Kitabı oku: «The Haunters of the Silences: A Book of Animal Life», sayfa 3
Another and equally deadly peril was one that took several forms. Once as he swam swiftly but easily onward, he saw a number of his companions, who chanced to be a little ahead of him, stop abruptly and engage in what seemed to him a meaningless struggle. Ever suspicious, he checked himself and tried to make out what was the matter. The struggle was desperate, but the adversary at first invisible. In a moment, however, he detected a mesh of fine, brown lines, which seemed to surround and grapple with the unfortunate fish. Not waiting to investigate further, he retreated with a nervous flurry of speed. Then, since nothing could divert his homeward impulse, he dived almost to the bottom and continued his journey, not returning toward the dangerous surface till he was nearly a mile beyond the throttling peril of the drift-net. But there were yet other nets, and as he entered the great outrush of his native river he encountered them on every side, stretched on rows of stakes running far out into the channels. These "set nets", as they were termed, he was fortunate enough, or wary enough, to detect when he first entered the river, and he avoided them by keeping to the deepest parts of the channel; but he saw what cruel toll they took of the eager and heedless schools that swam with him. Net after net they threatened him; but ever upward he urged his way against the tawny current, his long fins and powerful tail never pausing in their graceful, tireless effort. Neither he nor his companions now lost time in foraging, for their appetite had mysteriously vanished since leaving the salt water. They had become engrossed in one idea, the quest of the clean-rushing rapids and the beds of bright gravel where they were born.
Leagues up the great river, after mounting several noisy but not difficult rapids, the grilse came to a halt for the first time in a deep and spacious pool which swarmed with his fellows. Here he rested, and here he made light, casual meals, jumping at the little flies which fell upon the swirling surface of the pool. Once the bright yellow body of a struggling wasp allured him, – but just as he was rising to gulp it in, a memory, vague but terrifying, swung dimly up into his brain from the far-off days when he had been a tiny, gay-coloured parr in the ripples of the Great South Branch. He remembered the sharp point piercing his jaw, his choking and gasping on the hot, dry bank; and refusing the bright titbit, he left it to be gobbled up by one of his less wary companions. After that revival of memory the crafty grilse inspected every fly before he rose to it, to see if any slender, almost invisible line were attached to it. His precautions were unnecessary, in that instance, the pool being a lonely and unnoted one in a broad, shallow reach of the river; but his awakened watchfulness was to stand him in good stead later on.
A day's journey beyond the pool, a great outrush of colder water, green-white against the amber tide of the main river, greeted the returning grilse, and he found himself in the mouth of his native Quahdavic. It was a scanter and shallower stream, however, than when he left it, for now the long heats of the summer had shrunken all the watercourses. As he mounted the clear current he now encountered fierce rapids, and ledges boiling with foam, which put his swimming prowess to the test. After a day of these rapids and ledges and shallow rips, he felt quite ready to halt once more in a great green pool where two lively brooks, tumbling in from either shore, kept the surface flecked with whirling foam. Here the invigorating coolness of the water speedily refreshed him, and he fell to feeding on the various insects brought down by the meeting currents. The pool was thronged with grilse and full-grown salmon, with here and there a school of graceful whitefish or a group of sluggish suckers, whom he ignored. When the moon rose white over the black, serried masses of the fir woods, silvering the pool, the big grilse, obeying a sudden caprice, shot upwards with a mighty surge of fins and tail, and hurled himself high into the still air. Falling back with a resounding splash, he repeated the feat again and again. He had discovered the fascination of diving upward into the unknown and alien element of the air. Others of his kindred, large and small, had made the same discovery, and the wilderness silence was broken with splash after splash, as the tense, silver shapes shot up, gleamed for an instant, and fell back. As the noise of the mysterious play echoed on the night air, a black bear crept down to the water's edge on one side of the stream, and a lynx stole out to the end of a log on the other side, each hoping that some unwary player might come within reach of his paw. But all the salmon kept out in the safe deeps; and the keen-eyed watchers watched in vain as the round moon climbed the clean heights of sky.
After a few days in this pool, he was surprised one early morning by the sight of a long, dark shape gliding over the surface. From its side, near the hinder end, a strange-looking, narrow fin thrust downward from time to time, and with heavy swirls propelled the dark shape. The strange apparition disturbed him, and he grew restless and watchful. A few minutes after it had passed there came a faint splash on the surface above him, and a big, curious-looking fly appeared. It sank an inch or two, moved against the current, and was then withdrawn. He eyed it with scorn, remembering his former experience with such. But when, a moment later, the strange fly appeared again, he was amazed to see one of the biggest salmon in the pool rise lazily and suck it down. The next instant there was a terrific commotion. He saw the great fish rush hither and thither up and down and around the pool, now scattering the whitefish on the bottom, now splashing upon the surface and leaping half his length into the air. Very clearly the cunning grilse understood what it all meant. For many long minutes he watched the struggle, which showed no sign of ending. Then disgusted and apprehensive, he forsook the pool, darting beneath the canoe as he did so, and continued his journey up-stream.
Late in the day the returning traveller came to the mouth of the Big South Branch. Without hesitation he turned up that turbulent but shrunken stream, knowing it for his own; and he made no stop till he reached the deep, green, foamy pool at the foot of the Falls. Being still comparatively fresh, and very restless, he swam all round the pool, and took a crafty survey of the terrific obstacle before him. But among the sojourners in the pool were many fish with bleeding sides, who had essayed the leap in vain and were waiting to recuperate their energies for another effort. So he, too, paused a little, gathering his young strength.
The Falls of the Big South were about twelve feet in total height. There were two leaps, the upper one, of about three feet, rolling down into a hollow shelf of sandstone some six or eight feet in width, and the lower, dropping nine feet sheer into the pool. Most of the face of fall, at this stage of the water, was lashed into foam by fissures and projecting angles of rock, but on the right the main volume of the stream fell in a clear, green column. Up the front of this column the grilse presently flung himself, striking the water about a foot from the top. As he struck, the impetus of his leap not yet exhausted, his powerful fins and tail took firm hold of the solid water and urged him upward. Over the lip he shot, into the boiling turmoil of the shelf, then onward over the great surge of the upper dip. He had triumphed easily, and the way was clear before him to the shining gravel bars whereon he had been spawned. There were still some tough rapids – shallow, and tortuous, and grid-ironed with slaty rocks – to be climbed; but there were quiet pools to sojourn in, and no perils that his craft could not evade. One by one his fellow voyagershad dropped away, betrayed by the fisherman's luring fly, clutched by the skilful paw of wildcat or bear, or vanquished in their own element by the mink or the otter. But when he reached the wide spawning-beds he was still comraded by a fair remnant of the host which had entered the river with him; and the shallow run that swept the bars were noisy with their splashings through the twilight of evening and dawn.
Every day there were new arrivals at the spawning-beds, and among them the strong and wary grilse soon found a mate. She was considerably larger than he, a trim young salmon of the second year and perhaps nine pounds in weight. But his radiant colouring, his strength and his activity, as he swam around her and displayed his charms, appeared to content her. With his bony nose he dug her a circular nest in the gravel, where the current ran clear but not too strong; and in this nest she laid her countless eggs, while he rubbed his side caressingly against her shining flanks. When her eggs were all laid and fertilized he drifted away from her, dropped down to the nearest pool, and lay there sluggish and uninterested for awhile, until, seized once more by the longing for the great salt tide, he joined a returning company of "slinks" and hurried back down-river to the sea.
III
When he reached the deep sea once more, and regained his appetite among the sweeping tides, he once more began to grow. His fins became smaller in proportion to his bulk, and he was no longer a grilse, but a salmon. His life, however, underwent no great change; his adventures, perils, interests, appetites, were all much the same as during his first season in the sea. Only he now swam with a certain majesty, ignoring the grilse and smaller salmon who swam and fed beside him; for he was of splendid, constantly growing stature, of the lords of his kind.
This time he let nearly the whole round of the year go by, feeding at leisure and lazily dodging the seals, among the icy but populous tides that swung beyond the mouth of Hudson Straits. Then, late the following winter, long before the dark earth had any word of spring, spring stirred secretly in his veins, and he remembered the sunny gravel bars of the Great South Branch. The sudden urge of his desire turned him about, and he began to swim tirelessly southward, companioned by an ardent, silvery host into whose veins at the same time the same compelling summons had been flashed.
It was late May when the returning salmon, having successfully eluded the snares of the nets and the assaults of harbour seal and dogfish, came again to the mouth of his native river and fanned his gills once more in its sweet, amber current. He was now a good forty pounds in weight, and his clean blue-and-silver body was adorned with fine markings of extraordinary brilliancy. His vigorous, wholesome, seasoned muscles propelled him irresistibly against the current of the river, which was now fierce with freshet; and being urged by a stronger and more insistent desire than that which had swayed him on his former visit, as a grilse, he now made more haste in his journeying, with briefer halts in the pools. The pools, at this season, were some of them indistinguishable in the flood, and others turbulent and difficult of access, so the fly-fishermen were not yet out in force. Only once, in the great pool below the Quahdavic mouth, did he see the bright fly whose treacherous lure he knew so well go dancing over his head. He rose lazily and slapped it with his tail in angry contempt, then returned to the bottom of the pool and watched it lazily, while for nearly an hour it went through its futile antics. Then it vanished suddenly.
Perhaps ten minutes after the gaudy fly had disappeared, the big salmon saw a brown furry shape, more like a very young squirrel than anything else, go floating down the current. Other salmon, who, like himself, had ignored the fly, observed this furry shape with interest, and half started to investigate. But when the big salmon rose to it they turned away with resignation. As for him, though he had not been once really hungry since entering the fresh water, he felt that that strange object was the very thing he wanted. Gliding up to the surface on a long slant, very slowly, he opened his great jaws just below the object, sucked it in, and with a heavy splash turned back toward the bottom. The next instant there was a jerk, a prick, a fierce tug at his jaw which swerved him from his course; and he realized that he had been fooled. The furry shape was but the old treason of the fly in another form.
His first impulse was to rush madly across the pool in an effort to escape the small tormentor. But memory and experience, added to that native cunning which had brought him safely through so many perils, now came to his rescue. Instead of rushing to the surface and performing wild feats which would have soon worn him out while delighting the soul of his enemy, he turned resolutely back to his course and bored his way to the bottom against the exasperating pressure of rod and reel. Here he set himself to nosing vigorously among the stones, in the hope of rubbing off this troublesome thing on his jaw. The thing tugged, and tugged, and pricked, and worried, as the fisherman at the other end of the line strove to rouse him into a lively and spectacular struggle. But for some minutes he refused to be diverted from his nosing among the stones, till the fisherman began to fear that the hook had got fast to a log.
Presently, however, the great salmon decided to change his tactics. Though he did not know it, he had already loosened the hook appreciably, tearing the cartilage of his jaw. Now, having craftily eyed for some seconds the fine, taut, almost invisible line of gut as it slanted off through the water, he made a long, swift rush straight in the direction in which the line was striving to pull him. Instantly the pull ceased, the line fell slack. But he felt the hook, with its furry attachment, still clinging at the side of his mouth. He passed straight under the dark shape of the canoe, and heard a sharp, vibrant sound above him, something like the song of a locust, which was the noise of the big salmon reel as the fisherman made wild haste to take in the slack of the line. As he swam he shook his head savagely; but the hook still held. Then, near the farther edge of the pool, he darted between the limbs of a sunken windfall, and back again on the other side, effectually fouling the line a few feet from his nose. The next moment there was a violent jerk at his jaw. The hook tore out, and he swam free.
In tremendous indignation and trepidation the great salmon now darted from the pool and up against the wild current of the Quahdavic. In the next pool he delayed for but a few minutes, not resting, but swimming about restlessly and stirring up the other salmon with his excitement. Then, accompanied by three or four of those whom his nervous activity had aroused, he pressed onward. Through rapid and chute and pool, and white-churned trough where rocks scored the bed of the river, he darted tirelessly, and up the clear torrent of the Great South Branch; and he never halted till he found himself in the boiling basin of green and foam at the foot of the Falls.
The basin was a very different place now from that which he had visited as a grilse. Into its vexed deeps the flood fell with the heavy trampling of thunder, which was echoed back and forth between the high broken rocks enclosing the basin. But what was of most importance to the great salmon was a fact which, if he realized it at all, he realized but vaguely. The Falls themselves had changed since his last visit.
At the very first of spring there had been a landslide. The great, partly overhanging rock, seamed and split by the wedges of countless frosts, had all at once crumbled down beneath the tireless pressure of the cataract. The lower fall, thus retreating, had become one with the upper. The straight descent was now nearly five feet higher than before, – a barrier which no voyager those waters ever knew could hope to overcome.
The great salmon did not understand what had happened. He knew that he had passed the barrier before, and had come to those bright, gravelled reaches of which he was desirous. He knew that a summons which he could not disobey was urging him on up-stream. He had no thought but to obey. After a short rest in the deepest part of the pool, – he was alone there, being the first of the returning migrants, – he suddenly aroused himself, darted like a flash of silver through the green flood, and shot straight up the face of the fall. Within three feet of the crest he came, hung curved like a bow for a fraction of a second, glittering and splendid, then fell back into the white smother. Again, and yet again, he essayed the leap, gaining perhaps a foot on the second trial, but falling far short on the third. Then, exhausted and beaten by the great impact of the waters as he fell back defenceless, he retired to the quietest depth of the pool to recover his strength. He felt bewildered by his failure, and half stunned by the buffeting of the air-charged flood, which affected him somewhat as a tornado might affect a man who was fighting to make head against it. Moreover, there was a long crimson gash slanting down his flank, where he had been driven against a jagged rock as he fell.
Of all these things, however, he thought little, as he lay there in the green deep which seethed from the turmoil passing above it. Through the turmoil he saw the wide, clean-glittering, shallow-rippled gravel-bars of the upper stream, golden under the sun and blue-white under the moon. These he saw as he remembered them, and he saw the loud barrier to be passed before he could reach them. As he brooded, his courage summoned back his strength. Again he flashed up, with a power and swiftness that seemed irresistible, and again he shot into the spray-thick air on the face of the fall. Again he hung there for a half a heart-beat, spent, to fall back baffled and confused. Again and again, however, he flashed back to the trial, undaunted in spirit though at each effort his strength grew less: again and again the rock teeth hidden in the foam caught and tore him as he fell. At last, all but stunned and altogether bewildered, he swam feebly into an eddy close to shore and half turned upon his side, his gills opening and closing violently.
Just about this time a visitor from the hills had come shambling down to the river-edge, – one of the great black bears of the Quahdavic valley. Sitting contemplatively on her haunches, her little, cunning eyes had watched the vain leaps of the salmon. She knew a good deal about salmon and her watching was not mere curiosity. As the efforts of the brave fish grew feebler and feebler she drew down closer and closer to the edge of the water, till it frothed about her feet. When, at last, the salmon came blindly into the eddy and turned upon his side, the bear was but a few feet distant. She crept forward like a cat, crouched, – and a great black paw shot around with a clutching sweep. Gasping and quivering, the salmon was thrown up upon the rocks. Then white teeth, savage but merciful, bit through the back of his neck; and unstruggling he was carried to a thicket above the Falls.
Answerers to the Call
THE little lake, long and narrow, and set in a cleft of the deep forest, led off like a pathway of light to the full October moon. The surface of the lake was as still as glass, and the woods, rising from each shore in dense waves, billowy where the hardwoods crowded thick, or serrated and pinnacled where the fir and spruce and hemlock drew their ordered ranks, were as motionless as if an enchantment had been laid upon them. The air was magically clear, almost pungent with suggestion of frost, and tonic with autumn scents.
In sharp contrast to the radiance of the open, the deep of the forest was filled with an extraordinarily liquid and transparent darkness, pierced with hard white lines and spots of light where the moon broke through. Down along the shores of the lake, under the ragged fringe of mixed growths where forest and open met, ran a tangle of grotesque, exaggerated shadows, so solid of outline as to seem almost palpable.
All these shadows were as motionless as if frozen – except one, a long, angular shadow, which projected itself spasmodically but noiselessly through the bushes, occasionally darting out upon the naked beach, but withdrawing again instantly, as if in dread of the exposure. The source of this erratic shadow was a lean backwoodsman, who, rifle in hand, was stealing on moccasined feet down the lake shore under cover of the fringing branches.
Suddenly across the water came a sound as if some one were thrashing the underbrush with a stick. The hunter stopped short, and listened intently from his place of concealment. Very well he knew that sound. It was a bull moose eager for fight, thrashing the bushes with his great antlers as a challenge to any rival who might be within hearing.
The woodsman's grizzled lips parted in a smile of satisfaction, and after a glance at his rifle to see that the cartridge was in place, he crept onward down the lake, well under cover and as soundless as his own shadow. He expected to come upon the challenger somewhere near the foot of the lake. He might, of course, have adopted a surer and lazier method of hunting by staying where he was and imitating the call of the big moose's mate; but this seemed to him gross treachery, and little short of murder. He would almost as willingly have condescended to snare the noble beast whom he gloried in overcoming in fair chase.
The hunter had not gone far, however, when another strange sound disturbed the enchanted silence. It was harsh, wild, yet appealing, and seemed in some way the very voice of the untamed wilderness. It was the call of the shy cow moose.
The woodsman crept down to the shore and peered cautiously through the screening boughs, to see whether the call was an authentic one or the cheat of some other hunter less scrupulous than himself.
About a quarter of a mile down the shore a bare sand spit jutted out into the sheen of the lake; and near its point, an ungainly black silhouette against the bright water, stood the cow, calling, listening, and calling again.
The hunter stood for a few moments, watching her with that deliberation which marks the man of the woods. As he watched, suddenly the cow wheeled half-round, as if startled, then dashed into the water, swam in haste to the next point, and vanished among the trees.
The woodsman, much surprised, waited motionless where he was for a couple of minutes, to see if the cause of her alarm would reveal itself. Then, as no sign of life appeared on the brilliantly lighted sand spit, he pressed on stealthily down the shore to investigate for himself.
In a few minutes – forest and lake meanwhile as still as if no living thing breathed within the borders – the hunter found himself at the head of the sand spit. Keeping within the deep shadow, he examined the ground carefully, but could detect no trail, except that of the cow which had been calling. Puzzled, and nettled to find his woodcraft at fault, he continued his furtive progress toward the foot of the lake.
He had gone not more than two or three hundred yards when, just as he was about to step out upon a little lighted glade, that subtle and unnamed sixth sense which the men of the woods sometimes develop warned him that something alive and hostile was hidden in the thicket just ahead. He stiffened in his tracks and waited, eyes and nostrils intently alert.
He was so close to the edge of the thicket that his own concealment was very imperfect. In the thicket, just across the lighted space, nothing stirred; but he was sure that something was there. For fully five minutes he waited. Then, just to see what would happen, he gave, very softly and alluringly, the call of the cow moose.
What happened was something no previous experience had taught him to expect. No moose responded to the supposed voice of its mate; but a huge black bear fairly bounced into the open, and came at him in terrific leaps, evidently purposing to catch the cow before she could get started running. Annoyed, because he was not hunting bear and did not want to scare the game he was seeking, the woodsman stepped out into the full light as he raised his rifle.
But he did not have to shoot. If he was not hunting bear, neither was the bear hunting man. At this unlooked-for apparition of a man with a voice like a cow moose, the bear almost stopped in mid-jump, as if struck by an explosive bullet. Fairly falling over in his desperate haste to stop himself, he clawed the turf wildly, wheeled about, and scuttled off into the woods like a frightened woodchuck. The hunter smiled grimly, and went on. He knew now what had startled the cow moose.
For nearly half an hour the great white moon seemed to possess the world alone. At the foot of the lake the hunter had to appear in the shining open for a second or two, while crossing the shallow but wide brook which formed the outlet. But he drifted across from stone to stone like a shadow, marked, as he knew well enough, by vigilant eyes, but not, he trusted, by the moose.
On this point he was presently quite assured, for he had little more than reached cover again when he saw the cow reappear on the open beach a short distance up the lake. She walked out till her fore hoofs were at the very edge of the water, then called again and again. She knew that somewhere in these illimitable shades, bold but crafty, her mate was watching and listening.
In answer to her call he was likely to come rushing up noisily, defying all peril, and flinging his challenge abroad for all whom it might interest. But to-night there was a vague suspicion in the air. It was probable that he would come silently, and give no hint of his coming until he stood beside her on the beach.
The point of beach whereon the cow was standing was carefully chosen with reference to the scare which she had received a half-hour earlier. It was where a little stream flowed in through a space of wild meadow, so that there was ample open all about her, and no enemy could get nearer than forty or fifty yards without revealing himself.
From the foot of the lake the woodsman approached with a stealth that none of the wild kindred themselves could surpass. Skirting the back of the meadow, he drew near from the upper side, expecting that any response the call might bring would come from that direction. Then he hid himself in a dense thicket of willows near the water.
Meanwhile there were others besides the woodsman for whom the calling of the lonely cow had interest. The great black bear, having recovered from his panic and put what he thought a safe distance between himself and the dangerous stranger, had slipped his huge bulk through the underbrush without a sound, and glared out savagely over the meadow to the solitary figure on the beach.
He knew that he was no match in speed for a frightened cow moose, and he saw that the distance across the open was too great for him to carry the matter by a rush. That cow was not for him, apparently. His mouth watered, but he held himself firmly under cover, waiting in the hope that some whimsical fortune of the woods might throw opportunity in his way.
Suddenly his ears caught a tiny but suggestive sound. Somewhere far up the course of the little brook a twig snapped sharply. He turned his attention away from the cow, and listened. That chance sound, so conspicuous on the expectant silence, might signify the coming of the antlered bull.
The bear would much rather have spared himself exertion by hunting the cow; but a bull, although apt to prove a dangerous adversary to an inexperienced bear, was well enough for one who knew how to manage such matters. He slipped over to the edge of the brook, and crouched behind a huge stump which was veiled by a growth of vines.
Immediately before him was the narrow, grassy clearway occupied by the brook at high water, and now threaded by a winding, loitering rivulet. So narrow was the space that in one lunge of his long body and mighty forearm he could reach almost all the way across it. This white-lit path was fretted with black traceries of branch and leaf, but the shadow behind the rock was so thick that even the furry bulk of the bear was completely engulfed in it.
The lonely figure out by the lake-side kept repeating its harsh calls from time to time, but neither the bear behind his brook-side rock nor the woodsman in his willow thicket up the shore any longer heeded her. Both were waiting for a third to answer her summons.
The third, indeed, was coming to answer; but with unwonted circumspection. He was a small but sturdy young bull, his antlers not yet perfect. It was he whom the hunter had heard thrashing the bushes in challenge; and when his mate first sent her call across the lake, he had stood silent behind the sheltering trees and watched her. But just as he was about to start on the long détour round the foot of the lake to join her, he had seen her sudden alarm and been puzzled by it.
Like the woodsman, he had rested for some time, motionless and watchful, looking for what else might happen. The absence of happening had left him vaguely apprehensive. When, therefore, he saw her reappear long afterward on his own side of the lake and begin her calls again, he was cautious about replying. Instead of hurrying straight down the shore to meet her, he sank softly back, deeper and deeper, into the woods, till her voice could scarcely reach his ears.
Then he made a wide swing round, and came stealthily down the channel of the little brook. In spite of his bulk, his spread of antlers, his broad and loose-hung hoofs, no mink or weasel could have come more silently than he.
As the moose came in sight up the brook channel, a moving shadow, the muscles of the watching bear behind the rock grew tense, and a luminous green film seemed to come over his small eyes. One powerful hind leg lifted itself till its claws took firm grip on a projection near the top of the rock. He was like a catapult, bent and ready.
