The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Heart of the Wild, by S. L. (Samuel Levy) Bensusan
GOLDEN EAGLE [Photo by C. Reid]
THE HEART OF THE WILD
NATURE STUDIES FROM NEAR AND FAR
BY
S. L. BENSUSAN
AUTHOR OF “A COUNTRYSIDE CHRONICLE,” “WILD LIFE STORIES,”
“MOROCCO,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED WITH
ACTUAL WILD LIFE PHOTOGRAPHS
LONDON: JOHN MILNE
1908
PREFACE
To Sir Robert Hay Drummond-Hay, C.M.G.,
etc., etc.
Dear Sir Robert,
I have but one regret in offering to you and to some small section of lovers of wild life this bundle of stories, a regret that for the most part they end with the violent death of the bird or beast whose life-story is set out. One of my friendliest and most charming critics, whom I would not willingly hurt or offend, told me lately that she will read no more of my stories of bird and beast unless I promise to make them end happily. I quoted Omar the Tentmaker in extenuation, and pointed out that if we could shatter the sorry scheme of things and remould it “nearer to the hearts desire” the lion and the lamb would lie down side by side and the big game shooter would confine his skill to the target. Then I added that for the time being the battle is to the strong, and the explosive bullet and the hammerless ejector are to the sportsman, but from the depth of a twelve year knowledge of the world and a deep love of the life that is entrusted to our care, she turned away declaring in great distress that I am “very horrid”. Certainly I was greatly abashed, even though I could not wish her to read this book.
You, no unworthy son of one who was a mighty hunter before the Lord, know that these stories are true in substance if not in form, and that such cruelty as is set out in its proper place is of the kind that man has dealt in some way or another to the brute creation since the dim far-off days when first he learned to fashion hatchet and spear and knife. His excuse has passed, but the old-time savagery lingers. I have done no more than set down what I have seen, though I have gifted bird and beast with an intelligence they are not allowed to possess. You at least will grant that there is some foundation for my lapse from the grace in which serious naturalists thrive even to the second and third edition of volumes that become works of reference to those who refuse to admit imagination to their councils. You have seen much of the strange camaraderie that exists in the African forest and on the heather-clad hills of your native land, and you know that the philosophy of the orthodox professor has not yet fashioned even in dreams all the wonders of life in the heavens above and on the earth beneath and in the waters under the earth. I am presumptuous enough to think that those of us who have camped out under the canopy of the stars in the world’s waste places, and have followed the track for days and nights together, not without privation, have caught glimpses of an order and union in the wild life around us that will some day be recognised and investigated by those who speak and write with more authority than I have even the ambition to command. I must even confess, with all due humility, that I am beyond the reach of rebuke for my attitude towards bird and beast so long as it does not come from those, like yourself, whose experience of the fauna and avi-fauna of North Africa, Southern Europe and the Scottish Highlands is greater than my own.
S. L. BENSUSAN.
Great Easton,
Dunmow,
October, 1908.
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[A Two Days’ Old Cuckoo Ejecting a Young Titlark from its Nest]
THE HEART OF THE WILD
THE GOLDEN EAGLE
It is not easy to explain how the Red Fox and the Golden Eagle came to be friends. Perhaps there were hours in the months of his extreme loneliness when the great bird was pleased to unbend, and the fox was the only living creature that was neither to be eaten nor feared. Then they were near neighbours. From the rocky ledge upon which the eagle’s eyrie was set you could throw a stone to the fox earth. The Golden Eagle, king of the air and monarch of all the wild life he surveyed, could well afford to feel generously disposed to the fox in this wild highland country, for poor Reynard by no means cut the gallant figure of his brethren in Leicestershire and other homes of grass land. He went dejected and lived poorly, liable to be shot on sight, no more than vermin in the eyes of gamekeepers and foresters.
It was early morning, from his vantage-ground the King of the Air surveyed his splendid hunting grounds. All round as far as the eye could see there were hills, the heather that covered their lower sides glowed faintly in the morning light. The air had a nipping freshness that dwellers in town cannot imagine. Even the fox appreciated it, though he had been on the prowl all night. He was preparing to sleep, and only kept one eye open to watch his patron.
The golden eagle stood erect, his keen eyes piercing the distance from Ben Hope to Ben Hiel and south to the valleys that ended with Ben Loyal. It was his territory, bird and beast paid him tribute over all the land his far-seeing eye could reach, even to the distant sea. Then the joy of morning and of power came to him. He flapped his wings and screamed, the sound of his triumph echoed among the hills.
“Good-morning, my lord,” said the fox obsequiously.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” replied the eagle with good-natured contempt. “Don’t you wish you could fly on a morning like this?” Once again he flapped his wings that must have measured six feet from tip to tip, and the rising light caught the orange-coloured feathers that lay sharp and pointed along his neck, gilded the yellow cere at the base of bill, and set the gold iris of his deep-set eyes aflame. Even the fox found his fear mingled with admiration when he looked from the black claws to the bill that was straight at base and hooked at the point, a weapon that could tear life out of any wild thing that lived in the Highlands.
In the sun the deep brown feathers of the eagle’s body were turned to purple, the muscles stood out like whipcord on the yellow legs feathered to the toes. Those talons, nearly three inches long, could catch and kill any game bird in the Highlands, from the capercailzie that lives among the dark woods upon the shoots of the larch and pine, down to the ptarmigan of the barren hill-tops, or his red cousin of the heather and ling.
“It is so fine that I must enjoy the view before I start,” continued the eagle. “I suppose you supped late?”
“Yes, my lord,” replied the fox nervously, “I found a couple of dead——”
“Faugh!” interrupted the eagle in great disgust. “Carrion: I can’t enjoy anything that I haven’t struck down for myself. Sometimes, when the snow is on the ground, and I have flown some hundreds of miles in search of a dinner, I may have to content myself with a stillborn lamb, or even with frozen birds, but I couldn’t make a rule of it, or ever thrive on such fare.”
“Do you fly for hundreds of miles literally and truly?” asked the astonished fox. “Why, if I go over ten miles of ground, in the spring for example, I expect my vixen to say quite a number of flattering things; and in the winter, when I’m living solitary, I would never think of going so far as that unless I were starving.”
“My speed is about one hundred miles an hour,” said the eagle solemnly, “and I can increase it for a short distance. And now I’ll bid you good-morning.” He gave another wild exultant cry and flung himself into space. Before the fox could open the other eye, the bird was a speck of brown without definite shape, rapidly disappearing.
“Well, well,” soliloquised the fox, “if I can’t fly, I don’t have to travel hundreds of miles to find a meal.” So saying, he retired to his earth.
But the Golden Eagle had not far to fly on this occasion. For the first few moments he soared higher and higher, rejoicing in the vast spaces of the sky, in the illimitable freedom of life, in the caress of the morning. Only when the ecstasy had passed did he look below, far below, where men and beasts live cribbed, cabined and confined to the surface of mother earth. Below the hill-tops, where the ptarmigan in their winter garb were invisible even to his keen eyes amid the surrounding snow, past long ranges of moor where fur and feather lay low amid the heather in an agony of apprehension, he saw a great blackcock sunning himself on a rock by the side of a plantation of Scotch firs. The guns had all gone south, the artful bird had baffled them time and again, though some of his brothers, and his sister the grey hen, had gone to bag. Now, careless of danger, the bronze-plumaged bird sat sunning himself in the sunlight, spreading his handsome white tail feathers and thinking of the days that were not far away when he would do battle with his brethren for the grey hens. Around him fur and feather crouched low and shut eyes; little birds that had come down from the high lying moors checked their song, a shadow seemed to drop across the wintry sun. Too late the blackcock looked up, saw his terrible enemy literally dropping upon him, saw the huge wings and the tail feathers open like a fan to break the impending fall, was conscious of a sudden blow—and knew no more. In a moment the Golden Eagle’s talons had pierced the blackcock to the heart, and all that remained on the rock was a handful of bronze feathers, as the captor rose with a shrill cry of triumph. He made straight for a bare rock some mile or more away, and then with one foot upon the dead bird he plucked it rapidly with his beak, scattering the feathers on all sides. This done, he tore the skin open and feasted ravenously on the still warm flesh.
His meal over, he preened himself, and with sudden movement rose from the rock and resumed his flight, still hungry. This time he went in the direction of the moorland, and instead of floating over it at a great height travelled low, as though he had been an owl. The place was solitary at all times, undrained and seldom shot, and he knew it for a place where white hares might be found. Nor was he disappointed, for he started one unfortunate puss, and laughing at her feverish attempts to escape, dropped heavily upon her. In that moment the poor hare screamed and died. The terrible talons had gone right through her lungs, and at the same instant the curved beak delivered a stunning blow upon her head. Looking hastily round, the eagle saw a piece of high flat ground by the side of a wood, and rose in flight towards it, carrying his prey in his talons without any apparent effort. But as he lifted it, and before he had put the dead hare in the best position for his attack, two ravens came suddenly from a neighbouring corrie and flew screaming towards him, calling him all manner of insulting names for daring to poach on their preserves. Without waiting to argue with them, he gripped the hare again and flew away, followed for a long distance by the black, angry birds, whose language will not bear repetition. Finally they tired of pursuit, or perhaps remembered that he might lose command of his temper and turn upon them. But to do that with any effect he must have dropped the hare, and they knew well enough that he would be by no means anxious to do that. So they abused him until they were tired, and then returned to their corrie, feeling certain that their reputation would be enhanced by what had taken place.
Then the Golden Eagle sought another rock, and devoured the hare at his leisure—very angrily withal, for he hated being made ridiculous by contemptible eaters of carrion like ravens. But the rich repast comforted him, and when he left the rock and ascended high in air, it was to seek a river or loch. That was soon found, and he dropped slowly by its edge, with more grace and less force than he had used when falling upon the blackcock. His wings and tail were spread sooner than before, and he came to anchor as a fine sailing yacht might come to rest with all her canvas fluttering down. By the edge of the loch he washed with great care, removing the bloodstains from talons, beak and cere, but he did not drink. Thirst seldom troubled him.
His hunger satiated at last, and there being no little ones to provide for, the Golden Eagle rose high, and sailed in leisurely fashion for miles, keeping a watchful eye on the earth, where he saw fear-stricken birds and beasts seeking what shelter the land afforded. But he was not hungry enough to take anything that offered, and preferred to wait until some dainty morsel was put directly in his way. And it happened that a red grouse, hit in the wing during the last drive of the season, was to be seen fluttering vainly over the moorland, and the eagle fell on this unfortunate, bringing the gift of instant death. Perhaps he was unintentionally kind. Not being hungry, he was content to eat the dainty parts that pleased him best, and leave the rest for fox or stoat, or any vermin that might come along. Once again he washed with scrupulous care, and then, rising high, turned in the direction of home. He was many miles away, but before the widespread sweep of his wings miles disappeared, and the thirty or forty that he had covered took less than half an hour to race through. With his familiar scream of triumph he lighted on his home rock, surveyed the world, and knew that it was good.
The fox had had a very long nap. He, too, had washed in his own half-hearted fashion, and was preparing for his evening prowl.
“I hope you have had a good day, my lord,” he said rather anxiously. He had a vague fear that the hour might come when a succession of bad days would make the great bird too careless or too hungry to regard foxes with his present indifference.
“I’ve done very well, thank you,” replied the Golden Eagle with the graciousness born of a full meal. “Good luck to your hunting.” So saying he stretched himself to his fullest extent, then gradually drew his feathers closely together, allowed the bright eyes that had never winked at December’s sun to close, and the alert, vigorous head to sink slowly down. And so he slept.
He had but one care. His mate, who had built and lived with him for five long years, had disappeared a month before, and he could find no trace of her. In vain he had travelled as far as Caithness on the east, and to Foula among the Shetlands in the north, and down south as far as Perthshire, screaming the old love-cry as he went that she might hear and answer him. She had left the eyrie as usual one morning; they never hunted together, and he had not seen her again. Nor would he, for she had failed to find food and had been tempted by carrion. The carrion—a dead chicken—covered a steel fox-trap, and though, in her frenzied fight for liberty, she had torn the controlling staple from the ground, a keeper had passed within shot before she could get clear of the wood, and now her skin was being stuffed by a Perth taxidermist, and she would presently appear under a glass case in the hall of the shooting lodge by the loch side.
One day differed only from another by reason of the success or failure of its hunting. If rabbits and grouse—red, black, or white—were plentiful, the Golden Eagle sought no other food and returned to his eyrie at peace with all the world. But there were days in the winter season when nothing was to be found, or more often still when the quarry got to cover, and then the eagle would come home screaming with rage, and the red fox would slink to his earth and remain until he was well assured that the great bird was asleep.
Towards January’s end the Golden Eagle fasted for two days, and on the third rose in the air, feeling strangely weak and ill at ease. Happily the mist, that had been lying all over the land and had helped to keep him hungry, was growing thin and yielding altogether in places where the sun struck boldly at it. So the bird winged his way to one of the wildest forests in Sutherlandshire, a place seldom disturbed for nine months out of the twelve. The last stalker had left with October, the monarchs of the herd had long ceased from “belling” and had been forced to the lowlands and the root-crop fields by the stress of severe weather. With keen eyes, and a rage born of hunger in his heart, the Golden Eagle saw a small herd of young stags and hinds disappear into a wood where he could not hope to follow them, and then he skirted a few corries and came to a wild glen where rocks lay strewn haphazard as though there had been a battle of giants there in the days of old. But the eagle only saw one rock—a high one standing at the brow of the glen and bathed in sudden sunshine. A young fawn not a year old had left its herd and was basking in the light. With a scream of triumph the Golden Eagle swooped down upon the luckless little animal, drove the cruel talons deep into its back, and buffeted its head with his heavy wings. Dazed by the suddenness of the attack and blinded by the blows from the bird’s strong pinions, the poor fawn staggered to the edge of the rock, the eagle released his grip, and his victim fell headlong on to a rock below, striking it with a force that broke its neck and ended its sufferings.
The dead body was too heavy for the bird to carry off, so he stayed by its side and tore and ate ravenously, until all the hunger that troubled him was forgotten. It was a very difficult task to rise from the heavy meal, but he made way at once to the nearest stream in order to wash in the icy water, and only then turned heavily towards home, feeling very little inclined after the long fast and the heavy meal to move in any but leisurely fashion. But he had to forget his inclinations. Two large peregrine falcons spied their rival a long way off, and seeing that he was not in a fit state to face their onslaught, made a furious attack upon him. Could he have reached either of them it would have gone hard with the one caught; but he was like a merchantman pursued by a couple of fast cruisers, and while they could turn and twist and use their wings in any direction they fancied, he had to follow a steady course, and content himself with uttering threats of what he would do if he caught one of them then or thereafter. When at last, having done all it was safe to do without getting quite within reach of the terrible beak or talons, the falcons flew screaming to their homes, the eagle was left with a very bad indigestion. Had he been carrying his food in his talons he must have dropped it, and the swift enemies would have caught it in the air and made off beyond hope of recovery, for they could cover three miles to his two.
Doubtless the crows and other eaters of carrion would soon leave nothing of the carcase from which he had torn his meal.
Shortly after this day, a touch of mildness that seemed a forerunner of spring came to the Highlands, and the Golden Eagle took a sudden flight to the north-east. He passed beyond the limits of the land and the home of the sea eagles, and moved swiftly in the direction of the desolate island of Foula, beyond the larger group of the Shetlands. And on the following day he turned to the south again, but not alone, his new mate came with him, a beautiful creature, larger, heavier and even more fierce than he. She had come from Norway to Foula Island, and consented gladly enough to share his home in the wild hills of Sutherlandshire.
Through the slowly lengthening days of February the two eagles, while hunting independently, worked together to restore the nest on the rock. It was a very big and rough affair, six feet across at the base, built of sticks taken from the Scotch fir and the larch and the thick twigs of heather. Inside it was soft with grass and fern and mosses, and when it was complete the mother eagle laid three eggs, each three inches long and nearly as big round the broader end. They were purple, with red-brown blotches and streaks of yellow and black. It was March before the first egg was laid, and as the other two came at intervals of several days, the first nestling came before the other eggs were hatched. He was an ugly little fellow with big mouth, staring eyes, and grey down in place of feathers.
Then the other two nestlings made their appearance, and the fox, whose vixen had given him a litter of cubs, was more uneasy than ever. It was apparently impossible to satisfy the appetite of the eaglets. The father and mother birds thought less for the time being of their own wants than of the requirements of their babies. For miles round all the weaklings and cripples among the game birds were destroyed, and one afternoon the mother eagle came to the eyrie with a young lamb in her claws. She had snatched the new-born creature from the hill-side, and would have been delighted to feed regularly on lamb, but the shepherd had seen her, and when she paid her next visit to the hills on the following morning he was waiting with a shot-gun. Anxiety made him fire too soon, a handful of feathers came fluttering down, and the mother eagle received a couple of pellets in her side and several through the outer edge of the primaries of one wing. Thereafter she left the lambs alone. Her alarm was the greater because she had never heard a gun before, and the shock of the charge, though well-nigh spent before it reached her, was very severe.
“What fools these men are,” said the Golden Eagle angrily to the Red Fox some days after the accident to his mate, “they grudge us the food for our little ones. And yet if they had but the wit to understand, we serve their purposes as well as our own. The strong birds and beasts that are useful in the world can get away from us, the weak ones are taken. But if they were not taken they would soon spoil the race. Why, I have taken hundreds of crippled birds from these moors and valleys since men began to shoot in these parts.”
“Do you remember the place before shooting began?” asked the fox in great wonderment.
“Not perhaps before the gun began to be used,” replied the eagle, “but my memory goes back to times when there was very little shooting indeed. The moors were all undrained, the forests were sheep farms for the most part, and the deer were not preserved. The Highland boys used to load their old guns with slugs and black powder pushed in with a ramrod, and would wait at the springs for the deer, and if they shot one would salt it for winter eating. Then the lairds were poor men, and shared their deer with the poachers. I was a young bird in those days, though I shall never be old. The eagle renews his youth, and I expect to record a hundred years. Now I must be off, here comes my mate.”
The mother bird was a black speck in the distance, but her mate’s loving eye could find her out, and he sailed away to meet her as she came heavily towards the nest, a young pig in her claws. She found a farmhouse, and dropped on to the pig-sty, where mother sow had presented her owners with a litter of seven. Six had managed to get within cover, the seventh, a weakly little animal, had paid the penalty, and was already pork. The farmer’s wife had seen the outrage, but her husband and sons were working on another part of the land and could not be reached. So the eaglets had a splendid meal of sucking-pig, and there was enough for the parents too.
In a few weeks the down on the eaglets’ bodies had turned to feathers, and they were completely fledged, handsome birds, like their parents in all respects save that they had a white ring on the tail feathers. One morning after they had learned to fly and were beginning to enjoy the exercise, the Golden Eagle addressed them seriously.
He and his mate had just come from the farmhouse where they had surprised a couple of hens.
“Look here, my children,” he said as he plucked one dead fowl with wonderful rapidity, “eat well to-day, for from to-morrow you will have yourselves to look after.” His children eyed him curiously, so did the Red Fox who sat solemnly outside his lair. “I mean it,” continued the Golden Eagle seriously. “You will hunt for yourselves after to-day, and if you come poaching on the hunting-grounds of your mother and myself there will be trouble and you will be in the midst of it. Down to now we have raised and fed you, your wants have been our worry, but now that time is up, and after to-day you are no more to us than if you didn’t exist. We don’t want to see you again, and if you are wise you will take care that we don’t.” And on the following morning the young eaglets departed, flew some way together, and then chose their respective kingdoms.
They did not thrive, and of the three only one reached maturity. The first lighted on a stoat in a ditch and could not strike it with the sharp talons before the angry little beast had jumped at its throat and bitten through the external jugular vein. Another, not heeding his parents’ warnings, set out for the farm whence the sucking-pig had come and was shot. But the parent birds remained together in their eyrie and knew no trouble save when storms were brewing. They could see storms rising out of the Atlantic, and when one was on the way to their beloved hills they would grow nervous and restless and fill the air with their screams.
August came round and the Golden Eagle’s joy of life knew no bounds. Never had the moors been so full of delicious red grouse, never before in all his long life had he fed so well.
One afternoon he sat on a rock at the head of a wild corrie. Below him went the stalker and his master, two hundred yards away and quite invisible.
“A fine day, Donald,” said the sportsman; “my best achievement since I came to the Highlands.” To be sure he was only a Sassenach, but he had shot a grouse, and caught a salmon in the morning, and an hour ago, after a long stalk, he had grassed a ten-pointer that was on its way to the lodge strapped to a pony’s back.
“Best kill that de’il yonder,” grumbled Donald, taking a huge pinch of snuff preparatory to launching into a long account of the Golden Eagle’s misdeeds.
Some unaccountable impulse brought the eagle to his wings. Ignorant of his danger, he floated lazily down the valley until the barrel of a mannlicher rifle gleaming from below caught his quick eye. He seemed to see right into it. As though conscious of imminent danger, he screamed defiance and rose higher with loud flapping of his heavy wings. The rifle cracked....
“How terribly the Mother Eagle has been screaming,” said the Red Fox to himself as he made cautious way down the hill that night. “Thank goodness she has gone to sleep at last. My nerves were giving out.”
THE BADGER
Even the residents hardly knew the part of the forest that the badger called his own, the tourists and callers from the nearest seaside town had never seen it. From June to September there were visitors in plenty; they came along the white dusty roads in coaches, carriages and motor-cars; they walked, or rode on bicycles, held picnics in the shadow of beech and oak trees, and often left assortments of glass bottles and paper to mark the spot they had delighted to honour. Sometimes on his nightly rounds Brock would pass one of these places, and would make haste to get away from the neighbourhood, for his scent was exceedingly keen, and he knew the number of the visitors as certainly as though he had been out during the daytime. The fear of man had come to him quite naturally, it was part of his life to dread and avoid this relentless enemy, just as it was his rule to range the woods by night and to retire to his earth when the sun came out of the east heralded by the pageant of the morning twilight.
He had few friends; only the brown owl sometimes paused in her work to pass the time of night, or the fox, whose earth was close at hand amid the thick-growing gorse, would hold a little converse after a good hunting expedition that had closed before dawn woke the rest of the woodland. Then in the moment when sleepy birds were trying their earliest notes and wondering why those strange visitors the cuckoo and nightingale would sing all the night through, when the wood-pigeons were tumbling heavily from their perches, and the shy kingfisher was standing by the edge of his home in the bank of the stream, the brown owl would seek his hollow tree, and badger and fox would seek their homes. The badger’s abode was quite palatial. Just where the gorse ended and the trees asserted themselves again, the soil was very light, and there were patches of broom and bushes of pink thorn and hazel. Clear of the roots, the first passage began, with a rather steep slope to a well-cleared chamber in which the badger slept. Beyond this apartment there was an upward slope from which two or three tracks branched to the right, and at the end of the slope was another chamber used as a storeroom only a few feet below ground. To the right of this was another dip that went to the open air, or offered a road by yet another gallery to a point just above the sleeping-chamber. In times of stress the grandparents and more remote ancestors of the badger had been accustomed to use the chamber that was nearest the second entrance, for they could then hear the lightest human footfall. But in the old bad days even this precaution had availed them nothing. Dogs and tongs had been employed by their pursuers, and they had been butchered to give idle folk a few hours’ amusement.
When the badger had found the earth in the autumn following his birth, he did not know that it should have been the home of his house. He had wandered across miles of country when his family broke up. His parents had separated, his two sisters had chosen their own road, and the earth in which he was born remained in the sole possession of his father. Once he had assured himself that he would enjoy undisputed occupation, the badger explored and renovated all the tunnelled passages, stopped up all entrances save one by raising sandy mounds with his feet, and prepared to enjoy a solitary existence. Thoughtful, sober and introspective he had no desire for companionship just then.
“I had as fine a family of cubs as you could wish to see,” said father fox, when they had known one another for a few weeks, “but the hunt drew the gorse and two of them were killed. The others have gone away, so has my vixen, and if the hunt comes again I’ll go too.”
The badger stirred uneasily, and traversed all his passages again to make sure that every possible precautions had been taken. Though he had stopped the bolt holes, it was only by way of hiding them from prying eyes; a few minutes’ work would suffice him to open them again in time of need. Even when he went out at night he would cover his point of exit in the most careful fashion, using hind and fore-feet with equal ease. Only when the hole was screened would he set out in search of what the wood might yield. Sometimes he would go down to the marshy ground by the river and take toll of frogs and insects, he would even stray into the nearest orchards and eat the fallen apples, pears and plums. Failing these he would root up plants and fungi and carry away what he did not want, for storing; but whether he ate in the wildest part of the wood or comparatively near the haunts of man the enemy, he never forgot the need for guarding against surprise. Like Agag of old he walked delicately, and his hearing, like that of the wild boar, was only suspended when his jaws were actually working. So he would pause with a mouthful of food, or stop half-way in the work of grubbing up a root to scent the breeze, though the forest held no foe within its ample boundaries.
In the early autumn, after his arrival, the young badger cleared away the bed of dry fern and grasses in the sleeping-chamber. His methods were peculiar, for he collected what he could in his forepaws and then shuffled out of the earth backwards. Many journeys were necessary to accomplish this task which was pursued by night, after a meal had been taken; and when the work was ended, he moved to certain parts of the wood where he had torn up ferns and grasses which were now dry. He took these to the sleeping-chamber in the awkward fashion already described, and though much was lost in transit he had a warm and pleasant bed at last. Feeling at his ease he ranged the woods in search of wounded game, making many a hearty meal off fur and feather that should have been retrieved. Later on, the wind and the rain entered the wood together and removed all traces that marked the badger’s journey to and fro, while the badger, finding his bed warm and his house free from draughts, set up a barrier by the entrance and went to sleep. Like the porcupine and squirrel he refused to face the severe weather, though it is more than likely that he responded to warm spells and came out on certain winter nights in search of roots, or the wasp-nests that were in the river bank. But his capacity for sleep robbed winter of half its terrors and kept him in good condition. The food stores supported him if he woke in time of snow, the troubles that proved fatal to so much of the woodland’s life never reached him, and when he resumed his normal activity in March he was no worse for the protracted rest.
The new life that stirred the forest could not rouse him to any great ecstasy. The season did no more than endow him with a funny little grunt and an unwonted measure of playfulness. He loved to stand on his hind-legs and sharpen his fore-paws against the rough oak tree-trunks, and in April evenings he would sometimes be astir before his usual time, generally after light showers of rain. He often went lumbering through the wood with a curious swaying movement, and sometimes walking backward as though by way of expressing his playful humour. There was great joy in the uncouth body, but he had none to share it with him. Even the fox found a vixen; their loving cries resounded through the woods as they hunted together by night, and in the heart of the earth there were four little cubs that would sometimes come to the edge of the gorse and play with the rabbits.
Brock was now to be ranked among the adults; he had shed his four premolar teeth, and from tip of tail to tip of nose must have been very nearly three feet long. He stood about a foot high and the rough skin lay loosely on his body. His jaws were uncommonly strong—no other animal of equal size could boast such a pair—and no dog that had not been trained to bait badgers could have attacked him with impunity. For the present, however, he had no enemies to face, and his lines were cast in pleasant places, among the birds’ nests that were scattered in profusion through the wood. Where the nests were built low the badger would not be denied—the eggs of partridge, thrush, blackbird and wild pheasant supplied him with many a meal, and sometimes he was quick enough to add the parent bird to his meal. The animal that could rob wild bees of their honey had nothing to fear from birds, and even the stoats, weasels and snakes that pursued birds’ nests would not wait to argue their claims with Brock. He soon learned that some birds deprived of one clutch will even lay another, and was delighted to observe their industry, and profit by it in due season. At the same time it must be remarked that he did very little real harm. His neighbour the fox was pursuing an active campaign against all the outlying poultry-yards with so much success that he could afford to leave the rabbits in peace; the badger did no more than help to reduce the overwhelming number of common birds. Since game preserving had been practised on the estates that joined the wood, ceaseless war had been waged against hawks, falcons and other birds; ignorant keepers had dealt with the kestrel and the owl as severely as with the carrion crow, and the tendency of birds like blackbirds and thrushes was to justify Mr. Malthus by increasing beyond the capacity of the food supply. In helping to counteract this tendency the badger was doing good work; it was better for the eggs to be eaten than for the young birds to be born and starved.
Summer waned, and at the time when the stags in Highland forests were seeking the hinds, Brock found the trail of one of his own species and felt the pangs of love. He grunted and yelped as though the spring had come again, and followed the track of the loved one for miles, night after night. Perhaps the unknown, whose scent would have been equally keen, knew that she was pursued and assumed the virtue of shyness; perhaps she was really shy. In either case she was hard to find, and on many a morning the badger was forced to beat a very hurried retreat to his home, hungry, footsore and disappointed, compelled to draw upon his winter stores of roots and grasses for a meal. At last he found his love. She had stayed to hunt for frogs in the river bed, and in rather grudging fashion accepted his attentions. Between wooing and winning a great gulf was fixed, but after nights of pleasant companionship, the well-beloved one agreed to become Mrs. Brock. Had there been other males in the neighbourhood, a fight for supremacy might have been necessary, but the nearest badgers were many miles away and this pair had the district to themselves. Until the storms came they roamed the woods together, finding in addition to roots and berries, wounded game and an occasional nest of wasps or wild bees, which they would root out and eat as it stood, comb, honey, insects and grubs. With the first break up of the weather each retired to its home. She lived across the river but swimming presented no difficulty to either.
When the winter waned, and the first warm dry days called the woodland to renewed life, the badger was early astir. Once again his bed was scattered to the winds, and a fresh one was made in the fashion already described; once again he tested the entrance and exits and made what effort he could to obliterate his own tracks. Then he swam across the river and, returning with his lady-love, conducted her to her new home where she was quite happy. For awhile they travelled together, then he walked alone, and in his clumsy fashion brought some fresh roots and bulbs down to the warm earth where three blind baby badgers shared the fern leaf couch with his mate. They were quite blind and helpless, but while they were awake their mother was with them, and while they slept she foraged for herself. As long as he was in the neighbourhood of the earth her lord would hunt with her, but when he wished to go far afield he went alone, she would not travel a long way from her little ones.
Later, Brock would lead the baby badgers on their first rambles, in the days when they were learning to look after themselves. He showed them how and where food must be sought, warned them of the sound and scents that portended danger, and taught them their share of forest lore. This was his duty now that their mother had gone back to her own quarters across the river and the little ones must face the world alone. With the coming of autumn he sought his mate once more, but she had gone, and for all his efforts he never found her again. But, ranging a part of the wood to which he had never penetrated before, he met a badger philosopher, an old fellow who had seen six or seven summers and grown grey with accumulated wisdom.
This philosopher, whose search for a mate had been equally unavailing, declared that the contemplative life was best of all, remarked that the old badger run he tenanted was not far removed from an unoccupied earth and suggested that they should hunt together. The younger one accepted the suggestion, and started making a bed in the new earth without delay.
It was about this time that he was called upon to give battle. Without knowing it he had moved into a district that was favoured by one or two daring poachers. Stray pheasants from a neighbouring estate were tempted into open spaces by judicious display of raisins, hares and rabbits were plentiful, and the main road was less than a mile away. One poacher had a valuable lurcher that would start off into the wood at a given signal and never return without a rabbit. Coming down a glade at top speed in hot pursuit of a hare the lurcher saw the badger, and forgetful of his safer quarry turned to the attack. It was quite a short contest. To be sure, the dog secured a good grip, but he had forgotten or never known the extraordinary elasticity of the badger’s skin. He only realised it when the animal he had attacked so unceremoniously had fastened on his throat with a grip nothing could relax. In little more time than is required to set the statement down the lurcher lay dead and terribly mangled by the badger whose terror had given place to rage.
All in vain the poacher called and called, until the coming of the morning light warned him to make his way home and return, without the impedimenta of his calling, to go through the wood in the guise of a peaceful pedestrian. To one whose knowledge of woodcraft was so complete it was no hard task to find the spot where the lurcher lay, and a very brief examination of the shattered head indicated clearly enough the author of the deed. Only the badger’s merciless jaws could have bitten through the lurcher’s skull as though it had been a wooden match-box.
The poacher was a dull fellow, an idle loafer who knew the county gaol intimately, ill-treated his wife and gave long hours to the ale-house. And yet for all his unprepossessing ways he was not without some measure of affection, and it had been given to the dead lurcher. Never Arab loved his well-tried horse better than this wastrel loved his dog—it had possessed an intelligence that was almost human, and had been the one living thing that loved him without change of mood. In the silence of the wood the poacher cried like a little child, hid his friend under the ferns until he could return and bury him, and then turned on the badger’s track.
Men who have been long brought up in the woodland and learned all the tricks of the poacher’s trade are hard to baffle. As the poacher moved along all his gifts so long latent, stimulated by grief and rage, he became for the time one with the wood and its denizens. He heard the ceaseless under-song, and could analyse it as the skilled critic of music can analyse the component parts of a symphony; almost instinctively he knew the shy fearful birds that were peeping at him through many a screen of leaves, the grass snake and adder that were gliding away from him. In those hours of wrath and exaltation his eyes were opened; without haste on the one hand or delay on the other he found the badger’s earth, never losing for long the track of the five toes and the sharp nails.
Down in the darkness where his bed was strewn, Brock realised the coming of his enemy; the horror of man so long dormant in him was revived. He stood up noiselessly and heard the unseen feet move deliberately in search of the entrance to the earth. Against this man who, in clear-headed hours, could read Nature’s stories as though they were set in printed page before him, a badger must fight hard for life. It would be a contest of wits.
The footsteps passed; the hidden animal heard the slow and regular decline; the normal sounds of the woodland were resumed. By night, he thought, he would creep away and leave the place, he would go back to his old haunts below the river where there was safety. The afternoon turned towards sunset, and then Brock, who was in a passage close to the ground, heard the tramp, tramp that had startled him in the morning. The man was coming back, was moving from one part of the ground to the other, sounding the entrance and the bolt holes. Already he seemed to know them all. What was he doing?
Presently the dull thud of a spade was heard by the mouth of the run, and the purpose of the poacher was clear. He had blocked each entrance and was going to dig until he had found the destroyer of his companion. Had he stayed till the following day the quarry would have passed. He knew this well enough so he had brought gun and food, trenching-spade, lantern and tobacco, and was about to dig down foot by foot to the badger’s lair.
Quite undismayed now that the risk of invasion had yielded to certainty, the hunted animal prepared to defend himself. At the foot of the first slope he started to pile the loose earth using his hind-feet as readily as the others, and before the poacher was half-way down the barrier was strong enough to have kept a dog at bay. But the man was depending upon his own exertions, he had no dog, and when his spade encountered the defence it was speedily broken down.
By this time the badger had retreated past his bedroom into one of the deepest passages, the one that commanded a double route. He had already gone to two of the exits that were intended for emergency, but the human taint was strong at each, and he feared to let the issue of the contest depend upon a chance flight. Perhaps it was as well, for the strongly pegged netting that was ranged round each hole must have given him a pause that would have sufficed the poacher.
The lantern was lighted now and the pipe was out; the poacher, flabby and out of condition, was deaf to the call of his tired limbs. Passion sustained him in the pursuit of a task that few sane men would have attempted. The task would have been relatively easy if additional assistance had been to hand, but the poacher had no friends. He had reached the bedroom now, the soil had responded to the sharp spade edge, and with savage glee he broke up the soft couch of ferns and grass, and then set the lantern down and mopped his forehead and thought deeply. Two passages led from this chamber, without counting the one he had followed; he piled the dry bed by one of them and set it alight, in hope that the smoke might enter and make the fugitive bolt. But though the material was dry and burnt well the air was windless and the fumes ascended.
“Curse you,” he cried, as though he knew Brock was in hearing and thought he could follow his words. “I’ll dig till I find you, if I dig up the whole earth.”
Once again the spade work was resumed, the eerie silence of the night was broken by the recurrent thud. The poacher was drunk with passion; the impenetrable dignity of the night and the silence of his foe seemed to set his blood on fire. All sense of fatigue had gone; he hardly knew how his temples were throbbing or realised that his breath was coming in short painful gasps until, after another frenzied spell of work, he turned to survey the long trench that marked his progress, and shout out a gibe at the unseen badger.
At that moment his light was extinguished, the candle had burnt itself out, the darkness enveloped him almost with a sense of physical force. By the junction of the two paths some ten feet away Brock heard the sound of a heavy fall, the following silence was long and deep. For some quarter of an hour the badger did not move, then he moved cautiously to the right along a seldom-used passage and came to a forgotten crossway. Down one side of it a current of air came clean and pure. He followed it, along a track he had not used before until he reached an opening under a bank. All seemed safe. His sharp ears could not catch the sound of human breath, there was no taint of humanity by the bush that hid the entrance. The night was still profoundly dark. He slipped noiselessly into the shadows.
BADGER [Photo by C. Reid]
The old snake-catcher passing down the woodland clearing in the morning found the poacher lying at peace, his spade gripped tightly in one hand. A coroner’s jury was told by the doctor that sudden and unaccustomed exertion had brought about a failure of the heart’s action and a painless death. And twelve good men and true wondered greatly that the deceased should have exerted himself so greatly. Trained terriers had been put into the earth under the various nets and had returned quite silently to their owners. “He must have been insane,” said the enlightened jurymen.
But the snake-catcher, who believed in fairies, knew better. “He tried to dig a badger by night,” he said, “and that disturbed the little people. So they killed him.”
THE STORY OF A CAMEL
When Abdullah, the slave dealer, led the long file of loaded camels towards the desert on the bright April morning, only one of his animals remained in the fandak. Within a week she had a companion, her little baby camel who came into the world as though to give her his company during the long, hot months of summer when, at the sun’s bidding, the caravan that had just set out would cease from its labours and rest in the far-off city of Timbuctoo.
The fandak was a large rectangular enclosure open to the sky everywhere save in the cloisters round the inside walls. It was filthily dirty, and full of flies and insects, but Basha the baby camel noted none of these things. He passed his early days wandering round the cloisters to look at the half-starved mules and donkeys that were brought in there for their much needed rest, and when the heat was greatest and the flies most insistent, he would lie contentedly by his mother’s side. For all the fandak’s limitations Basha had been born in fortunate hour. His mother’s services were not required in field or city, heavy spring rains had made food plentiful and cheap, so that she was well fed, and the little one, who by the way was two feet odd inches high when he was born, enjoyed an unfailing supply of milk. Had he come into the world at another time or place, his mother might have been put to work hard before he was three months old, her milk might have been required for cheese, and he would have pined and died as so many baby camels do. Even when the summer waned and the autumn rains starred the fields with flowers of bewildering beauty, Basha stayed with his mother on a farm outside the city gates. The caravan came back in the season of cool weather and in place of the merchandise they had taken to the South, the camels brought slaves for the Sok el Abeed, but they could not go out again. Between them and the Soudan the fierce veiled Touaregs of the desert were in arms, and in the direction of the coast the chief camel road was held by the braves of a tribe that was in open revolt against Morocco’s Sultan.
So, while Abdullah swore strange oaths by the Prophet’s beard, and declared that the men of the desert were descended from devils and the men of the western province from apes, little Basha grew strong and unshapely, and life was an affair of sunshine and good milk. Day by day the farmer spread his mother’s food before her on a cloth; dried beans, crushed date stones and a very small measure of corn and chopped hay, and Basha would sniff at it with very little interest. If the farmer himself was absent the cloth might be forgotten, and then Mother Camel would make an angry noise in her throat and refuse to eat, and little Basha would suffer accordingly.
“Why must you have a cloth to eat from?” he asked her one day, when she was gurgling indignantly while the rats made merry at her expense, and she made no attempt to check their depredations.
“It is Camel Law,” replied his mother. “If we were to eat our food from the bare ground we should take all manner of dirt into our mouths, and in a little while it would make us ill, perhaps fatally. Our inside arrangements are very delicate and complicated. In the fandak two camels and no more will feed from one mat or cloth, and it is right that there should be precedence at meal-times. The most important camels should be fed first. That is etiquette, and we set a great store by it. Indeed, if this consideration is overlooked we let our masters know about it.”
“But when you leave your food, I get less milk,” remonstrated Basha.
“You can’t begin too early,” explained the Mother Camel, “to understand that all camels must suffer. It is part of our life to work hard, to endure ill-treatment and to be deprived of our fair share of good things. Down to the present your good luck has been astonishing. Your brother and sister, one born seven years ago and the other four, died of starvation before they had lived through one summer. I myself was born in the country of the black men south of the Atlas mountains, and had to come here with my mother across the desert before I was six months old.”
Basha took small account of these warnings. He could do no more than judge life as he found it, and do credit to his environment by growing to be a fine specimen of his race. When at length he was taken from his mother he was fully a year old, and he enjoyed some idle months on the farm land, living for the most part upon green herbage, and straying far and wide in search of camel thorn, r’tam, tamarisk and mimosa. When he had found his favourite bush, he would run his upper lip over the leaves as though to assure himself that they were what he sought, but if he knew what he liked he did not know what was good for him. A wandering Bedouin shepherd came upon him one morning just as he was beginning to sniff with appreciation at some leaves that would have finished his career at once, and thereafter Basha’s liberty was curtailed and he had his first experience of the manacles. They were made of steel and fitted round each fore-leg above the ankle. This was a most effective device, for a camel walks moving both legs on the same side simultaneously, and the steel was capable of arresting the walk altogether. He had to endure many long and painful hours in this confinement.
As he was quite unconscious of having done anything to deserve such treatment, and knew nothing of his own stupidity, Basha was full of indignation and kicked with his hind-legs at all passers, exhibiting early signs of bad temper. Then the first evil days came to him, and in the picturesque language of his master he “ate the stick” until he knew fear and understood the virtue of docility. But in after days when he was goaded beyond endurance he always kicked out with his hind-legs, and he learned that many camels do the same when they are angry, although their fore limbs are much stronger than the hind ones. Perhaps the early use of the shackles accounts for this tendency, which is common to the most of African camels.
If his training in those early days was cruel, Basha was no worse off than his fellows. He had to learn to endure the saddle and the pack, to kneel at word of command, and to go with the other camels on short journeys carrying some light load in preparation for the trying days to come. He grew very slowly but managed to preserve a good condition, clearly to be seen in the rising hump and in the well-covered skin. Camels that were overworked or underfed lost their hump, and if they had any serious illness, their skin looked like a moth-eaten fur.
In his fifth year when he was reckoned fit for the full measure of work Basha was a very finely developed beast, even though his ugliness was undeniable. His long, thick upper lip was divided in two, and this peculiarity accounted in part for his perpetual sneer; his eyes, the one redeeming feature of his head, were shaded by heavy brow and coarse eyelashes; his ears were very small and round and he acquired the curious power of compressing his nostrils that was to be so serviceable in days to come. His legs were long and thin, and the great shapeless feet in which they terminated looked very absurd; his walk was little better than an awkward flat-footed shuffle. His tail was short and stumpy, and his mode of resting had brought well-defined hard growths to his chest and knees. He could travel without fatigue over endless miles of level ground, but hills tired him at once; and he could swim sturdily though nothing but the most severe thirst would make him drink of running water. His early-day nervousness had gone though he was still restive when taken from his companions. He seldom called as he had been in the habit of doing when he was young, but with manhood, if the term be permissible, he had developed a violent temper, and there were seasons of the year when only Abdullah dare approach him. At these times he would grow very excited, he would repeat the horrid gurgling noise that his mother had made, and would go about with a hideous pink bladder hanging from one side of his mouth. At the first sign of this state among his male camels Abdullah would seek to reduce their rage by bloodletting. The camels would be hobbled in turn and told to sit down, and after a cord had been tied tightly round the neck two small incisions would be made just below the cord. This was an effective cure for ferocity, but was not always a possible remedy when the camels were on the march, for it left them very weak.
In the first year of his complete strength Basha was hired with two other camels by a Moor who traded between the Atlantic coast and Marrakesh, the far southern capital of the Moorish Empire. The work was hard and the loads were heavy, but the Moor did not spare himself. The start from coast or capital would be made in the very early morning hours. The camels would be loaded in skilful fashion, the weight being put as high on the ribs as possible, because the hind limbs were so much weaker than the others. If there was any mistake or the weight was unfairly heavy, the camels would gurgle angrily and refuse to rise. Then some fresh adjustment was necessary for Abd el Karim knew better than to waste his time in trying to force an ill-loaded or over-strained animal to his feet. Once a camel had risen and started he would go until he dropped, but no animal would rise before being satisfied that he was being fairly handled. In those early hours the beasts would be fed with cakes made of crushed grain and dates, mixed for choice with camel milk or, failing that, with water. The meal over, the little procession would start out well in advance of sunrise, and when the first halt was called it would be to avoid the midday sun and give the weary men a little time to repose. When the journey was resumed it would be kept up until night was falling and it was no longer safe to be found on any one of the broad tracks that served the southern countries for a road. Then Abd el Karim would seek an ensala, a piece of bare ground next some village, fenced round with cactus thorn and prickly pear. He would pay the equivalent of a few pence for admission, and once there the headman of the village would be responsible to the nearest country governor for the safety of the little company. The camels would be unloaded, watered and fed, three or four pounds of grain being the maximum supply for each beast, and they would enjoy some six hours’ rest. But as soon as the false dawn appeared in the sky and Abd el Karim had said the early morning prayer that is called the fejer, and comes with the third cock-crow, loads would be replaced and the journey resumed. Basha plodded along with seeming content, but in his heart he hated his new master. It was not that he had any special unkindness to complain about, the ill-treatment was quite impartial, he hated all humans, and Abd el Karim stood for him as the type of the tyrants who inflicted such base servitude upon the camel world. He had no pet grievance, and would most certainly have resented any special act of kindness as an impertinence. Whatever kindly feelings he might have had were kept under so severely that his face had but two expressions. He looked upon the world with indignation and contempt in turn. When he walked through the narrow streets of Marrakesh carrying a pack that weighed between three and four hundred pounds upon his shoulders, he would turn neither to the right nor to the left; horses, mules and pedestrians had perforce to make way for him. Not only was he prepared to walk over anything that stood in his way, he was ready to turn round and bite any passer who came within reach of his mouth. From nose to tail he could not have been less than eight feet long in those days, and he stood more than six feet high from hump to ground. In brief, Basha was an ill-natured, sulky beast, but his powers of endurance gave him a value for which all his little failings were forgiven.
In the camel fandak at Marrakesh where he had first seen the daylight he would join the rest of Abdullah’s animals from time to time and hear of their adventurous journeys to the Soudan. His mother was still at work among them and had lost another son since Basha was born. She was ageing now under the combined influences of hard work and insufficient food, and the sight of her condition roused her son to a state of anger in which pity took no part. He had no affection for her, but her state increased the bitterness of his feelings against the enemy man. From time to time he noted the disappearance of animals he had known and asked about them.
“He fell,” replied his mother once, referring to a camel of his own age, “and then you know the old cry.”
“I don’t,” confessed Basha, “what do you mean?”
“It has passed into the proverbs of our masters,” said his mother slowly. “‘When the camel falls,’ runs their adage, ‘out with your knives.’ It is a recognition of our undying pluck. So long as we can endure we keep up and when we fall we are beaten and done for. No rest can cure us. Our masters know that, and when we fall in our tracks their knives are out—sometimes before we are dead.”
Basha turned away, sick with anger. This then was the end of things, to labour through the heat of day, to toil until the last store of strength was exhausted, and then die a dishonourable death under the curved daggers of brutal masters. How he hated them, one and all.
It was on account of his recent losses that Abdullah decided to include Basha in the next caravan that left Marrakesh for the South, and so it happened that he made one of a string of fifty beasts that filed out of the city by way of the Dukala Gate on a fine September morning. For some weeks past the camels had rested and had been tended with an approach to care. Before a final selection was made each animal was examined with care and a few were rejected on account of ailments that were plain to the practical eyes of Abdullah and his assistants. Chief of these disqualifying symptoms was a foot disease brought on by overwork, and the fate of Basha’s mother hung in the balance for she was beginning to show signs of the unending labour imposed upon her. But there was a fair sporting chance for her, and Abdullah took it. The unaccustomed rest of the past three weeks and the regular food had almost restored her strength.
Although he was now in his tenth year Basha had not crossed the Sahara. He had not finished growing but was immensely strong, and the journey had no terrors for him. For the first few days the land was one vast oasis and the camels went unwatered, feeding in the very early morning before the dew was off the autumn greenery, and so storing enough moisture to last them through the day. They were well fed at night, and Basha began to think that the difficulties of which his companions spoke after supper when they sat in a great group, had been exaggerated. Then the caravan reached the real desert beyond the Draa country, and he understood. The sun was like molten copper above, and the sands seemed white-hot underneath. Vegetation ceased. No man spoke, and at night the hours of respite from the heat seemed to fly. A reserve stock of water was carried in goat-skin barrels on some of the camels, but Abdullah made a detour in order to reach the oases that lay scattered here and there. And when the wells at one of these oases were found to be dry, the real troubles of the journey commenced. Supplies were reduced all round as they moved towards the next oasis, and on the second morning following the reduction the desert was swept by a dust-storm.
Long before Abdullah and his companions could note its approach, the leading camels saw the advancing columns of the storm, and with one accord they dropped to their knees and crouched with their long necks stretched out and their nostrils firmly closed to face the coming trouble. The men shrouded themselves in their haiks and crouched on the ground, taking refuge with Allah from Satan and his legions, for they knew well that the sand columns were really djinoon, who went about the desert seeking whom they might devour. When the legions of the storm had passed, and men and beasts arose to continue the journey, the terror of the desert lay heavily upon one and all.
The caravan had a mournful appearance as it laboured across the desert in the tracks of the storm. Camels shuffled along with the hopeless, listless energy of creatures attuned to suffering in its every form; the men, riding or walking, seemed to have yielded to the depression that the Sahara knows so well. Shifting sand and raging wind had hidden the tracks, but Abdullah and Abd el Karim, who was acting as his lieutenant, had rare eyes, and they corrected their bearings by the stars at night. For perhaps the first time in his life Basha realised the cunning economy of his body. His stomach had four compartments, to say nothing of cells, that served for the preservation of the water-supply, and he could regulate the flow of food and water in manner that took the keen edge from his sufferings. Men suffered more than beasts, but they had the consolation of their faith. “Mektub,” they muttered, when Abdullah pointed out the need for diminished rations lest the next oasis should fail them, “it is written”. If their safe arrival in the far-off Abaradiou of Timbuctoo was decreed, no dust storm would avail to stay them; if they were to be one of the caravans that the pitiless Sahara swallows up, no complaint would avail to avert the evil decree.
At night when the packs were removed and the men smoked the forbidden haschish over their scanty supper, or took council with the star Sohail that served to guide them to the South, the camels held converse after their own fashion.
“The end is upon me,” cried Basha’s mother one evening, “My feet are worn away. It is not for me to see the Niger’s bank or to eat the camel thorn in the woods beyond the Mosque of Sankoréh”.
“It is well, mother,” said the camel crouched by her side; “you will rest at least. We shall go on, and your load will be added to ours. Rejoice then in the end of the day’s work.” And late on the following afternoon, at the hour when the sun first appeared to relent of his pitiless severity, Basha saw his mother stoop slowly to the earth.
“A camel falls,” cried Abd el Karim, who walked by his side, “out with your knives.” He leapt forward, Basha saw the red stain in the white sand, and then passed on with averted eyes. A few camels gurgled to express sympathy or indignation, three or four were stopped by Abdullah’s orders and the burden of the dead beast was divided among them. Then the march was resumed, and in the evening an oasis was reached where there were date palms in plenty, and a well untouched by drought. Far into the night the water was poured into the puddled troughs from the goat-skin bucket that served the well, each of the camels receiving ten or twelve gallons—enough to quench their raging thirst and give them a store for two or even three days.
Half of the party remained at the oasis, the other half under Abdullah’s guidance turned aside to El Djouf, the desert city where the merchandise of the camels would be exchanged for the great blocks of salt that were worth their weight in gold, and slaves in far-off villages beyond Timbuctoo. Basha was one of the camels that remained behind, and he sat through the night with sleepless eyes seeing ever before him the dead body of his mother, and hearing Abd el Karim’s horrid cry. It was anger with the living rather than pity for the dead that fed his growing wrath. A light breeze stirred the palm leaves, he heard the far-off cry of a jackal and then the patter of little feet. This last sound came nearer until a company of desert antelope ran in view. Undisturbed by the camels they ranged in search of green food, and drank of the water remaining in the puddled troughs as though indifferent to the proximity of the sleeping men.
One, who seemed to be the leader of the deer, paused by Basha’s side.
“Little master,” said the camel, “whence come you, and what have you seen?”
“We range the sands,” replied the stranger, “from the oasis that is tended by man even to the far-off spring that only the gazelles have seen. And to-night we fly from El Kebeer, the great jackal, who has brought his pack in search of meat.”
“Where is he now?” asked Basha, shuddering.
“All are together now,” said the gazelle. “They have found the body of an old mother camel fallen by the way. Until the morning comes they will hardly leave the spot, and ere then we shall be miles from here. We shall seek green places that the desert hides from all save us, we shall rejoice in our freedom and our peaceful lives. Farewell.”
He slipped noiselessly into the shadows and was gone. But Basha sat wakeful and watchful through the night.
With the break of day the most of the camels in the oasis rose to search for the young green growths that held the dew, but Basha sat silent.
“Fool,” cried Abd el Karim, staggering from his tent, the haschish dreams still clouding his brain; “art thou too among the sick? Shall I kill thee, or wilt thou eat, O thrice cursed beast?”
“Leave me while there is time,” growled Basha, but Abd el Karim heard no more than the usual angry gurgle, and drawing off one of his slippers he struck Basha across the mouth.
With a curious cry like a trumpet-call Basha shuffled to his feet, and Abd el Karim, realising that some awful change had come to his charge, turned and ran.
In long slanting strides, with outstretched neck, lowered head and open mouth, Basha pursued noisily. The other camels were feeding behind the palm grove, their guardians with them, Abd el Karim had run towards the desert. But the drug he favoured had made his feet unsteady; in the hour of his direst need he slipped and fell. Basha’s teeth closed on the white haik that enveloped his master, and then he came down slowly to a sitting position and thrust the man, senseless now from fright, between the smooth rock and the bony ridge of his chest.
When he rose and ran towards the open desert he was mad, doomed to run until he dropped and died. But the man he had left prone on the rock that had tripped him would never, never rise again.
Many days later, in the great fandak of the Abaradiou beyond the gates of Timbuctoo, Abdullah told his friend the slave-merchant of the journey. “We had two anxious days,” he said, “but the grace of Allah was upon all save Abd el Karim. One of the camels that had never known the desert broke down and went mad. Perhaps the man had ill-treated him, perhaps even strove to stop him. Who shall say more than that Abd el Karim’s hour had come? May Allah have pardoned him.”
THE RED GROUSE
When he woke to being, and left the warm shelter of his mother’s feathers to take a look at the world around him, the sun was smiling upon the purple heather, and a light wind was stirring the leaves of birch and mountain-ash in the plantation below. He was no more than a tiny ball of yellow fluff with some dark-brown marks on back and sides, and a chestnut patch on his head, and there were eight brothers and sisters exactly like each other, waiting for him by the side of the heather tuft under which his mother had been hatching her eggs.
His father sat on another tuft a few yards away, spreading his plumage in the sunlight, and the little grouse thought he was fortunate in having such a handsome parent. The head, neck, breast and sides of Father Grouse were of a very bright chestnut colour, with black lines across, his lower feathers were darker, but tipped with white, to show his pure Highland breeding.
“Kok-kok,” said Father Grouse. “What a fine family I have to be sure. The stupid gamekeeper put his foot in our first nest and we had to make another one. So you are all very late. June is already here, the other birds on the moor can fly by now. Kok-kok.”
Then he and his wife broke off the tiny fresh tops of the heather, and the little bird, having been fed with his brothers and sisters, ran about in the sun till it went down, and then crept back to the nest where the shells of broken eggs had been lying, pale cream shells covered with heavy blotches of red. The little grouse, warm under his mother’s feathers and above the moss that lined the nest, slept quite happily, dreaming of the days when he would be able to fly over the moor. He woke with a start hearing his father crying:—
“Who goes there? Who goes there? my sword, my sword.”
“Don’t be frightened,” said Mother Grouse reassuringly, as the little ones nestle closer to her, “he says that every morning.”
The newcomer soon became accustomed to be called at daybreak by this startling cry, and he learned as soon to hide from the buzzard, the peregrine falcon and the carrion crows that, between them, eventually managed to secure all his brothers, because they would not listen to their father’s warning. Mrs. Grouse had decided at last that the last big egg, which was as broad at one end as at the other, held no son or daughter, and as soon as she had made up her mind about that she put on her summer dress; it was buff-coloured and marked with irregular bars of black. When the family had admired it they flew together across the heather. Father Grouse had no summer dress; he did not change his costume before autumn.
The family kept to the moor, where they met many very pleasant relatives with children quite grown up, so much like their mothers that it was hard to tell the difference, and while they were together Father Grouse gave his only son a lot of useful information.
“We keep to the heather,” he said. “It is our own. On the hills beyond,” and he pointed to the mountain behind the moor, “you find our cousins, the ptarmigan. In the plantation below the hills where there are birch, hazel, ash and juniper trees and where the roebuck hides in the ferns, you have another cousin, the blackcock. He feeds with us sometimes. We have not much to do with either of them, though we are not unfriendly. Kok-kok.”
It was a very fine summer, the heather was fresh and sweet to eat, and very warm to lie on. The little grouse soon lost the yellow down that had covered him, and his plumage became very much like his mother’s. The family would fly about in a group, father and mother leading, and they often went off the heather to eat the grass and early berries.
“I have lived more than one whole year,” said Father Grouse, “but I was born in a very bad season. The heather was bitten by the frost, the rain was unceasing, we could not get enough food, and it was terribly cold on the wet ground. Hundreds died—but lie down, somebody is coming.”
The family crouched low in the heather and saw the landlord’s factor walking up the hill-side with a stout gentleman who wore an unbecoming coat and a waistcoat with a heavy watch chain across it. The stout gentleman passed a handkerchief across his forehead. “It is a fine view,” he gasped, “and what are the limits of the bag?”
“Eight hundred brace of grouse may be shot and forty stags but the laird is not a hard man and might make it a thousand brace and fifty stags,” said the factor, who had forgotten how to blush.
“Now,” whispered Father Grouse, and uttering a challenge, he rose within three yards of the stout gentleman, closely followed by wife and family.
“You see,” said the factor, “the moor is packed with birds, you can almost walk over them.”
“Why did you show yourself like that, my dear?” said Mother Grouse, when they had settled after a long easy flight.
“Ah,” replied her husband, “you leave me to attend to my own business. I like to see men like that on the moor, they do no harm. It is the young, slender men who are never tired and are always shooting that I object to. You can’t get away from them, Kok-kok.”
“Did you hear the factor,” continued Father Grouse, after as near an approach to a chuckle as a red grouse can achieve. “He said the bag was limited to eight hundred brace, though the laird might make the limit up to a thousand. Now there are not two hundred and fifty brace on the moor. As for the stags, fancy a man like that trying to stalk them; well, let us go and eat some heather-tops—such talk makes me feel weak.”
They were glorious days that led to the middle of August. The young grouse was becoming quite big; he could take long flights without fatigue, could accomplish a small call, was an adept at finding good food and soft sleeping places, and he never allowed his attentions to stray from his feathered enemies.
He had some narrow escapes; on one occasion the peregrine falcon struck down one of his sisters as she was flying by his side; on another the great Golden Eagle, coming from his eyrie on the mountain top, was circling over him, but suddenly saw a young deer calf on a rock not far away. The rock looked over the bare hill-side, and the eagle, lighting on the poor calf’s back, buffeted its face so heavily with his wings that it fell off the rock and, tumbling down, was killed on the hill-side. The Golden Eagle made his meal, the fox and the carrion crow took what was left. It was a sad sight, and the Golden Eagle was more unpopular than ever on the moor and in the forest.
The young grouse made the acquaintance of the biggest deer on the hill, a king of stags, with brow, bay and tray antlers, who explained that he was a stag royal. This acquaintance was made one afternoon in early August when the grouse family were feeding on some succulent grasses by the side of the burn where the stag came to drink.
“I am more than pleased to meet you again,” said the stag. “I wish you and your family as sure an escape from the shot gun as I hope to get from the rifle.” So saying he trotted off, and Father Grouse spread his feathers just as though he had been a blackcock in a juniper tree, and challenged as loudly as he could.
“Last September,” he said, turning to his wondering son, “after my parents had met with misfortune passing over the butts, I found myself on some high ground near the big corrie. The royal stag you saw just now was resting there with his family, and he had been seen by the stalker. I was sitting on a heather tuft thinking that now I had lost my parents I should have to join the grouse pack, when I saw the stalker and the man who shoots the stags, crawling along the ground in my direction. They wanted to get behind the stag and shoot him as he sat head to wind.
“I can see them now—the stalker very cool, and the shooter very tired. As I looked I thought I recognised him as the man who had shot my parents. I did not hesitate, but rose up when they were almost near enough to touch me, flew within hearing of the stag and called out:—
“Who goes there? The gun, the gun.”
“The royal stag and all his family scattered, the stalker put down his gun and took up his whisky-flask; the man who had shot my parents used language no respectable grouse could listen to without feeling ashamed. They went to the wood for their lunch and my cousin, the grey hen, heard the stalker say he thought they had walked twelve miles after that stag. Kok-kok.”
It was good to be alive in those August days, to wake up when the sun started work, look out for food in the morning and late afternoon, and lie close through the heat of the day. The southerner had taken the shooting on lease and spent one or two days looking over the land, to the great delight of Father Grouse, who declared that no bird need suffer uneasiness on his account.
“All old men,” said Father Grouse, “would fire into a pack without hurting anything.” This was on the night of the 11th August which happened to fall on Saturday. Sunday, the 12th, brought no guns to the moor, and Father Grouse was first puzzled and then delighted. “I have it,” he said at last; “there will be no grouse shot this year, that stout man knows he will have no chance against us. He will try to shoot stags because they are bigger. Kok-kok.”
Monday, the 13th of August, found the grouse family up betimes; they fed heartily, as was their custom, and then retired to shelter from the heat. Father Grouse, Mother Grouse, three daughters and the one son, comprised the family now. Once or twice Mother Grouse stirred uneasily and said she heard men, but her husband remonstrated with her.
“You are very nervous, my dear,” he said, “haven’t I told you there will be no shooting this year? They will be cutting the corn in the lower fields soon, and we’ll go down there to feed on the stooks. You want a change of diet to strengthen your nerves. I know well enough you have no occasion for uneasiness.”
“It’s no good starting too early,” the head keeper had said at the lodge on the previous evening, “give the birds time to eat and time to settle down, and then you’ll do all right.”
And on the morning of the 13th he had declared that the breeze was just what was wanted, and that everything pointed to a successful day. The party, four guns and two keepers, with retrievers, had gone steadily from the low ground where the lodge stood, across the fresh-cut fields, over the hill-side and on to the moor. The heather was short and pointers were not used on it.
The old gentleman who took the moor did not shoot, but his three sons and nephew were first-class shots. While Father Grouse was saying his last words, he had seen them, and had realised that the men with the guns were young and sturdy, just the sort he had learned to fear. In that trying moment he realised how he had deceived himself and family, and how the gunners, by coming up the wind, had made it impossible for him to scent them in time.
“Rise quickly with me,” he whispered bravely to the Mother Grouse, “we’ll go for a safer place, my dear, and you follow us,” he added to his children. With these words he rose, and the others followed so quickly that the six birds seemed to take wing together.
“Bang, bang, bang, bang,” said the guns, and Father and Mother Grouse sank down into the heather that had been their home so long, with never a feather of their fine plumage ruffled. They were shot dead so cleanly that they knew no pain, and with them two of their children fell, not to die so easily. The white spot at the base of the beak of Father Grouse had a bright drop of blood on it, Mother Grouse did not even show as much.
“Mark down the others,” cried the man who had shot the parent birds, and opened the season with a successful “right and left”.
“Isn’t worth while,” said his friend who had shot one of the younger birds, “they are only cheepers.”
Then the birds being retrieved, the party continued to shoot its way over the moor, meeting with fair success, for the wind kept the birds from hearing the approach, and they had fed so well during the fine weather that they were not at all wild. Twenty odd brace had gone to the bag by two o’clock.
The young cock grouse never knew how he got away, nor what became of his family. He heard the guns cracking at the back of him, the hissing of shot through the air, and he flew wildly until he felt he had reached safety, then sank down into the heather, not daring to stir. He heard the guns again; once the remnant of a broken covey passed over the heather where he crouched, but he did not move until feeding-time came, and then, after a brief meal, returned to shelter.
For the next two weeks the moor was quite unsafe, the four guns sounded every morning and afternoon; on one or another of the five beats the birds fell in all directions. One day the guns came upon the young grouse suddenly, when he had no idea of their proximity and, crouched in the heather, he remained quite still. It was a hot day, no breath of air stirred the leaves; the ground was hard as iron and there was no scent. A dog passed within a yard of him without betraying his presence; the gunners moved away to the right; he was safe.
He met single birds on the moor, and all told the same doleful tale of disaster, and when with the last day of the month the weather changed and the wind rose, word passed from bird to bird that it was time to pack. So he joined one or two others and they joined some more, and when they were fifty strong they joined another band as large, and their addition went on until the pack numbered hundreds if not thousands. This was not on the old moor where he had been born, but on another one not far away, where the guns had only stayed for a day or two before going on to the high forest lands some mile or more away in pursuit of the stags. The young grouse and his companions had become very keen of sight and hearing; they were alarmed by the least sound, and gunners who tried to walk after them never arrived within firing distance.
One afternoon when the pack was feeding, the young grouse came upon his friend the royal stag by the side of the burn that ran through the heart of the heather. The great beast had been wounded by an ill-aimed bullet and had found his way to the water alone, for his hinds had scattered. He lay crouched amid the moss and water grasses.
“I have been here for two days,” he said to the grouse, “and if I’m left alone for two more I’ll be healed of my wounds and I’ll baffle the stalkers yet. They nearly tracked me, but had no dog, or I must have fought for it.”
“We’re staying here awhile,” said the grouse, “and I’ll do what I can for you in the way of warning.”
The red grouse fed and rested in that quarter for several days, and the stag went back to the forest on the third evening. “I am well enough to go to sanctuary now,” he said, “to the wood in the centre of the forest where the stalkers may not follow us. Good-bye, good luck, take care of the butts.” So saying, he trotted off bravely, before the young grouse could ask what the butts might be.
He was not left long in doubt. On the morning following the stag’s departure, he and his companions were alarmed to see a body of men armed with white flags approaching from the distance. With one accord the birds rose and went en masse in the direction indicated by the wind, right over some little banks of turf they had seen many times before on the moor. There were several of these banks on various moors, they were in a line, one being seventy yards or more from the other and were quite harmless as a rule.
This morning, however, as the birds passed over, the cry of the guns was heard, shot after shot was fired, bird after bird fell, for every little enclosure held one or two men. Some birds tried swerving, but it only carried them from one earth to another; it was a frightful experience and one that was destined to be repeated, for the birds followed the wind whenever they fled from the beaters and were caught again and again.
If the walkers had shot their tens, the drivers secured their hundreds in the next week or two, until the weather changed again for the worse and the packs took to a wilder and higher flight than they had ever attempted before. Then the gunners went off the moors and returned to the lower lands to shoot partridges.
To his last day the young grouse never knew how he survived the driving. The constant alarms, the headlong flights through the air, the hiss of the expanding shot that struck down near neighbours, these experiences filled him with a strange unreasoning fear, and he was not to escape scot free, for a couple of stray pellets cut off two of the toes of his left leg and another skinned the feathers above the left eye so that they never grew again.
On one occasion in his mad flight from the moor, he would have been killed against the telegraph wires of the Highland Railway, had not the singing of the “protectors” warned him just in time to dive below the wires. He felt little pain and inconvenience from his wounds and soon learned to go on short allowance of toes, but his fear increased until the least sound sent him into flight. Long after the moor had ceased to echo with the sound of guns, he trembled at every noise. The stags roared in the forest, and he fled in fear; a bird of prey screamed in the air—he dashed off again.
RED GROUSE [Photo by C. Reid]
“Have no more fear,” said the royal stag one day in later October, “the guns have gone for the year, the shooting season is over and I go about the forest as I like. Until my horns have fallen and grown again they will not return.”
This assurance comforted the grouse and he changed his clothes for a black and buff combination that yielded in a little while to the splendid chestnut with white tipped lower feathers that he remembered his father wearing. He still travelled with the pack, but they ate less heather than they had eaten before, and depended more upon late autumn berries, grass and corn left on unploughed fields. He grew strong and indifferent to the storms that swept the moors and made the forest bare.
No sportsman came near, and at the end of December the pack separated, and our friend was left so near to his own moor that he lighted on it, and there he met a young lady grouse in her charming winter gown with its bars of red and buff and spots at the tips of the feathers. He asked her if she would fly with him, explaining that he had, he feared, lost his family and friends. She feared that hers was a similar plight and said she would be glad of a protector. So they went out together and found the scattered remains of their friends, and for two or three months enjoyed a pleasant courtship.
Then when the stale winter heather was about to yield to a new crop, one bird brought news of a district where all the old growth had been burnt by the proprietors of the land a few years earlier and the new shoots were plentiful and sweet. The grouse and his lady flew to that spot, and found a little unoccupied hollow under a heather tuft. He helped her to line it with grass and moss, and she filled it with ten eggs. It was now the end of March, and during the first part of April he stood on sentry duty a little way from the nest, and uttered his war cry in Gaelic as his father had done before him. Happily the weather was fine once more and ten little babies were his before April turned to May. He was a proud grouse on the day when the last bird had come from its shell.
Other birds had been carelessly content to nest in the old uneatable heather, or on parts of the moorland where the ground was damp and undrained; the mortality among them had been very great, for they caught pneumonia and other troubles which are peculiar to the grouse. But this grouse flourished, and so did his wife and family, and by rare good luck no birds of prey secured the little ones; the food supply did not fail, and the weather was never cold enough to kill the children in days when their down had not changed to feathers.
By this time all remembrance of the autumn had passed from the grouse and his wife. It was no more to them than a dream. They thought of nothing but love and domesticity. Spring, which had restored all its beauty to the Highland country, had effaced recollection of autumn and winter and all the woes they bore. Summer deepened the remembrance of the spring and the joy of life; as Mrs. Grouse remarked to her husband, there was not a pair on the moors that led a finer covey of little ones.
June passed in days that seemed to be twenty hours long, there was no night—only a prolonged twilight; July was so fine that the burns dwindled down to little threads, and the farmers on the lowlands were crying for the water of which in nine years out of ten they had too much. August found the heather full of fragrance and the grouse forward, and strong on the wing. “They are exactly like you, my dear,” said Father Grouse to his wife, who had put on her summer dress with the irregular black bars across buff feathers, as they skimmed over the heather side by side. The parent birds were like her, very fat and very lazy, for the heather-tops had been young and plentiful in their part and they had rather overeaten themselves.
“That was a fine covey,” said the first gun to his neighbour at ten o’clock on the morning of the 12th. “A dozen in all, and we got six. How odd; last year you bagged the leader with your first shot just as you’ve done now. What is it, Donald? Yes, that’s odd, this old cock bird must have been hit twice last season. Two toes gone from left leg and mark of shot above left eye. Well, put them in. If we go on like this we will have a good bag.”
THE ROEBUCK
With the beginning of June, full leaf came to the plantation, but never a human foot disturbed the fresh thick undergrowth, and save for the subdued note of birds the silence was complete. Above the woodland the pines towered along the side of rising ground that led to the more abrupt hills in whose corries the red deer were to be found; below the woodland the arable lands began, and stretched in rich and plenteous growth to the inhabited districts.
The corn was young and green, and the farmers had no work to do within its area. So the doe that had left her mate and the little party with which she travelled, in the third week of May, felt happily secure in the hiding-place she had chosen, a secluded spot amid thick bracken, and very early in June two little fawns were born to her. They were pretty babies with coats lighter than their mother’s summer dress, and marked with white spots that did not remain very long. Their mother watched over them with most anxious and affectionate care, and until they were weaned could not bear them out of her sight for a moment. In the days of their utter helplessness she did not leave the wood at all, and the first walks abroad seemed to fill her with anxiety.
At the beginning of July, when the fawns were able to frisk about in prettiest fashion, happily ignorant of the element in life called danger, Donald’s retriever pup, making a little journey of discovery, came quite by chance into the wood. It was quite a puppy, without any definite ideas of a proper function in life, and no desire to do more than play with strange animals, but the mother of the little ones was very frightened, and could not fathom its intentions. She called upon her babies to lie down in the thick fern, and then made her way to the puppy.
Had she possessed horns it might have gone ill with the intruder, as it was she managed to kick him very severely, and he fled from the wood howling. After this alarm the doe redoubled her precautions, and very often would stop feeding to stand with one fore-leg raised and listen intently to some sound coming from far away. Towards the end of the month the return of her errant husband lightened her anxieties.
The Roebuck came jauntily into the wood and offered no excuse or explanation for his two months’ absence. He was quite a handsome fellow with about nine inches of antlers bearing the backward and forward tine that mark the complete development of what our forefathers called the “fair roebuck”. From the shoulder he stood about two feet two inches, from nose to the end of his short tail he was about four feet long; his head was short, his eyes were large, and there were black and white markings on his lips. His coat was the light reddish-brown of summer, and his conspicuous white patch gave an effective contrast to it. He was very well pleased with the children his wife had brought him, and expressed his satisfaction in a series of short, sharp barks.
The family stayed in the wood for a brief time, living on grasses and ivy and the fresh growth of young trees, to which the fawns soon learned to help themselves, as they cared more for leaves than grass; but the pleasure of the season was quite spoilt by the flies. The wood was full of them, and they bit and worried the fawns until life became a burden.
“We must go up into the hills,” said the Roebuck decisively; “it is our only chance of escape from this trouble. Midges can’t climb so far.”
“But what about the babies?” said the doe anxiously; “don’t forget the great big stags with long horns that live up there.”
“It is quite safe,” explained the Roebuck; “we are good friends. Next to the red grouse, there is no bird or beast that does so much for the red deer as we do. At the first sign of danger we give the alarm, and send the red herd scampering over the hills out of harm’s way. Often when the stalkers are abroad we spoil their day’s work by coming between them and the quarry. So you have nothing to fear from our big cousins.”
Reassured, the doe and her fawns accompanied the roebuck to the high hills, choosing night-time for the journey, with the fear of mankind before them. Food was less plentiful in the high grounds, but there were sufficient grasses to keep serious trouble away, and the cool shade was free from the worries that went with it below.
From their new home they could see right across the pinewood, over the plantation of birch, alder, juniper and Scotch fir, and thence across the low-lying fields of ripening corn. And when they sat head to wind no danger could come their way. Change of residence had made the doe, at least, very suspicious of unaccustomed sights and sounds; the buck was bolder and more assured.
August found the horns of the red deer fully grown and nearly free from velvet, and it brought the stalkers to the forest. The sharp crack of the rifle passed so quickly that it left little terror behind, the greater cause for alarm was the stalker himself. Did the Roebuck wind one he would bark defiantly, and his cry was as significant as the crow of the red grouse, who also hated intruders. It was well for the stalkers that the roedeer had another interest in middle August—it was the season of their lovemaking, and then they were less careful about questions of concealment.
The buck and the doe were more than ever devoted to one another now, and the fawns were left to their own devices. They courted and played, and were happy as though the month were April instead of August, and when one fine morning another roebuck wished to intrude, there was a terrible battle. The two fawns watched it from a distance. As soon as their father saw the intruder for the first time, he rushed at him with lowered head; the newcomer lowered his to receive the charge, and the horns of both seemed to be locked together. They separated, but drew off only to rush at one another again, and as each wished to avoid the other’s shock the charge was ineffective. Then they kicked with their forelegs and stood up, and in that position the parent roebuck managed to get in a thrust that ripped the intruder’s flank badly. This ended the struggle, the stranger retreated, leaving a little trail of blood to mark his trail. Mother doe had watched the combatants from a safe distance, and as soon as the fight was over she called in her own subdued fashion, and her mate, forgetful of his bruises, rushed headlong to her side. It had been an anxious time for the doe, for, according to the forest laws, she must have followed the stranger had he proved a victor.
On the afternoon of the same day the parents were still together, and the fawns had rambled to some rocks at the head of the corrie. They saw no danger below, and all around the place was deserted. But far away in the blue depths above the Golden Eagle hung for a moment quite motionless, wondering where his supper would come from. The little doe-fawn, suspecting no evil, had advanced to the edge of the high rock overlooking the valley; she was clearly to be seen from the eagle’s post of observation. With quick, fierce swoop the great bird shot through space, and stuck his cruel talons deep into the fawn’s shoulders. As he did so he buffeted her fiercely with his heavy wings, and she fell headlong on to the rock below—dead. Assured by one rapid circling flight that no danger was to be feared the eagle followed, tore from the half-formed body the parts that pleased him best, and then rose with a hoarse scream of triumph to wash red beak and claws in the nearest water.
The parents did not seem to notice their loss as they would have done in the earlier year, but the little roebuck had seen the tragedy as he lay crouched in the adjacent heather, pressed as closely to the ground as the hare in her form. He at least knew now that danger came from every side. And, as though to enforce recollection of the fact, it chanced that he was feeding in cover by a hill-side track one evening a week later, when the sound of footsteps made him crouch very low.
The sounds came nearer, he was afraid to move, and presently a pony came down the narrow track with a gillie by its side. Tied on to the pony’s back was a red deer—dead, a gaping wound in its throat. The little roebuck knew the victim for a royal stag, one of the monarchs of the forest, whose antlers were the admiration of every hind in the district. Yes, a rifle had cracked twice in the late afternoon in the direction of a corrie that the great stag favoured, and, doubtless, a bullet had found its billet. The fawn crept back to his mother’s side, he did not care to ramble any more.
A great chill came to the forest, and there were morning and evening mists that made feeding difficult.
“We will return to the plantation,” said the father roebuck; “it will be pleasant down there now.”
So they made their way back to the first home in the plantation, and all three began to change their coat, losing the red covering the parents had worn since May, and the young one had worn since the last white patches had left him. By October, when the great red deer were roaring on the high hills, and the stalker had laid his rifle down, roebuck, doe and fawn wore the thicker livery that would be theirs till spring returned.
It had not come before it was required, for the brief season of good weather had passed. Now the clouds hid the high hills, the red grouse had packed, the ptarmigan was putting on his white dress, and the blue hare of the hills was following his wise example.
With the winter dress the appearance of the elder roedeer improved considerably. They began to grow fat, and found an abundance of food. The tops of young trees, ivy and rowan berries served the doe and fawn, but the Roebuck was not averse from a raid on the turnip fields below the plantation, and enjoyed many a meal of corn until the last stooks were carried.
Owing to his night-prowling habits, his extreme quickness of eye and ear, and inconspicuous colouring, he could travel unobserved and with comparative impunity over to the farm lands. Doe and fawn were less venturesome, and preferred to accept the restricted diet of the plantation, rather than wander far afield. The Roebuck’s favourite movement was a canter that became a gallop when alarmed; he never trotted, but was always ready to jump, and could accomplish great feats if hard pressed.
With the end of December the Roebuck’s antlers, which had been growing very loose, dropped off altogether, and for the next six or seven weeks the new ones remained undeveloped. At last they were complete, and their proud owner rubbed off the last shreds of velvet against one of the trees in the plantation. By this time the fawn had put out two little points, his first year’s horn, and he was so proud of them that he damaged many saplings in order to test their efficiency.
To such a young roebuck the points were not an unmixed blessing. Sometimes when he ran out of the plantation into the pine-wood the wire fencing would catch and hurt them, and the damage done in the months when his head was very tender quite spoilt its shape, and made his horns grow awry all the days of his life. Though he had his fair share of vanity, this mischance did not trouble him greatly, for when he went abroad after he had grown up, there were few roebuck better off than he.
In his first winter another family joined his parents—a buck, a doe, and a little doe-fawn about his own age. They moved and fed together right into the spring; does and fawns keeping well within the precincts of the wood, while the roebuck ventured afield. They were constantly on the look-out for food, but had their stated hours for eating it. Early morning, noon and sunset seemed to be their meal-times, and then they would feed very delicately and within quite a small space, ready to take alarm if a branch cracked at the far end of the wood, or a dog barked beyond the border of the arable land, or the breeze that faced them as they fed carried on its wings the scent of man the enemy.
In May the two families separated, and the does retired to the most secluded corners they could find. The Young Roebuck was now left to his own devices, and celebrated the change by putting on the summer suit of ruddy brown, that shone when he ventured into the light. Nearly a month was occupied by the change, and during that time he felt sick and out of condition; but as soon as the transformation was complete his spirits revived, and he was ready for any adventure. Throughout July he indulged in the roughest play with young bucks of his own age, but his single points kept the fighting from becoming dangerous, and he could not bark as his elders did in that season. He went up to the hills alone one night, following the tracks of the past year for it was his rule always to choose a path he knew, and to travel in darkness, or between the lights.
Depending upon his own exertions for supplies, he lived in comfort until the month of August woke the stalkers into life, and then, with the nervousness common to his years, he thought that every gun was directed against his life. His keen hearing, fine sight and prompt action often gave the alarm to less wary red deer; and, if half the stalkers’ curses had taken effect, his tenure of life would have been brief. As it was, he went back to the plantation at the end of September full of the belief that his life was threatened, and this thought inspiring all his movements, doubtless lengthened his days.
For once there was a keen hunter of roedeer in the district; a man who had shot game in the wonderful country lying between the Zambesi river and the Uganda Protectorate and was anxious to try his hand at the deer of his native land. Already he had secured fine heads of the larger deer, and now he was bent upon following the roe, and studying the habits of the ground game. Throughout the plantation roedeer changed their coats to the brown and yellow livery of the colder season; and it became hard for the experienced eye to follow their movements. They glided through the wood’s most shadowy places, lightly as the sun across a meadow in June; never a leaf stirred or a branch cracked beneath their tread, for the paths of their going and coming were marked.
Children making an excursion to the wood saw the circling tracks of the roedeer, and thought that they were fairy rings made by Queen Mab for her nightly revels. But the fairies were only the little deer who could see the children and yet remain unseen, and were never seriously disturbed by their stray visits. In May and June children were not allowed to enter the wood, for the does were with their babies then, and might have done an injury to intruders.
Through the heat of summer the deer were in the high hills, and in the autumn they were very shy. The hunter noticed these things. He loved the country, time was his own, and he chose a corner of the land from which he could mark some of the comings and goings of the roedeer, with the help of his strong glass. Then he waited all night among the corn stooks, enduring the cold and the mist with complete indifference; and as the dawn was breaking he surprised the roedeer’s father. The old buck gave two leaps and was off at a gallop. The hunter remained perfectly cool, his keen eye told him what allowance he must make for the pace; and when he fired the buck gave one last despairing jump into the air and fell dead. By the edge of the corn land the Young Roebuck, who had seen everything, lay low on the ground in an agony of terror, just as he crouched when the golden eagle of the mountain seized his sister in the previous year.
It was late November and the roedeer were growing very fat; they had grain, turnip roots and rowan berries, as well as the tender parts of trees and grasses to feed upon, and perhaps the quality of the food supply kept them to their old home, in spite of the danger that surrounded it. Now, the hunter knew the numbers and sizes of the wood’s inhabitants, and he secured two more bucks of first head before they lost their horns. And in January and February he shot several fat does, matching his cunning against theirs, and having no help save that of a well-trained dog.
He might have shot the Young Roebuck had he cared to, but the new horns had nothing more than the forward tine that shoots out in the second year, about two-thirds of the way from the base, and the hunter had no use for so small a head. With the end of February he left Scotland, and three summers had come to the land before he returned.
In his absence the wood remained undisturbed. A few roedeer were shot by farmers among the corn lands; in one very severe winter several were killed by poachers, but the young roebuck had escaped all trouble.
In his third year the backward tine had come between the forward one and the end of the point, and thereafter he was completely armed. He had learned to bark quite loudly, had fought for a doe and won her from her former master; he was a parent though without responsibilities, and was reckoned one of the most cunning deer of the woodland.
Though he travelled far and wide no trouble came his way, hooks and nets failed to snare him. Angry farmers, stalkers and owners of the young plantations to which he did so much harm could not reach him with their vengeance; he seemed to bear a charmed life. Even when he rested there was some avenue by which tidings of danger could find way to his brain and restore his full consciousness on the instant. His winter weight was over fifty pounds, and his antlers were over nine inches, though their shape had been spoiled in the days when they were no more than simple points.
The hunter came back to the Highlands in late August and pursued the red deer until they began to roar and seek the hinds. Then he went South, to return in January when the snow was on the ground, when the Highland world seemed given over to storms, and the roebuck had lost their horns. He sought his accustomed corner and waited to see the roedeer feeding. Very soon the glass revealed all things to him. He saw the doe come from the wood to enjoy the stock of roots that had been piled, by his direction, at the edge of the arable land. Presently a buck of the fourth year joined her—a fine heavy beast.
In other parts of the woodland he saw other roedeer, and he knew that severe weather had driven some of the red deer down from the high hills above him. But the first pair of deer always captivated his attention. He could not have known that they were old friends, and that he had spared that same buck when his horns were hardly formed. Perhaps he was attracted by the elaborate pains this buck and doe took to avoid observation, by the way in which the buck pushed his companion forward as an advance guard, and disappeared at the first sign or sound of danger, leaving her to follow undirected. For days he endeavoured to get near them, using a well-trained hound, watching in the neighbourhood of their rings, even employing Donald to aid him in the quest.
Four years of keen observation had made the Roebuck more wary than ever, and, aided by his protective colouring, he passed lightly from plantation to pine-wood, unheard and unseen, while the doe was equally successful in escaping pursuit. For days together they would leave the hunter’s boundaries, but they always returned when they thought the place was quiet; and in the meantime the roebuck’s antler’s grew, and the velvet stripped, and he was becoming a splendid buck with haunch and head alike at their best.
Many men would have been baffled, but the hunter was unlike most people, and did not know when he was beaten. His experience had been gained in many countries, his store of woodcraft was very large. He made a very careful study of the tracks by which the roedeer left the plantation for pine-wood and feeding grounds, and then, after leaving the place quite quiet for several days, took advantage of a strong wind, and stole up to a point where Donald had dug a pit and put a screen of heather. There were other dummy screens round the sides of the plantation, and the roedeer had ceased to fear them.
That evening the doe came out and made her way to a small patch of sweet grass that the trees had sheltered from the snow. She seemed very suspicious and ill at ease, and many times stood for a moment with head erect and fore-foot raised as though to sniff the breeze. At last she was within sixty yards of the pit, and broadside on, and even as the hunter pressed the trigger that sent the notched bullet speeding to her brain, he knew that his aim was true. Quickly as possible he carried off the spoil, glad at heart, for he knew that her mate must soon be his.
For two days and nights the snow fell, and then on a clear afternoon he sallied forth again, taking advantage of wind and cover to reach his pit unobserved. The woodland was desolate and still, no sound of life was to be heard. He laid his rifle gently down and took from his pocket the little call given to him by an old deer-stalker of the Austrian highlands. He put it to his mouth.
In the heart of the plantation the Roebuck, who walked now with clean horns of splendid growth, heard the music that the doe makes in the most pleasant season of his life. True to his predominant instinct he forgot the claims of caution, and rushed headlong in the direction of the sound. It came from behind a little mound of snow, where the heather patch had stood. The separating distance became eighty, sixty, forty yards, and then a long barrel peeped out towards him, and with a mighty effort he checked his gallop and prepared to turn.
In that brief moment of change the rifle spoke, and he tumbled dead in his tracks.
THE WATER-RAT
Many people know the river in and round the market-town that stands upon its banks, but very few have seen the parent stream where it passes rippling for some hundreds of yards between narrow banks in the shadow of old willow trees, for here it is on private ground. You could not wish to see more beautiful country. There are high hills crowned with woods and level meadows where grass is always green, and the willows share with the poplars the custody of the water. Tiny little tributaries enter the main stream here and there, but Jock the water-rat looked upon these with some contempt, as though he thought they were suburban. He had his home in the roots under an old willow tree. You saw one hole in the bank just above the water, but there were others under the water, and in the meadow.
When the summer day was fine and long, Jock would sit at the edge of the hole that was made in the bank, and would survey the world with a cautious eye and a contented expression. He was no longer a young water-rat, and he had not passed through his life without learning that he had enemies, but in this part of the river the trout were few and of small size—far too small indeed to trouble water-rats, and the eels that collected lower down by the mill seldom came in his direction, the feeding was not good enough. Of great coarse fish like pike there was little need for fear, the water was too shallow to tempt them to come so far up. If we except the old heron who was no longer as smart as he had been in the days of his youth, and now stood on one leg as often as he did on two, and missed his stroke as often as he made it, Jock had no enemies in the water, and this is as it should have been, for there never was a more harmless little animal.
He wore a brown coat well oiled, and carried a black tail with a white tip, of which he was absurdly proud, for such a decoration in water-rat land denotes that the wearer is of good family, and Jock had cousins and distant relatives by the score who could not boast such an adornment. He was proud of the many doored home he had made for himself, and still more proud of the river which, he believed, had been put there for his benefit. He would sit for hours where the light could just reach him and listen attentively to the soft song of the water, and the louder note of larks that sang in the sky above him.
From time to time he would look with a patronising eye upon Mrs. Moorhen who often brought her little black babies past the door of his house when the mantle of summer was spread over the land. In her early days Mrs. Moorhen had quite mistrusted him, she thought he was like the big brown rats that lived about the barns and sometimes came to the water side, and did what harm they could from the time when their eyes opened until the fatal day came when the keeper brought his terriers and his ferrets to the home farm and killed them in their hundreds.
“I assure you, Madam,” said Jock, upon the day when he cleared his character, “I would not harm you if I could, and I could not harm you if I would. I have nothing at all to do with the brown rats of the barn, my skin is darker than theirs, and my tail is altogether different. Why, the white tip ought to have told you as much, even if the length had not. Then too, my legs are shorter, and I have yellow claws, and yellow colouring on my fur. Those fellows who live up by the barns are merely brown. They will eat anything or anybody, and the dirtier their food is the better they like it, but I have delicate tastes and am altogether a clean liver.”
“Will you give me your word of honour,” said Mrs. Moorhen, “that you have never eaten an egg?”
“Quite readily,” he replied. “My food consists entirely of roots and flowers and water weeds. I’ve never tasted an egg in my life.”
Perhaps Mrs. Moorhen was not altogether satisfied at first, for she watched very carefully from among the rushes and roots to see when and where Jock fed. The sight reassured her. After sitting very quietly for an hour or so enjoying the view and the music, he would let himself down easily into the water, and swim to some plant that seemed to tempt his appetite. He would bite it from root or stem, swim back again to his doorway, and then squat upon his hind-legs and eat with great deliberation. When he had finished he would remove all the débris very carefully, and wash himself like the clean little animal he was. Sometimes he would carry his food on to the bank, or even seek it on the bank and eat quite away from his burrow, but his movements were all so simple and so harmless that Mrs. Moorhen could but be reassured, and she soon came to the conclusion that it was a good thing to have a friend in a world that was so full of enemies.
“I haven’t seen you here for long,” she explained, “and when I saw you first you were running on the land, and that made me suspicious. You were not in these parts when I came to them in the autumn.”
“The truth is,” he explained, “that I have only just come back to my home for the summer. During the winter months I could not face the water for long, and I could not sit at the door of my burrow because the river had risen so high, so I was forced to go inland when I was not asleep.
“You may not know,” he went on, seeing that his companion looked rather puzzled, “that during the very cold weather I sleep as long as I can, sometimes for days together. Then I wake up very hungry and must go in search of food, and as I cannot find much to eat in the water it is sometimes necessary to go to the fields to find a meal in the roots.”
“Are they not all cleared away by the time the very bad weather comes?” inquired Mrs. Moorhen.
“They have been taken up,” he replied, “but there is generally enough left to yield more than I could possibly eat if I started at the end of the summer and never went to sleep until the spring. Sometimes I store roots and grasses in my burrow, but last year two land rats came to it. I was frightened and would not return. I have no trouble at all about the food supply; my only care is to avoid the creatures that one sometimes meets on the fields in early morning or at dusk.”
“I know,” said the bird with a little shiver. “You mean great big men with guns and dogs. I knew a mallard who came to live here in the rushes with his wife, and we became very friendly. He had the most beautiful green feathers I have ever seen in birdland. One morning in January when there was a hard frost and my friends were lying low in the rushes, a big dog came up to them, and they jumped up to fly away. They went head to wind to keep their feathers in the proper place for the breeze was strong. Before they had gone as far as the bridge there was a hideous noise, and then another hideous noise, and one fell dead on the land, and the other fell dead in the water, and the dog went after them and picked them up, and I buried myself in the water up to the tip of my nose and felt terribly afraid.”
“I have heard those noises,” said Jock, “but I don’t think men would harm you or me; we do no hurt to anybody, and they don’t need us for their food. My enemies are the stoats and the weasels that run along the hedgerows and kill rabbits and anything else they can get their teeth into. Many of my family have suffered death at their hands, and I am always afraid when I go on the land lest they should see my beautiful tail. If they did it would be all up with me, for they can walk faster than I can run. On my bank I am safe for I can drop into the water, and the weasel or stoat that can follow me there may have all he can get. I don’t mind men, they never seek to hurt me. I don’t like boys because some have thrown stones at me, and I don’t like women because one passed last summer when I sat washing myself by my door, and she said: ‘Oh, there’s a horrid rat!’ and ran away.”
In those late spring days there was not much opportunity for conversation. Mr. and Mrs. Moorhen had built a nest in the roots of a willow tree, so close to the water that had it risen an inch or two the eggs must have been destroyed; and Mrs. Water-rat had retired to a nest at the far end of the burrow well above the water line, a nest of weeds and grass that had been bitten into tiny pieces and shaped rather like a cup. Jock in those days had less time for sunning and washing himself than he thought he needed, and was constantly in the water searching for dainties for his wife, or looking out for attractive pieces of grass or weed that he thought were needed to make the nest still more beautiful. Sometimes his wife would come from the nest for a brief wash and return immediately. Before May had passed, and at a time when the river banks were loaded with an abundance of food that must have gladdened any water-rat’s heart, Jock was the father of six little blind baby water-rats, and Mrs. Moorhen was the mother of eight tiny little babies, that looked like balls of soot, so round and so black were they. It was a busy time, but yet Jock found hours through which it was possible to listen to the lark, or to watch the bats when they gathered towards evening and fluttered through the air in pursuit of the flies and insects that could never get away. In all the land there were no happier families than those of the harmless bird that lived among the rushes, and the good water-rat whose record defied reproach.
“If I could find nothing else to eat,” he said one day when he had been explaining his rules of life to his friends, who paused on the water just in front of his burrow, with their little family playing round them, “I might be tempted to eat some of those young frogs. Some of my cousins do so, but they have rather low tastes, and you wouldn’t find a white tip to any tail among them. I hold that it’s wrong, for there’s no excuse here to be anything but a vegetarian.”
Doubtless the little frogs who had been tadpoles so recently and now swarmed all over the grass, were very pleased to hear the news, for they had quite enough enemies already, the old heron being the most determined of them all. Though he sometimes missed his aim when he struck at a fish now, he seldom made a mistake about a frog, and as he too had domestic duties and a family to provide for, he was terribly in earnest. Had he stayed in the narrower part of the river, it might have gone ill with Jock and his family, but he felt the need of the biggest fish he could find, and preferred the neighbourhood of the mill where there were eels in abundance and he had a fair sporting chance of capturing a young pike or two.
Jock and his wife had quite enough work to do in the early summer days when their young were ready to leave the snug nest at the end of the burrow. It was not difficult to teach them to swim, when once they could be coaxed into the water, for their natural instinct aided them, and they took more readily to the water than birds that are born in high trees take to the air. But it was exceedingly difficult to make them understand, in the first joy of their newly discovered achievement, that the river held dangers in its waters, that if the parent water-rats were too big for the small fish, the little ones in those early days were quite tempting morsels. Though the father water-rat was quite a foot long from tip of nose to tip of tail, his children could not claim more than three inches.
Then too, the babies were inclined to scatter and to be curious, and to go on voyages of discovery on their own account when they had passed the period of extreme helplessness that came to them at birth.
In the days when they first looked out upon the water they had no liking for it, and were carried for their swimming lesson in fashion rather similar to that employed by the seal when she takes her little one for the first time to the depths that are to serve as home for the greater part of his life. When the moment came to leave the baby water-rat alone, the father or mother would swim away from it, and the little one would find that it could not drown, and that the water could not even soak its scanty covering. The water-rat’s coat is full of oil that keeps the water standing in a thousand little bubbles on the points of its hair unless it stays for a very long time under the water, and no water-rats do this unless they are attracted by some roots that require a lot of investigation. The young water-rats swam with head and back right out of the water. At first they knew no other way, for this was the method that their parents practised, but they were soon to learn that, in times of danger, the body must be sunk altogether, and only the tip of the nose allowed to show above the water. The moorhens dived in similar fashion, and each thought that the one imitated the other.
“I daresay you find our method of diving very useful when you’re at all alarmed,” said Mr. Moorhen to Mrs. Water-rat.
“I see you’ve learned to dive just as I do,” said Jock to Mrs. Moorhen. “It’s the best way to get about, and you’ve learned the trick perfectly.” It would have been hard to make either believe that the other had not copied his action.