINTED DISARRAY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WATER-SPIDER LIVED BY HIMSELF IN A BUBBLE OF HIS OWN MAKING.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHEN THE NEWT FIRST SAW HIM HE WAS DEVOURING A CADDIS-WORM.]

It was not so much animus against the spider as a longing for the worm that brought about the conflict. For the newt to snap at it was certainly unpardonable. Had he antic.i.p.ated the resultant display of force, he would have hesitated. He had judged the spider solely by his size. When he felt six legs firmly fixed about his face, when he felt the cunning leverage of two more added to the pull, and a hideous pair of jaws drawing closer and closer, he dropped the worm, a useless martyr in Nature's scheme, and bit for freedom. The spider lost a foot, but left its mark, and the spider's hairy foot was not worth eating.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.n.a.t.c.hED AN INFANT DRAGON-FLY FROM THE JAWS OF THE WATER-SCORPION.]

In his next robbery he was more judicious. He s.n.a.t.c.hed an infant dragon-fly from the jaws of the water-scorpion, devoured it with pleasure, and then turned his attention to the water-scorpion himself. He found him flat and tasteless. The water-boatman was more succulent, but, with only one soft spot, difficult to do justice to. It was the same with all the larger creatures. He was reduced to stickleback fry, small larvae, and even juveniles of his own race. But nothing touched the tadpole, whose unkind destiny it is to furnish half the water-world with food. Had it not been for a diversion, he would have left the water in disgust.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WATER-BOATMAN WAS DIFFICULT TO DO JUSTICE TO.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IT WAS A CASE OF MUTUAL ATTRACTION.]

Probably it was a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest before her, comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become a feminine necessity. Her coat was a pale olive green; her front light orange. Her charm was in herself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIDDY VORTEX OF NEWT SOCIETY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOMETIMES THEY TRAVERSED THE MIDDLE DEEPS.]

For newts they made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant.

When she was occupied with the cares of a family, and spent her days and nights in deftly fashioning starwort cradles for her eggs, it was irritating that he, whose duty it was to frighten the marauding sticklebacks, should have preferred to rush away into the giddy vortex of newt society. It was more than irritating when, by way of showing that her cradles were insecure, he opened six and devoured the contents himself.

She profited by the experience, however, and the next series were exquisitely finished. The egg was placed in the exact centre of the leaf, the leaf was folded over, and sealed, tip to base, with all the strength of her hind feet. Her mouth put the finishing touch.

When she had visited some half-dozen stalks, and left each adorned throughout its length with a neat series of symmetrical bows, she felt that her task was done and that she was at liberty to accompany him.

Together they learnt the brook from end to end. Sometimes they walked along the bottom, stirring to right and left of them a host of low-cla.s.s life, slimy leeches, dingy crustaceans of every imaginable kind. Sometimes they traversed the middle deeps, brushing against the beetles and the boatmen and the water-snails. Sometimes they sunned themselves on the surface, snapping idly at the measurers and whirligigs.

It was the flood that parted them. For three days it had rained unceasingly on the surface of the brook. As they rose to breathe, their noses were lashed by pigmy waves. Each raindrop made its own widening eddy, its own pattering sound. Rain on the roof is noisy enough to those beneath, but rain on the water is deafening.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOMETIMES THEY SUNNED THEMSELVES ON THE SURFACE.]

In the brook, as I have said, it rained for three days. In one part or another of the valley it rained for a week. The meadow-land gave its surplus to the brook, and the brook sought the river for relief. But the river was already filled to overflowing, so that brook and river met each other halfway, and the life in each was intermingled.