The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far
Date: 2014-05-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short stories; Animals -- Fiction

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Title: The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

Author: S. L. Bensusan

Release date: May 24, 2014 [eBook #45745]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Roger Frank, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEART OF THE WILD: NATURE STUDIES FROM NEAR AND FAR ***

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

The Golden Eagle
The Badger
The Camel
The Red Grouse
The Roebuck
The Water-Rat
The Flamingo
Hob, the Ferret
The Fighting Bull
The Cuckoo
The Seal
The Giraffe
The White Stork
The Wild Boar
The Story of a Slave

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Golden Eagle
Badger
Red Grouse
Water-Rat
Ferret
Young Cuckoo

A Two Days’ Old Cuckoo Ejecting a Young Titlark from its Nest

Wild Boar

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.

As soon as the young family was fully grown it scattered up and down the stream. Jock and his wife were kindly parents enough, and would doubtless have been well pleased to keep their youngsters by their side, but the burrow was not big enough for a family that numbered eight in all. There were splendid positions for other burrows all along the banks, and the young rats, knowing nothing of late autumn and winter, were well assured that the supplies of duckweed, water-lilies, young flags and tender roots of every description would never come to an end. To them at least that little bend of the river was the world,—a world full of good things; so some went north, and others went south to make new friends and start independent housekeeping. The two that went to the north, that is to say in the direction of the river’s source, fared well. The four that went down stream had no luck at all. Two fell victims to the eels that lived by the mill pond, another was found by a hungry pike, and the fourth, having ventured on to the land, under the impression that he had discovered it, was seen by an active weasel who would not be denied. By that time, however, August had come to an end. Mrs. Water-rat in her snug little burrow that had had several leaves and pieces of weeds added to it by the affectionate Jock was the mother of another half-dozen babies. Mrs. Moorhen, who had endeavoured to raise another brood some weeks earlier, was not so fortunate, for her eggs were found by a land rat, one of the long-tailed, sharp-nosed, lean ugly fellows that do so much more harm than good. But that the unfortunate mother was actually driven off her nest by the intruder, and could see for herself what manner of animal it was, she might have had doubts about the earlier story that her friend of the burrow across the bank had told her.

WATER RAT [Photo by T. A. Metcalfe]

Before the autumn days had turned the greenery of the land to gold a spell of bad weather set in, accompanied by severe rains that raised the level of the river considerably. The entries to the burrow were flooded and, owing to a temporary obstruction at the bend of the river, the water threatened to pierce to the nest at the far end. On this account it was impossible for the young water-rats to go to the river as their brothers and sisters born in the earlier year had done, and for a time their parents fed them upon the land, carrying them to safety through the land holes of the burrow to the meadow-side, and always holding them in their mouths by the loose skin at the back of the neck. From time to time one of the parent animals would return to the water, plunging off the bank, and generally coming up by the doorway to see whether any change had occurred in the level of the water. These constant visits to the river were in a way a necessity to the animals, because the oily secretion that kept their fur from feeling the effects of the water, was not limited to the fur, but extended to the face, and only frequent use of water kept their eyes clear. With the very little ones this was hardly the case at first; until they were fully grown they could live with comparative comfort upon the land for a much longer period than was possible with their parents.

It was while returning to the river on one of these occasions that Jock met with what might have proved a fatal encounter. One of the young herons born in the spring had strayed into the neighbourhood in search of a fresh feeding ground, and spied what he took to be an appetising morsel. He darted a stroke at it that would have ended this story on the spot had not his intended victim been a little too quick, and dived. The bird remained watching for any sign that would indicate the return to the surface, knowing, by the instinct that serves every creature in pursuit of its prey, that in the nature of things Jock could not stay under the surface of the water for very long. Had the river been quite clear the water-rat might have been seen swimming close to the river bed; as it was, the recent rains in swelling the stream had made it muddy, and Jock was able to move to a point where the water had collected and left a mass of early fallen leaves. He travelled at a great pace under the water and came up under these so lightly that never a leaf was stirred, to remain perfectly motionless with no more than the tip of his head above water. A branch that had fallen into the stream kept him from being swept away by the force of the current, and he stayed there while the heron moved up and down with a succession of awkward strides, waiting patiently for what promised to be worth working for. Exposed to the force of the water which was running rather sharply past the corner where the leaves were covering him, Jock’s fur was speedily soaked, and for the first time in his life the protection of oil did not avail to keep his skin dry. Happily, the heron being young and foolish soon gave up the search, and stalked solemnly up the stream where water was more shallow, leaving his intended prey to scramble up the bank with some difficulty, and to lie still, wet and miserable and helpless until the sun came out and dried his fur and he was able by diligent combing and cleaning to reduce it to something like its natural condition.

Owing to the peculiar formation of his feet Jock was able to dress the whole of his fur as easily and completely as a bat might, and by the following morning he was in no way the worse for the mischance. He lived in the same relation to land and water that the bat lived in with regard to land and the upper air.

As the weather did not improve the river burrow was left altogether, and another was made in a field some little distance off. The necessary work was done by night and very early morning, and for the greater part of the day the family remained hidden in the burrow for the farm hands were at work upon the land, and the confidence associated with the water-side home had quite disappeared on the land. But the old burrow was not deserted altogether. In the early days of autumn the old grasses of the nest were brought out and left on the land, while a store of fresh clean roots was carried in to serve the family during the winter months in case of need.

By the time winter had gripped the country-side, Jock’s second family had scattered, leaving him with his wife in possession of the land-earth they had selected for their winter home. Sometimes they would travel as far as the stack yard of the home farm in search of their food, and were quite devoted in their attentions to the piles of root crop that were gathered under straw at the end of the last field waiting to be taken away in wheel-barrows and chopped up for the cattle. Jock and his wife would not have ventured so far from home had it not been that the brown rats of barnland had been almost exterminated some weeks before. When the last of the roots had been taken away, and all the land on which green corn was not rising had been ploughed, dressed and, generally speaking, made unfit for the water-rat’s attentions, Jock and his wife paid occasional visits to their store at the burrow end. Sometimes during spells of very cold weather they slept there for days on end, celebrating their return to wakefulness by a plunge into the river. Not even the coldest weather could keep them from being clean.

Spring came at last, and the two water-rats left their home on the land, and returned to the burrow upon the banks. The water had fallen, and though it had left the burrow’s bank-side door choked with débris, the clearance was an easy matter. Once again the interior of the far end of the burrow was cleaned, a new nest was made, and Mrs. Water-rat began to prepare herself for domestic duties. Then it was that Jock strayed out over the land for no particular purpose save sheer joy of living, and while returning saw his enemy the weasel afar off and ran for his life. The weasel pursued, and Jock tumbled into the water six or eight yards in front of his foe. Because he knew less about the weasel’s capacities than he thought he did, he was foolish enough to put his head out of the water and address the weasel who stood on the edge of the bank hesitating as to his next movement. Jock, who was firmly persuaded that no weasel could swim, attributed the hesitation to the wrong cause, for as a matter of fact the weasel was only debating whether it was worth while to get wet for the mere sake of killing. He was not hungry enough to need a meal.

“If you could only swim as well as you can run,” remarked Jock, “I should be quite afraid of you, you horrid little beast.”

“You don’t know everything,” replied the weasel, preparing to take a header, “and if you swim no better than you run, you haven’t much time left to learn in.”

With these words he plunged in. Conscious that something was wrong, Jock dived to the bottom and swam as hard and quietly as he could, in search of covert. But the weasel stuck to him, and was never very far behind. In desperation, Jock rose under a little mass of leaves that he had lifted from the bed of the stream, for he knew that his powers of diving were exhausted. Perhaps this little trick might have availed to save him, for the weasel was momentarily baffled, but his sharp eyes soon saw the leaves dispart, he guessed the cause, and Jock fled as Hector may have fled from Achilles round the Walls of Troy. This time he made for his home, and entered the burrow by the newly cleared door in the bank. It was a fatal mistake, for once his feet were on the land the weasel was master of the situation. He caught Jock at the point where the passage opened out by the nest, and killed him instantly with one bite behind the neck. Then he killed Mrs. Water-rat almost as quickly, and hurried away out of the burrow and on to the land feeling very pleased with himself, as he ran swiftly towards the rabbit burrows where he intended to make a fresh kill. So elated was he by the taste of blood, and the consciousness that he had been too quick for his harmless victims, that he ran carelessly in full view of the gamekeeper’s son, who was taking his first shooting lessons with a single-barrelled gun. The lad saw the weasel, and took accurate aim, so that the ferocious little animal did not survive his latest victims by more than five minutes. The dead body was picked up and nailed to the branch of the elm tree that served the gamekeeper as his vermin larder, and everybody was glad that the weasel’s career was ended.

But the larks that sang their hymns of praise to the sun, and the moorhen that lived so quietly in the reeds, and even the little bats that fluttered about at dusk round the edges of the river mourned Jock’s decease, and missed his cheerful presence when they passed the little doorway in the bank, from which he was accustomed to look out over the shining water and greet his many friends.

THE FLAMINGO

Some subtle sense of approaching spring stirred in the breast of the great mute Swan. He could not call aloud, and the low tone in which he spoke to his companion captives would not do justice to the occasion. So he raised himself to his full height, spread his immense wings, and darted across the pond, half-running and half-flying, and creating such a disturbance that the squirrels in the open-air cage some distance off raced to the top of their dead tree to see what was the matter.

On the pond the wigeon drake dived incontinently, and of the pink flamingoes all, save one, sought the banks, where they twisted their long necks into the shape of corkscrews, just to show their indignation. The remaining bird stood on one leg quite unconcerned, his neck in the shape of a capital S. He stared straight before him, and his glance seemed to light upon the excited Swan, and pass through him to some point behind the end of the world. The Swan was annoyed.

“This isn’t the time for dreaming,” he said, “on a fine April morning when the gardens are beginning to look their best.”

“I’m thinking, not dreaming,” said the Flamingo quietly.

“What a waste of time,” replied the Swan. “When I have nothing to do I preen my feathers. I never think. Isn’t this a pretty place; did you ever see anything as charming?”

This was too much for the Flamingo’s gravity. He turned his head, hid it in the feathers that covered the middle of his spine, and smiled. Then he withdrew his head, but feeling that some of the smile still lingered, put it down to the ground parallel with his foot.

The Swan looked on admiringly. “You’re a funny fellow,” he said; “when I saw one of your family for the first time I thought your body and your head were fixed up on stilts. Now I realise that you have a very special allowance of leg and neck. Why?”

“I’m built on special lines in order to realise my peculiar destiny,” said the Flamingo stiffly.

“Well, well,” replied the Swan, “don’t take things so seriously. You’re a bit stiff in the leg, but you have a flexible neck, and your tongue ought to match it. Tell me your story, I’m a good listener, and you don’t seem to have any friends here among your own companions.”

“They are good enough in their way,” replied the Flamingo, “but they are all European or American birds. I come from Equatorial Africa, from the land of great rivers, where the crocodiles bask in the mud, and the hippopotamus lives under the water, coming now and again to the surface to fill his lungs with air. Mine is a land of marabous and vultures, of lions and antelopes, of rhinoceros and giraffe. The rarest and strangest creatures kept in the gardens are in a way my companions, but the other flamingoes on this pond can boast no such experiences as mine.”

“How come you here, then?” asked the Swan. “If you had a good time in Africa, why leave it?”

“A thing you call a sportsman is to blame,” replied the Flamingo. “We were having one of our state processions along the banks of the river, and he came upon us. We had not seen a white man before, and knew nothing of his intentions, but he knew our habits, and crept up so quietly against the wind that when we rose we were not more than thirty yards away from him; he could not resist the temptation of a shot, perhaps because he thought we were good to eat. The flamingo he picked out fell dead, another was hit hard, and I was pricked in the wing by a stray pellet, and picked up before I could run. The sportsman removed the pellet, and clipped my wings, so that I could not fly, and told one of his black boys to feed me well. Then he brought me to his home over the seas, and here I am. Excuse me a moment——”

With this abrupt apology the Flamingo lowered his head and dug his flat upper mandible into the mud below the surface of the water. He took a mouthful of mud and ooze, and then filtered it with the help of his tongue and the little ridges along the edge of the lower mandible. Then he thrust his neck up in curves that gave it the appearance of a serpent’s body, and moved both mandibles together as though to sample the flavour of the mud.

“It isn’t really to my liking,” he said mournfully. “Why, where I was born and bred I’d have had a mouthful of worms, or little frogs, or other delicacies for less than the trouble I’ve just taken.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” suggested the Swan, “you are fed by the keepers, so you don’t go hungry.”

“It matters a great deal,” persisted the Flamingo. “What makes every creature in this place sick to death? What makes so many die outright? Just the fact that they will be fed at stated hours. There isn’t any interest in the business, there isn’t any search, there isn’t any travel. There have been days when the flamingo army has travelled miles and miles on the wing searching for new feeding grounds, every bird with his eyes wide open, his neck stretched out, his legs hanging straight out behind him. Each one of us, even those in the centre of the wedge, hopes at such a time to be the first to sight a good camping ground. Then the appetite following long hours of travel, the joy of the exercise, and wonder of the sights that we see—strange men, fierce animals, impenetrable forests, and lands where the beasts of the field are rulers and man is of no importance at all.

“What is there here to take the place of that life? In the morning I stand on one leg, in the afternoon I stand on the other. I put my head in the mud, or at the far end of my back, or under my wing, or round my foot. I make an attempt to twist my neck on a new and original pattern, and I listen to the ill-informed chatter of my European and American cousins, and the strange folk who come here to see us. And I’d give all the food that serves me for three days for three hours’ wading, or swimming, or flying in my own far country, under a sky that is really warm. Doubtless you admire my feathers, but I assure you they are very dim and dingy compared with what I wore in the days of my freedom under the sun of Africa.”

“I never see you swim here,” remarked the Swan. He hadn’t seen Africa, and was not interested in it, and he ignored the remarks about coloured plumes. His own feathers were very dull.

“I can swim as well as you can,” the Flamingo assured him. “But I much prefer to wade. Then I can put my head in any direction that pleases me, under my feet if I like, with the upper mandible on the ground. The attitude is considered quaint, and it sometimes helps one to snap up some unconsidered trifle that went about thinking itself quite safe.”

“Have you many enemies?” asked the Swan. “Can you tell me thrilling stories of escape from danger?”

“We are too shy,” explained the Flamingo. “Except upon rare occasions nothing can come near us, and when we change our summer plumage we choose a part of the country where man is seldom or never seen. We go for choice to the banks of some stream that is known only to the hippopotamus and the marabou, and live there until our new feathers are strong.”

“What about nesting time?” asked the Swan.

“That’s more sacred still,” replied the Flamingo. “The wildest and most desolate stretch of marshy land will serve best for that. We build together, there are hundreds of nests side by side. I remember my first view of the nesting colony quite well, for I saw it when I came from the shell, ripe fruit of the one egg of my nest. Most of the nests hold two eggs, but when the family is doubled the young cannot get the attention and instruction given to a single one. They were great times.”

“Tell me all about them,” said the Swan; “begin at the beginning.” And while the other flamingoes walked indignantly across the grass plot, tying their necks into knots because they felt they were ignored, the Equatorial bird croaked harshly, in fashion peculiar to flamingoes, rubbed one of his webbed feet with his beak and renewed his story. The wigeon drake came up quietly to join the audience, and later a stray pochard joined the little group, but nobody else was interested.

“When my mother set me from the egg by giving it a little tap,” began the Flamingo, “I stood up in the nest and had a good look round me. On all sides, as far as my eye could see, there were nests similar to the one that held me, just mounds of mud and fibre, scraped up along the edge of the lake and dried by the sun. Some held one, and others held two, rounded eggs, quite white and rather rough. Others held baby flamingoes, with no feathers to speak of, nothing more than some stubbly down that was dull white or brown. All had straight bills; the beautiful curve that you see now belongs, like the pink plumage, to maturer growth. The feathers of the mother birds were at their worst just then, very dull and dingy.

“I could not recall much of those early days, even if I tried hard. I remember that my mother would leave me from time to time to go down to the lake to fish for me; all the mother birds would go together, and then we little ones would stand up on the edge of the nest and sometimes tumble over it. Some babies, not more than a few days old, would walk boldly to the edge of the lake and start swimming; it came quite easy to them, far more easy than the flying that had to be mastered later on. When food was found the mother birds would come back and feed us, and tell us stories of the world lying far beyond our ken, the world that men live in. My mother told me how she and my father worked to make the nest, piling the soft mud up with feet and bill, and moulding it into shape. She told me that flamingoes live together, and that only bad characters are driven from the pack and forced to live the solitary life.

“Nearly a month had been required to hatch me from the egg, and I had all the summer to grow in, for the older birds would soon moult, and while they were moulting there could be no flying. ‘As soon as we have our new autumn plumage,’ said my mother, ‘you will start your flying lessons.’ And as the days passed, she showed me great flocks of other birds flying overhead, the white egrets, the spurred geese in their black and white dress, the avocets and ibises. At times the hippopotamus trumpeted in the marsh, or a lion roared on the plain, or we heard the wail of a hyæna in the hours of deepest darkness; but there were no other noises to disturb us, and never a danger came our way. The leaders of the flamingo pack had chosen an oasis cut off from the other fertile region by miles of summer-made desert. I learned that when the autumn rains came all the land would blossom and bud once more, and be accessible to man and beast; but by that time we young birds were to be flyers, and the masters of the pack would guide us to safety.

“‘We are fortunate birds indeed,’ said my mother; ‘we have beauty and well-ordered lives, we are related to the storks and herons, on the one hand, and the geese tribes on the other; so in birdland we are sure of a welcome wherever we go. We can walk, swim or fly, according to our own inclination; our feet are webbed, our necks are the most flexible things in birdland; we are very peaceful, even in the mating season, and our eyesight is quite remarkable. We live in the least accessible parts of the world, and the most cunning hunter is baffled by our shyness. Some of us stand as high as a tall man, and measure four feet from bill to tail. These are the measurements of birds that cannot possibly be overlooked.’”

The Flamingo repeated these phrases with evident pleasure, and drew himself up to his full height in order to show that when his neck was straight, and he cared to stand erect, he cut a very fine figure. To be sure he looked a little ridiculous, with his absurdly thin legs and neck, but he did not know this, and there was nobody to tell him.

“As the summer grew,” continued the Flamingo, “the sun’s heat reduced the waters of the lagoon and made the little plateau that held our nest quite dry and hard. Then we youngsters would go off for little journeys on our own account, sometimes to the water for food, at other times towards the plains. We must have looked a curious company, and you would not have known us for flamingoes; our plumage was now white, with a little brown shading here and there, while our bills were still nearly straight. Had we been in an enemy’s country, as we were so often in the later days, we must have fared badly in those late summer months, for we were very awkward and helpless; we could not have defended ourselves against anything, and our parents were losing their feathers, and could hardly fly at all. Then I appreciated the wisdom of the leaders, who had chosen for us a part of the country that was unknown to nearly all other living creatures, and possessed splendid food supplies. A few flocks of birds related to us would rest and feed on the lagoon for an hour or two, and then would be up and away, while sometimes the only visitor was the little bird that walks upon the water,[1] or the little warblers that sang among the reeds all day.

“By the time my feathers had grown, and the moult of the parent birds had brought back a wonderful set of bright pink feathers, I was face to face with the task of my life, learning to fly. That is difficult enough at all times and among all birds, but a very special trouble comes to a young flamingo, because his own parents are not very good at flight. Even when we are fully developed we rise with difficulty; and when we are learning, and are apt to tumble about, we get bad bruises and nasty falls, because our parents cannot move quickly enough to help us. Some young birds were permanently injured, and could never fly properly; others fared even worse, and died of their injuries, and for some weeks our little colony was happy no longer. The young ones complained, the old ones scolded, and it was impossible to make allowance for weaklings. Those that could not fly by the time the waters rose would be left behind. That was the order, and it made us do our best.

“One morning the plover was heard calling to us at daybreak to say that the floods were coming down. The leader sounded the order for departure, and in a few moments we were on the wing in a wedge formation, speeding in search of fresh pasture grounds. It was a difficult journey, and we dropped a few weaklings by the way. When the heat became intense, we were halted by the side of a lake, and there we clustered for hours, shading our heads under our wings. The surface of the water was turned crimson by the strong light on the pink feathers of the grown-up birds.

“Those of us who did not find room on the lake stood round the sides, generally on one leg, thrust our heads and part of our neck under the most convenient wing, and slept or rested until the elder birds called to us to resume our places. Then the great wedge swept on, past forest and clearing and marsh land to another lagoon where we settled for our evening meal, very tired and stiff, but delighted to find that once we were on our wings we could move with ease. We were now in more open country; the break-up of the drought had scattered birds and beasts everywhere. Until the rain came they had kept in the water-courses and river-beds, now they could go where they pleased. Where we rested for the night there was so much noise that for all my fatigue I found it hard to sleep. If we moved and opened our eyes the glitter of the fire-flies was so bright and fascinating that it was hard to turn from them; the frogs, whose friends or relations or play-fellows we had eaten, protested all night long at the top of their voices; grasshoppers and mosquitoes sang, herons croaked and small birds held concerts. This was disturbing enough, but when an elephant pack thundered along towards the forest and the hippopotamus challenged them from the marshes only a few hundred yards away, you can imagine that sleep was not easy, and those of us that were still young and inexperienced would have flown away if we had known of a quieter resting-place. In a little time we learned to rely upon our leaders, to understand that the air held roads and well-marked tracks for them, that they could guide us, if not with perfect safety, at least with far more certainty and definite intention than we gave them credit for.

“Sometimes we camped in the neighbourhood of salt water that the flood had brought down, but this made no difference to our comfort. We could fish in salt water as well as in fresh, and our food—water plants, grubs, insects and small reptiles—was always plentiful. Sometimes, towards evening, when we were just settling for the night, there would be a rush for river or marsh. Deer of all shapes and sizes, zebras, sometimes lions or leopards, would come to drink, and though they may have had no designs upon us, our nerves could not stand the strain of their company. However tired we might be we would rise. Those who went up first would wheel round and round in a circle that grew larger and larger, until at last every bird was on the wing and we were off again through the quick falling twilight, forced to come to ground again where best we could. Then the night would be very restless and disturbed, for any small alarm would send nervous birds fluttering up into the darkness, only to come down again at the sound of the leader’s cry that all was well.

“If I were to tell you of the strange sights that I have seen,” continued the Flamingo, after pausing a moment to sample a little of the mud in the pond, “you would be surprised, but it would take too long. I have seen an army of storks being ranged in close formation to stay the advance of an army of locusts. I have seen beasts of prey drinking side by side with harmless antelopes, and not seeking to molest them. I have seen the rhinoceros lying asleep in the grass in the hunters’ country, quite at his ease, because his faithful attendant, the rhinoceros bird, has been perched on his broad back keeping watch for him. When he rises up the birds will often fly away to a tree, for they know he can look after himself, but when he rests they settle down upon him once again.

“I have seen the baby beasts of marsh and forest, the lion cubs and the hippopotamus calves. I have watched the paths of hunters and hunted in lands where the black man has never seen white folk, and goes about in fear of the animals that ravage his gardens, destroy his cattle, and kill him, too, if they can. And by the time I had seen all these sights I knew something of the world we live in; the spring had come again, and our leaders were bringing us back by forced marches to the lagoon where I was born.

“When we were back in the old familiar spot there were grave discussions about the nests. None of us wished to build new nests if the old ones would do, but some collections of nests were held to be in bad condition, and in one of these blocks my mother’s nest was set. So those who had to rebuild moved down the edge of the lagoon, and were soon busy scraping up mud and rushes. I helped a little, but I did not mate. My feathers were only beginning to turn pink, my bill had hardly acquired a proper curve, and no flamingo is satisfied with his appearance until his beak is longer than his head. I was too young to find a companion, and stayed happily enough by the new nest, or waded into the lagoon with unattached companions of my own year, and had a pleasant, idle time.

“Unfortunately, the nesting season was a failure in our district. The other nesting areas did well enough, but some snakes attacked ours, capturing a number of eggs and some of the first hatched birds. There was no delay. We left the nests and started away to another water, a separate pack. The rest of the old pack was busy rearing young, the snakes did not attack them, so they stayed and we went, under the guidance of a very old bird who was one of the best leaders in the flamingo community.

“When we arrived at a safe place, where water and mud were to be found in abundance, it was too late to build nests. A few birds laid late eggs on the ground, but nothing was hatched, and we moped till moulting time and through it with never a newborn bird in our company. I moulted and secured a new crop of feathers, not very bright, not to be compared with the plumage of birds that were seven years old or more, but still much better than the dingy white and dull brown feathers with which I had been forced to content myself in times past. I found myself better able to fly, and though I have never been quick to rise in the air and get away, I have never known fatigue, and, indeed, in the following spring, when I proposed to a charming bird of my own age whose plumage was not quite so glossy as my own, I was able to fascinate her by my graceful movements in the air, by the ease with which I turned and twisted with wings spread, neck thrust straight out, and feet stretching as far behind me as they could go. My first attempt at nest-making was not altogether a success—our one egg addled—but perhaps it was as well. We were very young and might have made bad parents.”

He paused, and sought for consolation in the depths of the muddy water.

“And then?” queried the Swan.

“The autumn brought the hunting man,” said the Flamingo sadly, “and that’s why I’m here. They’ve clipped my wings; I can’t fly. The air is chill, and cold, and dirty. I’ll never grow good plumage again. I know there is food enough and shelter for bad weather, and companionship of a kind, but I want the African sun, and the tropical streams and forests, and the wild free life, and——”

“It’s no good, my friend,” interrupted the Swan. “You want too much. Be satisfied that you are still alive. Better be a live flamingo in Regent’s Park than a dead one in Central Africa.”

So saying he sailed away to the middle of the pond. The wigeon followed. But the Flamingo, standing on one leg, looked steadily through the misty air as though he could see in the far distance the land of his heart’s desire.

[1]

Microparra capensis.

HOB, THE FERRET

If you left the lane for the footpath that passes along the wood-side, you could see the keeper’s cottage in a large clearing away to the right. In the days that belong to this story it was a pretty place, thatched and creeper-covered, with a modest outhouse, one or two sheds, and some ground that had been reclaimed from the wood when the eighteenth century was still young. The flower-garden held half a dozen beehives, and there was a small paddock where a few pheasants were raised under domestic hens. In a corner of the paddock stood a useful ferret-hutch, standing a little above the ground, with sloping runs from the entrances to a little piece of the meadow round the hutch, fenced round with posts and wire-netting about a foot high. A large elm tree stood by the side of the enclosure, and one of its branches was used by the old keeper as his vermin larder. Here one saw stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, and sometimes a polecat, together with magpies, hawks, and, one regrets to add, an owl. As soon as the old man had trapped or shot one of his real or fancied enemies, its dead body was nailed to the branch and, in that corner of a southern county, traps were seldom idle or empty.

Some week or ten days before Hob was born, the room in the hutch where his mother slept was carefully cleaned, supplied with a new hay bed, and closed. Hob entered the world in complete darkness in company with four brothers and sisters. Not only was their room void of light, but their eyes were closed. Their mother fed and tended them very jealously. Had her sleeping-place been entered in the first month of their life, while they were sightless and helpless, their mother would have killed them, for that is ferret law. In those early days they were particularly ugly, and would squeak faintly as though to emphasise their distaste for their surroundings; but their mother found plenty of fresh milk or porridge waiting for her when she went out to eat in the apartment next her hut, together with odd luxuries in the shape of freshly killed mice or rats, or young game birds and chickens that had met an untimely death. So the babies were bound to thrive. One fine June morning the old keeper found them in the ferret’s dining-room lapping milk by their mother’s side. Thereupon he opened the part of the hutch that had been closed down so long, cleaned it thoroughly, and put in a fresh bed, so that Hob and his brethren returned to a clean home and proceeded to live their life in earnest. Within a week they were playing for the greater part of the day in the enclosure round their hutch, and this early exercise made them strong and active, so that none of the litter moped and pined and died, as baby ferrets will when they are badly housed and have no place for exercise. They still slept in their old room, but paid small heed to their mother, who, for her part, seemed to have lost the most of her care for them. When the youngsters were not racing about, playful as fox cubs, they were eating diligently, and in those days they never failed to receive three meals. Milk diet was their usual fare, but now and again their master would tie a piece of fresh meat in some form to the wooden stake in the middle of their playground, and they would attack together, each trying in vain to carry it off to the hutch to devour at leisure.

When they were three months old, Hob’s brothers and sisters were taken away and sent in a neat box to another county in response to an advertisement, and Hob owed his immunity from travel to the fact that he was the best of the litter, and was destined for ferreting on the home farm. He was transferred to another hutch, where he lived by himself; but when he had his first sporting day, it was in his mother’s company. He never forgot the morning, for it brought experiences that were new and unpleasant. In the first place he had no breakfast, though he had been ready for it soon after daylight. Secondly he was muzzled, and this was an indignity to which he never learned to submit without a struggle. The muzzling was done with strong thread that was tied in slip knots, and went round the neck and over the mouth in very painful fashion. Most people would have hesitated to muzzle a ferret that had never been used, but the keeper was a very old-fashioned person, and held that the lesson of restraint could not be learned too soon. When he had made Hob perfectly helpless in the fashion hinted at, he lowered him into a bag full of straw, where his mother, whose mouth, like Jericho of old, was straightway shut up, was already burrowing. Then the old man shouldered the sack, picked up a ditching-shovel and, whistling his retriever, set out to accompany one of the sons of the house to a bank where rabbits had been playing havoc with some green corn.

The bank was sandy and had a high slope, so it could be attacked at any time of year; and when the mother ferret started in very confidently, Hob followed her down the dark passage to a point where it branched out. There he left her and went forward alone, for he scented a familiar odour. He knew the smell of rabbit very well, and found the taste was pleasant; he required no teaching to tell him there were rabbits in the burrow, and that they were within reach. Darkness could not baffle him, and though the path he followed soon branched in several directions, he did not hesitate, but chose one that brought him suddenly to his quarry. At the sight of her enemy, Bunny bolted incontinently and sought the outer air; there was a muffled report a moment later, and Race the retriever went down to the bottom of the bank and picked her up dead as mutton, so cleanly shot behind the ears that she may be said to have died painlessly.

Of these matters Hob knew nothing; he was following his quarry more slowly, and by the mouth of the hole he put up another rabbit that bolted down the bank before he could reach it. He peeped out of the opening, watched the headlong rush, heard the gun go off again, and saw the runner turn a somersault. Then his master came forward, untied the muzzle, and rewarded him with a piece of newly killed rabbit. When he had eaten his fill he was put back into the bag, where he went to sleep, and knew no more until he woke to find himself being transferred to his hutch. His mother, who had done a hard morning’s work, received very careful treatment, her feet being bathed in warm water; but Hob, who had not worked long, needed nothing more than rest to restore him to his usual activity.

Though he did not know it, Hob had earned golden opinions already; he had shown all the instincts of the polecat, of which fierce animal a ferret is no more than a domesticated species. So he was taken out from time to time through the summer, his hours of service being gradually lengthened, and he was always rewarded with part of a fresh kill. So keen was his hunting instinct that when he did not get his breakfast, he understood the reason for its absence and would run round the hutch in a state of great excitement when he heard his master’s approach. By the time summer and autumn had passed and the thick growths had died down from the hedgerows, leaving the burrows plainly to be seen, Hob was as reliable a ferret as ever bolted rabbit. He would run along a hedge, testing every hole in turn, climbing up and down and missing nothing. If he disregarded an earth, there was no need to worry about it—Bunny was not at home. If, on the other had, after a moment’s hesitation, he ran in, the appearance of a rabbit was usually a matter of moments. He never made a mistake, and if rabbits would not bolt, the weather rather than the ferret was to blame.

Winter brought Hob his first experience of any note, and gave him his first intimate knowledge of wild life. Snow had fallen heavily, making the landscape one vast study in white, and leaving tell-tale tracks of bird and beast all over the snow. It was easy enough to see where the rabbits were living, even if you did not come upon them sitting outside their burrows and staring rather disconsolately across the land. It chanced at the time that two of the younger sons of the house, only lately promoted to the unrestricted use of 28-bore guns, decided to go ferreting, and took Hob with them. One was quite certain that he understood how a muzzle was put on, but his belief in his own intelligence was scarcely justified, and before Hob had gone to earth five minutes he had worked the objectionable restriction from his jaws, and celebrated the event by killing his first rabbit. He stayed awhile to enjoy a meal that was as pleasant as it was unexpected, and then proceeded to see what was happening in the outer world. His path led him to peep out from a hole under the roots of a beech tree. A net had been placed there by the young amateurs, who were compelled by the nature of the ground to face the other way; but one turned round in time to see Hob, quite free from a muzzle, regarding him with serious interest. He made an effort to pick the ferret up, but being unskilled, forgot to use the dead rabbit that chanced to lie beyond the net as a lure, and instead of seizing Hob with a firm, steady grasp, snatched at him nervously. Very disgusted, the ferret made a snap at the uncertain fingers, returned to the earth, found the dead rabbit that lay there, and made another heavy meal. Then, feeling quite tired, he laid himself up against his victim’s warm fur and slept peacefully. The ferret that came down on a line to inquire after him reported progress, but failed either to wake Hob up or to reach the rabbit lying in an end-hole behind him, and as digging operations were impossible because of the thick roots, the sportsmen returned disconsolate. Even then, had they blocked up all the exits, they might have recovered their ferret with the next day; but they did no more than net the ones they could see, and it was by the small one they had overlooked that Hob entered the world at large on the following morning.

For him it was a very pleasant place to live in. On all sides there were rabbits only waiting to be killed and eaten, and to do him justice, Hob did not keep those that were within reach very long waiting for their fate. Freedom brought a quick reversion to savagery, all the instincts of the wild, free-living polecat revived in him at once. He devoted his first free day to the systematic chase of a family of rabbits right up to the end-hole of their run, from which there was no escape. Then with horrid persistence he killed one after the other, biting them behind the head and taking nothing more than a little blood from each. When the slaughter was over, he slept among the dead rabbits—clearly he knew nothing of the fear of ghosts. In the meantime his loss had been reported to the old keeper, who put a line ferret into the hole where he was first lost, and then dug right down to the dead rabbit in spite of obstacles; but of course he was too late, and now he could do no more than keep a sharp look-out when he went on his rounds, and give the farm-hands notice that a jack-ferret was loose, and might be found at any moment, and that a reward of two shillings awaited the finder. But for all that a price was put upon his head, Hob was not destined to be secured until he had spent two or three weeks at large, and had grown as fat as the aldermen of the comic press.

In the days and nights of his freedom, Hob had many adventures. It became his habit to hunt at night, and many a time the despairing cry of a pursued rabbit woke the wood when all its denizens seemed to be asleep. Though he could not have run a rabbit down in a race, he succeeded by reason of the terror he imposed upon his quarry. Poor Bunny would race about at three-quarter speed, shrieking as she went. He would pursue silently, remorselessly, never losing the scent until his victim would either stop short or would run aimlessly about in a circle, while he waited for a few moments before rushing forward and inflicting the sharp bite that brought the hunt to an end. He soon ceased to pursue for the mere gratification of his appetite; he would kill for the sake of killing. But towards morning, when the birds were proclaiming the coming of another day, he would drag a victim to a burrow, eat his fill and go to sleep.

Once he happened to chase a rabbit into a fox’s earth, and even to catch a glimpse of the vigilant head and fierce eyes of its owner before he turned and saved himself. On another occasion, while he was watching a rabbit that sat out on a bank close to the hole that sheltered him, and preparing to dart forward in pursuit, his intentions were frustrated by a poaching cat that crept silently up to where the rabbit sat unsuspecting, and carried it away. Any trouble of this kind made the ferret very angry and sent him running wildly in search of a fresh victim. His girth had increased enormously, and his skin was as tight as a drum, but he kept in excellent condition, and seldom failed to kill when he had started in pursuit. Many a time he passed his old home, for in all his wanderings, that took him as far as two miles from the keeper’s cottage, he never forgot its exact position.

Not until he had been a vagabond for nearly three weeks did his luck fail him, and then on a fine Saturday afternoon he was sighted by one of the ploughman’s lads, and having no time to find a burrow or any other hiding-place, he submitted to be picked up. The boy took him home to his father’s cottage, found a sack, and having put some straw into it, threw Hob in after, and tramped over to the keeper. There was nobody in the house, and not liking to meddle with the ferret-hutches, the lad put the bag into the house through a window that chanced to be open. He then closed the shutter and came away. Hob, having been shaken by the fall, waxed specially indignant and industrious, searched the bag diligently, and managed to find a hole. He worked his way through it and started to prospect. He was in the larder, and on a shelf he managed to reach there was a chicken that the keeper had dedicated to Sunday’s dinner. Hob, being ignorant of his master’s intentions—or, perhaps, indifferent to them—made an excellent supper off such parts of the bird as took his fancy, and was discovered midmost his repast. Then his time of liberty came to a sudden end, and the next fortnight was a period of repentance, for he had no more than enough food to keep him alive, and the fine, prosperous contour he had developed in freedom disappeared slowly but surely, leaving him loose-skinned as of yore. When he went into service again, it was as a line-ferret—his master had finished taking risks.

It would be idle to pretend that Hob liked his work in its new form, but to his credit be it said that he never sulked. He worked as hard as ever, though it was inglorious labour to hunt for other ferrets that had killed rabbits and eaten the best part of them, or chased several to an end-hole and were now crowding them up in a corner and trying vainly to kill them. As soon as he stopped he knew he would be pulled out by the hand that controlled the line, and thrown back into basket, bag or box, while spade or pickaxe was requisitioned to break down into the earth. He would resist withdrawal to the uttermost, but the collar round his neck was too tight to be slipped, and he had to come out.

From time to time Hob ran with the jill-ferrets in the clearing round the hutches, and he was the father of several fine litters, but was probably unaware of the fact, for he was totally devoid of domestic instincts. He could not have helped the jill to tend the little ones, nor would he have been content to endure the darkness and seclusion of her home for an hour. It would not have been wise to leave him with young ferrets, even though they were his own children, if it happened to be meal-time and one and all were hungry. They would have been regarded less as kith and kin than as intruders bent upon depriving him of his food.

After a long period of line-work, Hob’s patience was rewarded by a few days’ ratting. Some of the old thatched cottages on the estate were infested by the rats. They swarmed in the walls and under the floors and in the thatch; when the corn was threshed they repaired to the houses, where they were fruitful, and multiplied and replenished the cottages and ate everything save tar, glass and metal. Complaints were made to the bailiff, and half a dozen ferrets visited each cottage in turn. It was a black week in ratland. Flight into the open availed very little, for there were one or two active terriers in the garden; hiding-places did not avail, for there was no hole so small but that a ferret could follow if a rat could lead; and as for fighting, it was no better—the ferret knew how to dodge the sharp teeth and plant his own before the rat could try again. There were no muzzles and no lines to hinder progress, and Hob killed as he had killed in the few weeks when he was a free ferret and all the rabbits in the woodland were at his mercy. To be sure, he received a few bites, so did his fellows, but they did not mind such honourable wounds. When the last rat had been killed, the ferrets were collected and taken home, to be carefully examined and have their wounds dressed and their feet carefully washed in warm water, with which a disinfectant was mixed. This careful treatment saved all trouble, and after a couple of days’ rest the ferrets were quite ready for work.

For more than two years Hob served his master, working so well that many people tried to buy him, and at last an amateur, who knew little about shooting and less about ferrets, made an offer that the old gamekeeper could not resist, and Hob went by rail in a small box to a farm where he was destined to enter upon evil days. In the first place, his hutch was a small one, and though it had a sleeping-apartment as well as a living-room, there was no space for exercise. The straw was not changed regularly, the saucer that held the milk was often left uncleaned, so that the milk turned sour; pieces of rabbit or small birds were thrown in haphazard and promptly conveyed to the sleeping-room by Hob, who knew no better. Within a month of finding his new home the ferret had quite lost the gloss that was on his coat in the old days, and lack of exercise had reduced his vigour. When he went out to work in warren or hedgerow, and came home tired out and with wet feet, he was turned out into his hutch and left to get warm by rolling himself upon straw that was sometimes damp and dirty. The old warm foot-bath that had kept him in such good condition was quite unknown in the new home. In a little while he was ill; his feet suffered from a complaint born of damp and dirt, and he had the kind of fever that results from lack of proper attention. These conditions were noted and, thanks to a little prompt and practical treatment, they were righted, but the real causes of the illness were never removed, because they were not understood, and it was a tradition of the neighbourhood that ferrets are delicate and hard to rear. Indeed, Hob’s new owner was heard to say that the old gamekeeper had sold him a weakly ferret for a long price, and had kept back the one he arranged to buy.

Perhaps the discomfort of his surroundings decided Hob to make his escape from them. Be that as it may, he took the first opportunity after his recovery to remain in an earth from which he had driven a couple of rabbits to the gun. He was free and unmuzzled, and he had no kill by his side; the line-ferret sent down to investigate made no sign. Digging only served to send him further into a perfect labyrinth that should have been dug out or blown up at the end of the previous season, and when sunset made the weary and angry diggers desist from their labours, Hob was free once more. By the following morning he had left the earth a long way behind him, and was sleeping in security by the remains of the rabbit that had yielded him supper and breakfast in one long meal. He could not run about as he did when he first made his escape into the world—lack of exercise and consequent illness had made him weak, nervous and slow in pursuit. If the rabbits had only known they might have escaped from him easily enough, and he must have starved; but he was a ferret, and that fact was sufficient to rob them of the keen edge of their speed. So strength came back to him slowly but surely, his eye recovered its brightness, and his coat its glossy smoothness, and though his feet were often wet and dirty, he could clean himself, because he had plenty of room to turn about.

FERRET [Photo by C. Reid]

Then with increase of strength came the desire to run for very pleasure of exercise, and towards evening the whitey-grey figure might have been seen passing rapidly along the edge of plantations and across open meadow-lands—might have been seen, and was seen, for one night a young farmer, out in search of a rabbit for the table, noticed the movement of the long, lithe body, and knowing nothing of a missing ferret, was certain that he saw a stoat. In a moment his gun was at his shoulder, and a second later Hob’s career was at an end.

“Blame me if’e bean’t a ferret!” remarked the shooter as he picked his victim up. And following that brief oration came the obsequies of Hob, who was flung into a convenient ditch.

THE FIGHTING BULL

When the fighting bulls come in at sunset, led from the lush pastures by the belled bullocks that have been their lifelong companions, one animal walks alone in the rear of the herd. He is of more than common size and splendidly armed, if one may use the bull-fighter’s term in speaking of his horns, but his is a gentle nature, and even the ganadero’s daughter, little Golisa, who has no more than ten summers to her credit, may bring him a handful of corn without fear. He is nine years old, and has many peaceful seasons before him, for he is El Perdonado.

Never heard of him, you say? That must be because you don’t know Andalusia. I saw the historic fight of which he was the hero; heard the greatest diestro in Spain make an appeal to the President that El Cuchillo, as he was then called, might be pardoned for bravery. And I saw the Spanish grandee, one of whose ancestors was immortalised by Velazquez, bare his head and pronounce the verdict of acquittal that is not heard once in five years in the plaza de toros. So El Perdonado (The Pardoned One) is by way of being an acquaintance of mine, and I have ridden for miles across country to see him browsing peacefully on the grass lands beyond Utrera, where he was born and bred. Now I will try to set his history before you, that you may know something more of fighting bulls than the plaza de toros can teach. The most of what I have to tell I have seen for myself, but for some of the more intimate details I am indebted to El Conecito, most expert of Andalusian banderilleros, with whom I used to chat over horchatas in the café of the Emperadores that is on the Sierpes of Seville. He will never see this acknowledgement of his help, for he slipped in the plaza de toros at Valencia during the corrida in honour of the feast of the Santissima Trinidad, slipped on a purple patch that had not been properly covered with sand, and died as he had lived—quite fearlessly.

El Perdonado was born on a Utrera bull-farm, in one of those restful districts that delight the traveller between Seville and the sea. The alqueria had whitewashed walls and a red roof, from which a belfry rose; it lay amid rich pastures. There were pools shaded with willows, and avenues of poplars that stood like sentinels against the sky-line, and over all the country-side brooded the spirit of deep and abiding peace. The young bull’s mother was of the notorious Miura herd of the Duke of Veragua, “the herd of death,” famous for their prowess throughout the arenas of Spain, and known by the red divisa that they carry into the ring. His sire was from a northern province, and not so well known to fame, but highly esteemed by the aficionados, the men who study the science of the bull-ring.

As soon as the calf was weaned he was turned out on to the rich lands that are watered by one of the tributaries of the Guadalquivir, and there he passed his days, eating lazily or standing in one of the pools to keep cool. He and his fellows were placed in the charge of a ganadero, who rode tirelessly across the meadows throughout the day, watching that his charges came to no harm and guiding or correcting them as he thought fit with a long pole. The young bulls were as hard to manage as a pack of foxhounds. They had every sort of temper among them; they were vicious, crafty, daring and sulky in turn, but they had one quality in common, and that was terror of the master’s pole. For Miguel, the ganadero, could knock a troublesome bull calf head over heels with his formidable weapon; he could ride like a vaquero of the pampas and turn a score of animals together in any direction he desired. Yet for all that he was fierce and pitiless, Miguel was the slave of any animal that fell sick, and never a racehorse received better attention in time of trouble.

Our friend gave little or no anxiety to the ganadero, and there was nothing in his behaviour during the first two years of his life that might outline his character, until the day when the proprietor of the farm rode down to the pastures with a company of friends and expert professionals to test the novillos, as the young bulls were then called. Each bull in turn was separated from the herd and charged by a stranger on horseback who was armed with such a pole as Miguel used.

Some of the animals would not face the charge at all, but fled in terror from it—to be driven into a fenced pasture and become mere butcher’s meat in the fulness of time. Others realised that their enemy was not Miguel, and charged him with fury. These were acclaimed by their owner, named on the spot, and entered in the stud-book as fighting-bulls. None of the novillos made so fierce a charge as the subject of this story, and because of the strength, shape and sharpness of his horns, he was entered in the records as El Cuchillo (The Knife). Among the bulls tested were some not quite of the first class in development and horn growth, though they were not lacking in courage and strength. These were sent away to provincial bull-rings, where they served, in corridas de novillos, to give practice to matadors of the second class, and to satisfy the blood-thirst of men and women who could not afford the time or money to visit the large arenas.

For El Cuchillo and the chosen companions of his year, life took a new and agreeable form when the first test had been withstood. They were kept by themselves in the lowest and richest meadows, where the grass came to their flanks and the water never failed. In the evening the tame bullocks that carried cow-bells round their necks came to fetch them home, and when they reached their stalls there was always a measure of fine corn for supper. So they increased in strength and natural ferocity until only Miguel dared face them, and he relied chiefly upon his old reputation. It is more than likely that he would have fared ill in a contest with the least of them now; but, as he carried the familiar pole, was a stranger to fear, and never allowed an order to be disobeyed, his rule was not seriously challenged. He called each bull by its name as though he were the huntsman and his charges were a pack of hounds.

One afternoon when El Cuchillo was rather more than three and a half years old, the tame bullocks came to the prairie some hours before their time, and in their wake followed half a dozen ganaderos, with Miguel at their head, all carrying long poles. Some eight bulls, including El Cuchillo, were separated from the rest of the company, and round these the belled bullocks formed a little circle, and the company started along an unfamiliar and deserted road, through lanes overblown with flowers of richest colour and fragrant with the perfume of wild thyme. Past farmhouses well-nigh smothered in greenery, and tiny wayside ventas where little groups of interested spectators were gathered under the vine-trellised arbours, men and beasts took their slow and peaceful way. Before nightfall a quiet meadow received the company of bulls and bullocks and, while five of the ganaderos went to claim the shelter of a neighbouring farmhouse, Miguel kept watch during the few dark hours.

In the afternoon of the next day the journey was resumed, and the fierce bulls went forward in orderly fashion enough, because they were accustomed by now to the company of bullocks and the tinkling of their bells. So that the bullocks knew the way, the bulls were well content to follow. Only on the fourth evening did they reach their destination, the tablada that lies within five miles of Seville and offers a clear view of the Giralda Tower and the cathedral. There for some days bulls and bullocks rested from their labours, and the corn supply of the former was renewed by Miguel with a lavish hand. Such little fatigue as might have been associated with the journey over dry and dusty roads was speedily forgotten.

A very gay procession rode out of Seville to the tablada on the afternoon of the Friday following the arrival of the animals. There were several noble patrons of the bull-ring, a tall, fair-bearded man who was treated with special deference, and a dancing-girl whose name was known from London to New York viâ St. Petersburg. One of Spain’s leading matadors was of the party—a heavy-jawed dull-eyed man, who rode his horse very awkwardly; there were two of the directors of the plaza de toros, and some of the lesser lights of the arena, including El Conecito, the banderillero. The bulls took little notice of the intruders. Their friends, the tame bullocks, were feeding by their side, and Miguel, armed with his pole, sat watching over them from the horse of which he seemed to be a part.

The company rode past the bulls, noting their points as connoisseurs should, and when the great matador—why hide the fact that it was Espartero himself?—saw El Cuchillo, he positively trembled with excitement. In thick guttural tones he asked Miguel a few questions; then, with a light in his eyes that seemed to change the character of his face, he cantered heavily to where the great bull stood. “We shall meet on Sunday, my beauty,” he cried aloud, “and then you shall feel my sword in your heart or I will take your horns to my body.”

And El Cuchillo, who at other times would permit no man to come within ten yards of him, raised his huge head and stared at the finest swordsman in all Spain, as though he understood the challenge and accepted it.

“You seem pleased with that fellow, Espartero,” said the tall man, turning for a moment from the lady with whom he had been conversing.

“Your highness,” replied the great diestro, “since the day when I entered a plaza for the first time, I have never seen a bull better set-up, better armed or in more splendid condition. And if I read him aright, half a dozen horses won’t tire him.”

Having spoken he drew back, the animation passed from his face as rapidly as it had come there, and he rode silently back to the city in the wake of his gay companions. Only Miguel remained in the tablada, perhaps in that moment the proudest man in Andalusia. For it was to his care and tireless work that El Cuchillo’s perfect condition was due.

More than twenty-four hours passed uneventfully, save that the supply of corn was doubled, but as Saturday night drew on many unaccustomed sounds disturbed the bulls—sounds of carriage wheels, the tramp of many horses and the noise of human voices. More than once the huge animals rose to their feet and looked round uneasily, but the bullocks showed no sign of nervousness, and Miguel was in his place. Night deepened, but moon and stars shone with a good grace, and soon there were other lights moving close to the ground—lanterns carried by horsemen at the end of long poles. Miguel’s voice sounded across the tablada, calling the beasts by name; they rose to their feet and came together, a dark, unwieldy nervous mass that a false movement might have turned into a destructive force. But other ganaderos were riding through the tablada now and calling the bullocks, that, obedient to the summons, gathered round the bulls and, preceded by Miguel and one ganadero, led the way through the pastures to the high road. As soon as this was reached Miguel’s companion shook his reins and darted off at a thundering gallop along the Seville road. His the duty to warn belated travellers that the encierro had commenced, to turn carriages and waggons into side lanes, and then to continue his headlong rush until the plaza de toros was reached, and he could summon the men on duty there to light their fires and open the great gate leading to the toril. It was a simple matter enough to take the bulls from their native pasture to the place they were leaving now, but the last few miles between the tablada and the bull-ring were full of dangers, for all Seville was accustomed to turn out to see the procession.

When bulls, bullocks and their guardians were safely on the high road, a long procession of carriages, followed by men on horse and afoot, came from a turn in the main road and formed a sort of rearguard.

The fascination of the night-ride was at once their justification and their excuse. The air was so still that the ringing sound of flying hoofs reached the ear when the first ganadero was some two miles in advance of the procession; one was conscious of the heavy, intoxicating perfume that stole out from gardens on either side of the road. From the poplar trees came the ceaseless call of the cigarrons, nightingales sang amid the orange-orchards of Las Delicias, the melancholy cry of the bittern rose from the river marshes, mingled with the croaking of the bull-frogs never at rest. And every venta along the roadside was crowded, the garden trees were hung with lanterns, guitars tinkled an accompaniment to malagueñas, jotas, boleros and other songs and dances of Southern Spain, and through the pageant and festivities prepared in their honour the bulls moved with silent dignity. Right along the Guadalquivir’s bank, where the lights shone from the faluchas at rest upon its waters, they tramped almost up to the Tower of Gold, and then the plaza de toros shone out clearly in the light of huge bonfires kindled just beyond its boundaries. Guided for the first and last time by the poles of the ganaderos, the bullocks turned sharply to the right, and after a moment’s hesitation that gave the one touch of suspense to the proceedings, the fighting bulls followed. The heavy doors were drawn behind them, the procession dispersed, and, quite unseen by any eyes save those of the men engaged, each bull was driven to his own condemned cell, while the bullocks remained by themselves in a small straw-covered yard. Then profound silence reigned throughout the city, broken only when the bells clashed from the Giralda Tower and the old serenos who paraded the streets with spear and lantern cried to the Maria Santissima that the night was clear.

In his narrow prison El Cuchillo may have noted the coming of the morning when one white bar of light fell across the wall. There were sounds of activity beyond the toril, but he remained undisturbed. He had little room to turn, there was no food, and, worse still, no water. Hunger, thirst and fear yielded slowly to an overmastering sense of anger, founded upon his consciousness of giant strength. He bellowed savagely, and would have given effect to his rage had it been possible to move freely.

Long hours passed; morning yielded to afternoon. The great splash of light that came through the bars waxed intense and intolerant and then waned slowly with the passing hours, while an indescribable sense of movement filled the twilight of the condemned cell. In some subtle fashion it told of the gathering of an expectant multitude. On a sudden a military band, somewhere just beyond the toril, crashed out the Spanish National Anthem, there were cheers and shouts, succeeded by a death-like stillness that was broken in its turn by a shrill, penetrating trumpet call. Time after time, for more than an hour, came the reverberating notes, the snatches of wild music, the cries from many thousand throats. Only one word rang clear: “Espartero”.

At last El Cuchillo became conscious of voices on either side of him, the light broadened, and a hand, shooting out a little way above him, stuck the barbed point of a red rosette in his shoulder. A moment later the trumpets called again, the front wall of his prison opened as though by magic, and he dashed forward with a rush that brought him half way across the yellow arena. A yell from twelve thousand throats arrested him; he lashed his flanks, blinked a little—for even the setting sun hurt his eyes after those long hours of darkness—and then answered his audience with a roar of defiance. Certainly he knew that he was surrounded by his enemies; perhaps the awful odour of blood that filled the arena gave him some prevision of the butchery that was to accompany his death.

Let us pass over the first few minutes of the struggle. El Cuchillo knew no difference between the armour-cased picadores who carried the spiked poles, and the hapless, unprotected, blindfolded horses they bestrode. That is all that needs be said by way of excuse for the six carcases that strewed the arena when the tercio sounded, carcases from which the blue-coated attendants had stripped saddle and bridle. With one exception the picadores had fallen behind their horses in the most approved fashion; the exception, a heavy man, protected at all vital points against the reddened horns, was tossed high into the air and carried off with a broken collar-bone; while Espartero himself drew El Cuchillo away with some of the most superb cloak-work Seville had seen since Lagartijo retired from the bull-ring.

With the enthusiasm of the huge auditorium a thrill of amazement was mingled. Though the bull’s neck bore red marks of the picadores’ poles, he was singularly fresh, his breathing was not short and sharp as it should have been, and he was in no sense distressed.

Conecito came forward with his banderillas, the beribboned spears used for the second attack upon the bull, and the crowd cheered lustily, for the banderillero was a favourite. Bull and man seemed to charge together, and then Conecito was seen travelling post-haste for the barrier, which he reached just in time, while his opponent drew up and trotted off gamely but with “half a pair” (the technical term for one banderilla) hanging from his shoulder. The second banderillero tried next and failed altogether—El Cuchillo’s pace beat him utterly; and then, to the accompaniment of a roar of applause and a burst of barbaric music, Espartero himself came forward with a pair of the light lances. This time there was no mistake. For all Cuchillo’s wonderful habit of using his eyes as he charged he could never quite tell where the great matador would cross him, and at the second attempt the two lances were beautifully placed. Then Conecito tried again, with the same result as before, save that the one sent home was on the other side of the bull’s flank, so that he carried two pairs now. The second banderillero was quite beaten, but the renowned Rafael Guerra, who led the second cuadrilla, succeeded, amid thunders of acclamation. Then the judge raised his hand to the string with which he signalled, the trumpeters sounded the third call and a great hush fell upon the arena.

Espartero was to kill. The great diestro, who had been testing the quality of two or three swords, and giving instructions to the footmen of his cuadrilla, now chose his weapon, and wrapping the scarlet muleta round it strode across the arena until he stood below the President’s box.

Hat in hand, he asked permission to kill El Cuchillo in manner that would do honour to Seville. The President raised his hat in token of assent; Espartero flung his own over the barrier and turned towards the middle of the arena, where El Cuchillo, standing sturdily defiant, greeted his coming with a thunderous bellow, and stared with bloodshot eyes at the gold epaulettes and braid, the gaudy coat, the red waistband and blood-stained white stockings of his enemy.

Conecito, who now carried one of the plum-coloured cloaks, stood a little to the left of his chief and heard Espartero speak to the bull as though he were a human being.

“El Cuchillo,” he said slowly, almost solemnly, “you are a great bull and know no fear. You have killed six horses and you are still fresh. I, Espartero, salute and honour you. And now one of us must die.”

So saying, he unfurled the scarlet cloth, the muleta, and flashed it across the bull’s startled eyes, so that he charged the uncanny thing. It jumped up out of his reach, and came back just below his nose, and buzzed round him like a hornet, and led him to jump and turn and twist and lose his caution, and stand with his forelegs closer and closer together as Espartero wished, for when they were quite in the normal condition he could send his espada through the matted hair over the shoulder and through the lungs to the heart. Then on a sudden, when the aficionados were telling each other that the end of the splendid animal would be tame enough, and speculating whether Espartero would kill with his favourite volapies, or would fall back on the descabello à pulso, that must be difficult with a bull whose movements were so uncertain, El Cuchillo seemed to recover his nerve. He ignored the muleta and rushed at Espartero himself, and in that moment all the diestro’s plans were upset, and he was forced to save himself by one of the agile turns of which he was the master.

The trumpets sounded a single warning note; Espartero had gone beyond the time allotted to him. A murmur of astonishment rippled round the vast arena; never before in the history of Seville had Espartero been warned. Even the boys who sell programmes and fruit and sandwiches ceased their cries; the flutter of fans on the sunny side of the ring faded into stillness almost automatically; and the gaudy flags that decked the arena seemed to hang breathless. Alone in that vast concourse matador and bull preserved their tranquillity, and it would be hard to say which of the two needed it most.

Espartero realised the need for prompt action. With splendid disregard for danger he returned to his work, and once again the muleta flashed all round the bull’s head, bewildering, dazing and almost stupefying him, while one of the banderillas that lay right across the animal’s shoulder was lifted into its proper place by a daring stroke of the sword. For a moment the forelegs came together, and it seemed as though Espartero hurled himself upon the bull, but a second later the sword was high in the air, the matador’s stroke had been foiled by one of El Cuchillo’s sudden movements, and one blood-stained horn ripped Espartero’s red waistcoat as he jumped aside avoiding death by a hand’s-breadth. The capadores rushed in to cover their chief’s defeat, and El Cuchillo, disdaining the plum-coloured cloaks, made for one man. The moment of mad chase to the barrier was one of horrible uncertainty, the capador vaulted and fell, badly bruised, on the other side, and then El Cuchillo trotted back to the centre of the arena, distressed and bleeding, but unbeaten. The trumpet called again.

Espartero examined the sword that had been picked up and brought to him, only to fling it aside. Armed with a fresh one, he paused to replace and reassure his wondering cuadrilla, and moved forward again. His face was perfectly colourless, his hand was shaking, the fatigue of the work done during the long afternoon was making itself felt, for he had killed two difficult bulls already, and El Cuchillo had been more than twenty minutes in the arena.

“Give me your horns or take my sword this time,” he cried, as he approached his enemy, and, as though in reply, El Cuchillo bellowed his defiance to Spain and its champion matador.

Now, in those last moments, the silence was almost as oppressive as the heat.

Something of the fury of despair seemed to seize upon man and beast, some shadow of their overwhelming anxiety lay heavily upon the audience. The muleta had seemingly lost its power to charm, and the matador seemed resolved to set his life upon the point of his own sword. With a superb gesture, he lowered the scarlet rag and invited El Cuchillo to charge. Hundreds of men and women, used though they were to all the carnage of the arena, turned their eyes away, until a deafening roar roused them to see Espartero hurled on one side and El Cuchillo in pursuit of the plum-coloured cloaks, with the sword quivering in his shoulder.

As the shout rolled through the arena, and Espartero walked slowly to the barrier, the setting sun made a final effort and flooded half the arena with yellow crocus-coloured light. The pigeons from the Giralda Tower swept right across the plaza, and from the sunny side rose a sudden shout of “Pardon! pardon.”

It was caught up all over the arena as El Cuchillo, with a mighty effort, shook the sword out of his shoulder and, with splendid valour, returned to the centre of the arena, unbeaten still, and ready for the next attack.

The clamour increased and became deafening until Espartero was seen walking empty-handed to the corner below the President’s box. Then it died away to absolute silence.

In clear tones that could be heard all over one side of the arena the great matador asked the President to grant pardon to El Cuchillo for his splendid fight, which had given more honour to the famous plaza de toros than would come to it by his death. And the President, listening gravely to his appeal, raised his hat and replied, “We pardon El Cuchillo on account of his bravery”.

Amid a scene of extraordinary enthusiasm the trumpets sounded again, and the tame bullocks came into the arena by way of the toril. They grouped themselves round El Cuchillo, while people cheered and flung hats and cigars and flowers to Espartero, and the band played Spain’s National Anthem. So the long-horned hero of “the herd of death” passed to the toril, where the barbs were removed, his wounds were dressed and his raging thirst was satisfied. And the crowd that had gathered along the river-side road to see him pass to his death gathered on the morrow to do him honour on his way back to the pleasant pastures of Utrera, where old age comes to him to-day, slowly and in peaceful guise.

THE CUCKOO

The month was May, the place was the Heron Wood, which was ablaze with wild hyacinths and pansies, and full of singing-birds. If you have ever been through the wood you must know the little open space in the middle with the pond to which a stray wild duck comes now and again in cold weather. From one corner of the pond you can see right down the slope to the wood’s end, along a path now overgrown with ferns and weeds, but, in the old preserving days, a ride cut to enable the squire to shoot his pheasants. There a Vixen had her earth. She could see over the approach to the wood and yet remain unseen, so she was well content.

YOUNG CUCKOO [Photo by C. Reid]

A bird that seemed at first sight to be a sparrow-hawk came into the wood above the ride, hard-pressed by a flock of sparrows and finches that were pursuing it with loud, angry cries. Once among the trees, the hunted one was lost to its pursuers, who gave up the chase and returned twittering to the open. The Vixen sat quite still. Suddenly she heard the flutter of leaves, as strong wings passed between them, and in another minute the bird that might have been taken for a sparrow-hawk lighted on the branch of the black-thorn above her, lowered his head, drooped his wings, spread his tail out to the fullest extent and called, “Cuc-koo,” he cried, “Cuc-koo, cuc-cuk-koo”.

“Well, I am surprised,” said the Vixen, “I thought you were a hawk.”

“So did the hedge-sparrows and the green-finches, and the yellow-hammer,” laughed the Cuckoo. “It was very amusing, particularly as they could not get near me. But I would not like them to catch me in the open.”

“Then why do you try to appear like a hawk when you’re a cuckoo,” said the Vixen. “Trouble enough comes to all of us without asking for it. At least I think so.”

“I’m not so foolish as you think,” explained the bird, whose plumage, now it could be seen closely, was very drab and undistinguished, just a dirty grey with brown markings, and nothing of the gloss that belongs to the feathers of the hawk tribe. “You see, I’m quite a defenceless bird. My bill is not made to deal with anything harder than insects. I’m not built for fighting. Now I’m a fair size, and every hawk can see me when I fly abroad. If they knew me for a cuckoo, I’d not do much good for myself, the first that saw me would have a free meal. So I imitate their flight and all their actions, and they take me for one of themselves. In this way I am safe to go from place to place; but there is the drawback that all the little hawk-haters of the woods and hedges are deceived too, and they mob me as you have seen. However, we can’t expect to have unmixed good luck, and deception involves trouble. Upon my word, I’m almost as wise as the brown owl himself.”

“How do you manage the imitation so well?” asked the Vixen. “I’m not readily deceived, but I thought you were a hawk.”

“Just practice,” he replied. “When I’m feeding I can twist and turn up and down any way you like, and when I’m trying to hide I can slip in and out among branches in a way your eye could not follow. But when I go into the open where there may be hawks about, I take a straight flight, keep my tail spread out, utter no sound at all and go across the fields as though I were on the look-out for little birds.”

“And what are you doing in this part?” asked the Vixen suspiciously. She was not pleased to see strangers in the wood.

“I’ve been about since early April,” replied the Cuckoo. “I’ve taken up my summer quarters here, and I don’t mind telling you that there is no room for any other male cuckoo in this wood. I had to make an exception to my general rule of peaceful living and fight one of my own tribe for possession of this pitch. I won, and he has gone across the river.”

“What about your mate?” she asked him, and the Cuckoo smiled again, rather wickedly.

“I don’t mind allowing any really charming lady cuckoo to call for a few days, but she can’t stay,” he replied. “My instincts are those of a bachelor.”

The Vixen thought it best to change the subject.

“What part have you come from?” she said.

“My winter home is in the centre of Africa,” he replied. “A place south of the equator full of tropical forests, where there are lions and hippopotami and a few black people in towns and villages where a white man has never been seen.

“We leave there in March and come north. On our way through Morocco or Algeria some of us stop, unwilling to cross the sea. You can hear us in the forests of Ma’mora and Argan, and in the woods of the country of the Beni M’gild. But the most of us persevere and leave Africa and come into Spain. There the great spotted cuckoo, who is my cousin, stays and spends his summer. He is four inches longer than I am; he has a crest on his head, and white under-parts. He does not thrive as he might, for his wives will put their eggs in magpies’ nests, and those birds are not good foster-parents. My cousins say that the country north of Spain is too cold for them; but we say they are too idle or too cowardly to take the longer journey. We take it, however, making the sea passage as short as possible, and travelling in separate parties.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked the Vixen curiously, and keeping her eyes upon him as though she feared a surprise.

“You see we male birds come first, and the other folk follow,” he explained. “They come about a week later than we do. We all land in the South and go quite at our leisure to the northern counties and to Scotland. One part of these islands is like any other to us so long as there are plenty of insect-eating birds in the neighbourhood. This year I arrived about the 6th of April.”

“Nobody heard your voice before the 14th,” remarked the Vixen, for she knew every sound from copse and woodland.

“We wait for our females before we sing,” said the Cuckoo, “and when our notes are heard for the first time there is quite a flutter of excitement in birdland. Dozens of birds come round to ask us what we are and where we come from; they are in their first year, and have forgotten our notes. Some of the elders want to hear the news from Africa. Unfortunately, the novelty soon wears off. Our women-folk can’t call as we do. They have nothing better than a husky note with something like a common chuckle in it. They try to say ‘cuc,’ and it sounds like ‘kwook’. And now I’ve said quite enough for one day, and I’m going to find some dinner.”

He must have lighted not very far away, for he called merrily and persistently during the next few minutes, and the notes thrilled through the wood, giving to every living thing the assurance that summer had returned at last. The Vixen waited awhile, and heard a mild, meek “kwook-oo-oo,” that seemed to be the confidential reply of some fair lady of the family, then she went back to her earth. Perhaps the Cuckoo had seen or heard his partner and had gone to a more remote corner to call to her.

Through the long nights of May and June the Cuckoo seemed to be nearly always awake. He was quite the last of the woodland birds to go to sleep and the first to wake up. The Vixen would hear his call break the silence of the Heron Wood before three o’clock in the morning, when she was waiting for her lord’s return. It was not always the familiar cuc-koo accented on the first syllable, but sometimes cuc-cuc-koo, and sometimes, though not often, cuc-koo-koo. He was comparatively shy; most of the cuckoos that passed over the meadow, calling as they flew, were hen birds, and it was seldom that he answered their call. One morning in early June, when the Vixen was playing with her cubs in the shaded corner by the water, he slipped through the leaves, lighted on a branch above her head, spread his tail and called loudly, jerking his body with each note as though the effort was a considerable one, and he did not want any of the significance of the cry to be lost.

“Why don’t you keep your singing for the daytime,” said one of the fox cubs, the biggest in the litter, “instead of waking me up before sunrise?”

“Well,” he replied, “you must not grumble at that. Other birds sleep soundly because they have been busy all day building their nests or helping to hatch the eggs or feed the little ones. Naturally enough, then, the evening finds them tired out, and they sleep until the sun wakes them. But cuckoos are the wisest birds in all the world. They want to enjoy the spring and summer without the hard labour that others practise. So I have no nest to build, no wife to keep, no young to tend, and I know the Heron Wood in all its beauty as no other bird can hope to. A very few hours give me all the sleep I require, and when I wake and see the summer decorating the beautiful wood, I must tell how grateful I am. It is by my help that the wood returns thanks for the gift of summer at all hours of the day and night, for when the late woodlark ceases his song I resume mine.”

“That explanation may satisfy you,” the Vixen interrupted, “but I am not sure that it convinces me. For you seem to shirk your duties, and you can have no share in the joy of the birds that work; you are not a father.”

“You don’t know much about it,” cried the Cuckoo merrily. “Follow me now, if you please.”

So the Vixen, leaving her cubs to gambol about the little patch of green-sward, followed, and he went lightly through the wood until he came to a bush where two accentors, known to the village lads as hedge-sparrows, had a nest.

“Show yourself,” he whispered, and when she did so the sitting bird flew away hurriedly, leaving six pale-blue eggs exposed to view.

“Look carefully,” said the cuckoo with a chuckle, and the Vixen saw that one egg was rather larger than the rest, and had some tiny black specks that might have been overlooked at first sight.

“Come away,” whispered the Cuckoo. “I don’t like to be seen about here. But I’ll tell you in confidence that I’m the father of the big blue egg.”

They moved off quietly to the more secluded corner of the wood where the cubs had found some rabbits to play with.

“If boys saw the nest they might not recognise that as a cuckoo’s egg at all. Some eggs have red or brown blotches on a grey-white ground; they were not like this one, and you would not see them in a hedge-sparrow’s nest. They would be in a blackbird’s home by the side of the ten-acre meadow, or a warbler’s on the marsh, or in a wagtail’s nest.”

“I was born in this wood in a hedge-sparrow’s nest three years ago,” said the Cuckoo, on another morning when he sat on a bough above the Vixen’s earth, “and when I am a father the egg is always blue. The mother of the egg you have just seen visited me for a few days at the end of May and laid this egg for me on the ground. You see I had no nest to offer her. So soon as we saw that the colour was blue, as I expected it to be, we scoured the wood for a nest that had eggs similar to it. We soon found the hedge-sparrow’s. Then we waited patiently for both birds to go for an airing, and my mate took the egg up in her mouth and flew with it to the nest. There she left it, and on the following day I said good-bye to her and she went away.”

“Will she lay any more eggs this year?” the Vixen asked him.

“It is quite possible,” replied the Cuckoo, “at intervals of a week or ten days, but they will be no concern of mine, in fact, they may not even be blue. But they will all find a place in the nests of birds that have our tastes in food. In parts where there are no insect-eating birds you would have to search a long time to find a cuckoo.”

“Do the hedge-sparrows, and warblers, and pipits and the rest of them realise the trick you have played upon them?” she asked him. “My mother once chose a badger’s earth for her home and I was the only one that got out alive.”

“Never,” he replied lightly. “They only think one of their eggs is a little unlike the rest, that’s all. You know our eggs are quite small for our size. And when they are all hatched the parents must work harder than they expected to, for a young cuckoo can eat as much as the rest of the family put together.”

Some fourteen or fifteen days after the strange egg had been put in it, a blind ugly cuckoo came from the shell in the hedge-sparrow’s nest, calling for food. The little hedge-sparrows had not yet appeared, but the unoccupied parent bird had all his work cut out to keep the newcomer satisfied. He was constantly on the wing through the wood in search of insects, and very often strayed to the orchard of Home Farm, where fat green caterpillars, most luscious morsels, were to be found among the currant bushes. And all that time the Father Cuckoo was living at ease on the fat of the land.

“I met that hard-working hedge-sparrow this morning,” he said to the Vixen, when he took his favourite place on the branch of an elder above her earth; “he was coming to the orchard as I left it. What a splendid arrangement it is to be sure. I’m sure my baby will be well fed, and that foster-father seems to enjoy the work. Let him thank his good luck there are not two of my family in his nest. If there were, he would have no time to feed himself or his mate.”

“Do the hens ever put two eggs into one nest?” said the Vixen.

“Only by accident,” he replied. “Sometimes it happens that a hen carries an egg to a nest, and deposits it there without noticing that some other hen has been before her. She would not carry two of her own eggs to the same nest. Hers is too keen a sense of affection for the unborn; she knows as well as I do that there is quite enough work for any pair of small birds in the raising of a single cuckoo.”

The little hedge-sparrows were born only to die. Their ungainly foster-brother was clamorous for all the food that reached the nest, and he could not stretch himself without danger to the little ones. Do not let it be said that he deliberately murdered them; but before they were three days old all lay dead on the ground below the hedge. The parent birds did not seem to feel their loss very keenly. Probably this was their second brood, and the earlier one had been reared successfully; for the nest, built of wool and horsehair and soft mosses, is always one of the first to appear in the Heron Wood, and, being badly hidden, is preyed upon by all unscrupulous egg-eating birds, or egg-collecting boys.

This one was hardly two feet from the ground, and might have escaped notice, had not the cuckoo-mother been looking for such an one. But even the Vixen who was not tender-hearted could not help feeling sorry for the hard-working couple, kept constantly busy to feed the thief who had thrown their proper offspring out of the nest with such complete unconcern. Possibly their hard work served to help them to forget their troubles.

Father Cuckoo to admit any responsibility though the Vixen, having a mother’s feelings for the time being, remonstrated with him.

“You can’t blame a young cuckoo, not a fortnight old for being hungry, and wanting all the food,” he said. “And you can’t blame me or his mother, for we were both brought into the world in the same fashion, and know no other. There are cousins of ours in America who make nests and bring up their young in the usual fashion; but for unknown generations they have had this custom, and we, on the other hand, have had ours.

“Nobody can explain these things. Why should I have such dull, ugly feathers, for example, when some of my African cousins have a plumage that shines as though each feather had been dipped in gold? Twice a year I moult, never without a hope that the new suit will be a brilliant one. But I remain dull and shabby; my partners are like me, and have no taste for domesticity.

“On the other hand, we can enjoy the knowledge that we are among the best loved birds in the world, so far as mankind is concerned; that thousands associate the summer with our song, and find the woodland empty when we are summoned south again. All these things are matters of natural law, and you must take us as we are, while we take the world as we find it.”

“What you say may satisfy you,” said the Vixen severely; “but it cannot be expected to satisfy the hedge-sparrow.”

“Perhaps there is no need to think about them,” rejoined the Cuckoo. “You must know that if those birds were left undisturbed, they would raise from twelve to eighteen young every season, for the hens lay three times. In a few years there would be hedge-sparrows in clouds, far more than the land can support. So Nature teaches them to set their nests in open places, where Robin, the horseman’s lad, and all his school companions, may take the eggs by the dozen, and the magpie or the rook may help themselves.”

“Well,” she said, “you won’t deny that the mother cuckoo is quite heartless?”

“I do deny it,” replied the father. “She will be somewhere near the nest, and will make it her business to see that the youngster is doing well. So soon as he is able to fly she will take charge of him and bring him up in the way he should go. She keeps an eye on all her family.”

“But how came he to kill the little birds?” persisted the Vixen. “We only kill for food at this time of year.”

“Just want of room,” replied the parent bird. “I can assure you there is no vice in him. When a young cuckoo wakes to life in a small nest, his first instinct is to make room for himself. I’m rather surprised to think that my son did not throw the eggs out right away. That is what I did when I was born in this wood. I wriggled and wriggled until I had them one after the other on the flat of my back, and then hoisted them over the side. There can’t be any blame for me in the matter, because the instinct came to me as naturally as my hunger. A cuckoo’s egg only takes a fortnight in the hatching, so the cuckoo baby is generally in time to throw other eggs out of the nest. When two cuckoos have got into the same nest by mistake, the two baby birds fight, and the weaker one goes out with the other eggs or the small birds. If two cuckoo eggs get placed in one nest, the cuckoo that is born first is the lucky one. Even a blackbird’s nest can’t hold two cuckoos. Perhaps it is our quarrelsome nature when young that made some mother cuckoos lay eggs in alien nests.”

The Vixen wondered whether these incidents had anything to do with the mobbing of the cuckoo by the small birds when he went abroad. They seemed more reasonable as an explanation than the sparrow-hawk theory.

The baby cuckoo was soon fledged, and left nest and wood at the same time, leaving his father in sole possession. As the summer wore away, the call changed considerably and ceased to have the fresh ring about it. There was no loss of health to the bird associated with the failing voice. On the contrary, he was in splendid condition, and ate heartily of all the good things the wood provided—moths, caterpillars, beetles and even butterflies. The indigestible parts of these dainties he ejected in pellets, just as though he had been an owl. With the end of July his notes had quite gone; other cuckoos were coming into the district in great numbers, and were allowed to enter the wood unchallenged.

“They are from the north of England and from Scotland,” he explained. “They leave early so as to be down here in good time, for we shall all go south together. Some have come all the way from the mountains of Sutherlandshire.”

“But the young ones can’t face the journey yet,” said the Vixen. “Many of them are not yet six weeks old. My cubs take longer to learn to help themselves.”

A TWO DAYS OLD CUCKOO
Ejecting a young Titlark and Eggs from its nest.
[Photo by T. A. Metcalfe

“That’s all right,” explained the Cuckoo; “the birds, you see, are all old ones; in fact, all the mother birds are three years old at least. The season’s children wait in England some weeks longer than we do, and travel together. Their mothers have told them all about the road, and we all have an instinct that keeps us from taking a wrong direction.”

“Why don’t they accompany you?” inquired the Vixen.

“It is hard to say why we have our call in August unless it is to get home before moulting time,” replied the Cuckoo, “but as far as the youngsters are concerned, I should say that they could not stand the heat of our winter home in August. We get there before September, and they are seldom with us before October, and then the country is more fit for young birds that have known no warmth worth mentioning. Coming south gradually in September, they can enjoy what awaits them at the journey’s end.”

“Have you a special day for your departure?” she asked. “I shall be off to the osiers in September and I’d like to see you go.”

“When we have received our marching orders,” replied the bird, “or as you might say, knowing no better, when the instinct for departure is upon us, we await the first fine night with a wind blowing towards the south. Have you ever noticed how the winds help birds at the season of the great migrations? They do, whether you have noticed it or not.”

For some days in the beginning of August the fields and woods showed a large number of cuckoos now quite mute, and then the Vixen prepared to leave the neighbourhood. Cub hunting had started.

“We are ready to fly now,” said the Cuckoo. “The signal has come to us; the wind is backing towards the north.”

“Aren’t you sorry to leave?” she asked him.

“Yes and no,” he replied. “If you had perennial spring and summer I would stay gladly enough. But one of my family was taken half-fledged from a nest here once and lived with clipped wings in an old garden across the river. He has spoken to all of us about the English winter, and it is something we never wish to meet. We are going to a land of such sunshine as you have never seen.”

Half-way through September there was no cuckoo of any age to be heard or seen. And the place seemed to lack something, over and above the crops that had gone from the fields and the green mantle that was fading from the hedgerow and the wood.

THE SEAL

Towards the latter end of May, the grown-up lady seals sought a corner of the shore where the slope was gentle and the sun was warm; the younger seals betook themselves, together with the old males, to another part of the coast, out of sight and hearing. Before the first of the long June days had come to bring new jewels to the treasury of the sea, the meaning of the separation was made plain—there were many little baby seals playing by their mothers’ side. Some rested upon a little nest of white wool that had nothing to do with their skin, which was dark and of a different texture. No mother had more than one child.

Had you passed among the mother seals in the very early June days, while they sprawled at ease, suckling their little ones, you might have noticed one male seal who was rather bigger and more intelligent than most of his neighbours. You would not have been able to go among or even near them unless you had taken the form of a red shank, or an oyster-catcher, or of one of the other sea birds that are the particular friends of seals; but you may take it, that this baby was the best of the pack, if only because the story is concerned with his career.

From the tongue of rock that overlooked the smiling waters, the baby seal, clinging to his mother’s side, heard the summer song of the sea, mingled pleasantly with the wondering bleating cries of many little babies like himself.

“Take me to the water,” he whispered to his mother.

“Cling round my neck, then,” she replied, lowering her head, and he did as she bade him, as well as his feeble limbs would permit.

“Hold on tightly,” she cried, and cast herself off the rock into the deep water, that plashed and curled and danced round them, as though for very love of seals.

“Soon you will learn to dive,” said Mother Seal, “you will be able to sleep on the water or under it, to catch fine fat fish when you do not want my milk any more. You are born to a beautiful life; so be happy.”

Day after day, mother and son lay side by side for hours on a ledge of rock that Mother Seal’s body had worn smooth; they spent only the hottest hours in the water. Soon the little one learned to face the sea, holding on to one of his mother’s flippers; then he went in quite boldly alone and learned to dive, and saw the fish that lived in the depths, and pursued them clumsily and in fun, for he was not yet weaned.

Only when he was two months old, and had grown quite rapidly, did his mother tell him that he must now learn to feed himself, and by this time it was an easy task, as the plaice and flounders soon found to their cost. They could not hide themselves in the sand sufficiently quickly to escape from his pursuit.

Having finished her maternal duties, Mother Seal changed her coat. The spots that had marked it became very light, and the skin itself assumed a yellow tint that seemed quite like silver at times.

“Is it time to change?” asked the male seals, who had now returned with the young sons and daughters to the maternal haunts. “If it is, we have no time to lose,” and they, too, put on the light summer dress which was, with all who wore it, a symbol of joy and happiness, a tribute to the halcyon days when domestic cares were laid aside, when there was hardly any night, when food was plentiful, and the sun seldom ceased to shine upon warm and tranquil waters.

The seals, scattered now into little groups in every bay and round every islet, enjoyed their idle days to the full. Sometimes they would travel upshore quite a long way, and laze upon the dry sand, the younger and less experienced among them being most addicted to such journeys. Every crag that looked out over the deep water had its noisy tenants, and throughout August there would be a series of dances given by various seal hosts and hostesses, at which the most agile among the visitors would glide through the water in dolphin fashion. They were inclined to be rather jealous of the dolphins.

During this pleasant season the Little Seal, now in the enjoyment of his liberty, made friends with a very old Herring-gull. The bird lighted upon his rock one afternoon and saluted him in friendliest fashion.

“I fish for my living just as you do,” he remarked, “but you have some advantages over me. However, there is room for all of us, so we might as well be friends. You will find some of my family with your people all through the summer. We sometimes warn them of the approach of man.”

“What is man?” queried the Young Seal, “and why do you warn us?”

“Man,” explained the Herring-gull, “is the sworn foe of all things in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth. He shoots birds in the air, pursues beasts on the land, and catches fish from the sea. If he saw you now he would certainly kill you, not because you have done him any harm, but because you are alive. He would probably shoot you, and say you were a nice little fellow, for he does not bear malice.”

“But that would be murder, would it not?” asked the Seal, opening his eyes to the fullest extent.

“Oh, dear no,” replied the Herring-gull, “it would be sport,” and flew away, leaving the puzzled youngster to think the matter out for himself.

With September, another change of colour came to the seals. Their coat became rather darker than before, and the black spots, that began on the head and spread in ever growing patches over the body, reappeared. The flippers darkened to a heavy brown, and with all these changes came an altered mood, and the males began to fight for possession of the females.

The Young Seal took no part in these contests, though his coat showed the influence of the season; he was little more than a baby, and, on the advice of the Herring-gull, he kept away from the scene of the fighting. He had made small progress in growth since weaning time came, the fish diet that made him strong had done little to help him to develop. This mattered not at all; strength rather than length was needed to face the rough days that lay before the seal world when September was at an end, and the long fight between adult male seals was over. There was very little love in the camp during that season. Polygamy prevailed, and the conqueror took as many wives as he could keep away from his weaker brethren; but when the last fight had been fought and the early cold snaps reminded them of the hard season ahead, friendly relations were resumed throughout the community.

At the bidding of the storm-wind the sea parted with its beautiful tints, the water became very cold and lashed itself into terrible fury, and foamed like a bayed wolf. Many a rough buffet it gave to the Young Seal, and not a few bruises, but the low temperature did no harm to him. He had enough pure oil in his body to withstand Arctic cold, and on these northern Scottish shores the temperature never approached Arctic severity. His friend the Herring-gull had gone; he saw no birds now within speaking distance, though a few gulls passed down wind every few hours of the day, trying in vain to steer along the road they wished to follow.

As the winter advanced, the seals split into small groups on some family basis of their own, and passed most of their time on the rocks, climbing up from the water by the aid of the strong nails in their foreflippers and the muscles of the tail. They always faced the water from which they had risen, and their attitude at this season was a very listless one, as if the triumph of wind and rain were not altogether to their liking.

When the Little Seal joined his family party, consisting of the mother, two male seals, and several children of two and three years old—eight in all—he soon found that the bottom of the water was the most comfortable part of the world within his reach. Down upon the smooth sandy bottom there fell no shadow of the trouble cast upon the upper waters and the land, and so he learned to remain for long drowsy periods, half-sleeping, half-waking, roused to instant activity by the sense of the presence of a fish. He could see under the water as clearly as he could upon the land, and his whiskers were developing the sensitiveness that belongs to seals in even a larger measure than to cats.

These nerves served to rouse him when he was almost asleep, and indicated the presence of food. When after even a long hunt he had caught his fish, he did not need to seek land; he could eat it at his ease under the waves; and if he came up afterwards, it was generally to tread water with his flippers, and look round to take his bearings.

Finally, when he was quite tired of the sea, he would return to the home rock, climb up in the manner described, and then, resting his head upon the body of the seal nearest to him, go to sleep. Every seal attached himself to his neighbour in this fashion for reasons of safety. When they were lying in such close touch, the first sign of alarm was communicated automatically to one and all. Perhaps in that quiet corner there was little need for such extravagant precautions, but the history of seals throughout the world is one long drawn-out tragedy, and the need for care had become as strong an instinct as any that entered into their simple lives. In old days, and among kind superstitious folks, the seals had been mermen and mermaids; and when they sat on rocks in the sunshine, passing their webbed toes through their coat to keep it bright and lustrous, simple seafaring men had thought they saw mermaidens combing their golden locks. The sunlight had supplied the gold, and perhaps the little waves had lent the song; and so the story grew, and passed into legend, and gladdened many a child-like simple heart, even though it dwelt in a time-worn body. But now, in the place of gold, men had introduced the age of lead; mermaids and mermen shocked an age that held materialism to be the highest form of faith, and knew that a leaden bullet properly aimed could kill the most beautiful creature that ever played about a summer sea. So the old seals, grown wary, exercised what care they could to save their helpless, harmless families from the enemy man.

Spring came back at last, and if it made little or no difference to the aspect of the rock-strewn shore, there were pleasant changes beyond. The waters subsided and lost their angry colour, the days lengthened, the light grew stronger, and sea birds came back to the cliffs to lay their eggs, and scream and quarrel in the old familiar fashion. And with the advent of May the adult female seals withdrew from the others, and the adult males retired with the younger generation to another part of the coast where, as good luck would have it, our friend found the old Herring-gull busily pursuing his fishing.

“I’d like to travel,” said the Young Seal, whose blood tingled with the spirit of the season. “I’m tired of stopping always in one place. Where does the sea end? You ought to know, seeing that you can fly all over it.”

“The sea has no end and no beginning,” explained the Herring-gull. “It is like the sky, boundless. Wherever I go, I find the sea. But if you wish to travel, follow the coast down until you come to a place where the water turns in towards the land. Follow carefully, until it narrows, and you reach a part where men have spread great nets. They are put there to catch a wonderful fish with scales as bright as a herring’s, and a pink body that all seals love to feed upon. But be careful to stay well beyond the nets, and do not let greed tempt you to travel too far. Then I shall see you back in the late summer, and you will thank me.”

This advice seemed very good to the Young Seal, who felt no family ties and had a love of adventure. He set out, resting from time to time upon the shore, and keeping the best possible look out for strangers. As he moved down the coast, he met a seal two years older than himself, bound on the same errand, and this one promised to show him the road. Having company, each seal was bolder than before, and as the sea was teeming with fish just then, they moved quite slowly to the home of the great pink delicacy. One fine afternoon they lay at their ease high upon the shore, and came near to be cut off, for a pleasure boat hove in sight, and they had to rush towards it in search of safety. This was a thrilling experience, and might have ended very differently if any of the four men on the boat had carried a gun. As it was, the two seals ran down the beach in fearful haste, raising sand and shingle very freely, as they progressed in awkward jerks, first on their chest, then on their stomach. To the men in the boat the movements appeared so strange that they could hardly row for laughter, indeed the reduction of their efforts may have accounted for the seals’ escape, but to the two frightened animals the case was quite different—they found nothing to laugh at. When they reached water at last, they were very sore, stiff and bruised; sharp stones and rocks had hurt them very considerably. They remained under the water for a very long time, and only ventured to show their heads above it a long way down the coast. At the same time the incident was not without considerable value. It taught them that an enemy might appear at any moment, and that they must not venture inland either when the tide was receding or when the shape of the coast corner tended to obstruct the view.

At length they reached the river’s estuary, and moving along it with extreme caution, found a point where the banks narrowed a little below the netting. There they remained for some weeks, and the Younger Seal found that the salmon seeking the fresh water were worthy of everything the Herring-gull had said in their praise. He remembered the advice that had been given to him; his little experience along the coast had done something to fix it in his mind, and it is doubtful whether the fisher folk who looked after the nets realised the close presence of the seals. Doubtless the men, to whom some of the salmon fell in the latter days, knew that the fish had run the gauntlet, for now and again a salmon escaping with his life from seal and nets carried to the upper waters the mark of the seal’s teeth. If not gripped behind the neck, many a salmon could tear himself away with little serious hurt.

At last the fish began to decrease in numbers and the Seal had eaten enough salmon to satisfy him for a long time. He began to think with pleasure of the life that awaited him among his own people, and of the joys of basking at ease without fear of disturbance. In the estuary he had been bound to observe the greatest care, and now he was not feeling quite well, the season of change was upon him. So he went down again to the open water, and turned his head to the north, covering the road home in comparatively short time, and arriving to find that the female seals were silvered, and that the males were beginning to change colour. He told all his experiences to the Herring-gull, but said nothing about them to his brethren. Instinct told him that if the salmon ground should be invaded by the seals, man the enemy, who owned the nets, would resent the invasion after his own brutal fashion. Strange though it may appear, he knew himself for a poacher.

This summer did not differ from the last. Perhaps the Seal climbed higher rocks than he had cared to face in the previous year, and perhaps he was more nervous if alarmed, and more careless when undisturbed. There were some rocks that the high tide covered and the low tide left bare, and he took a particular pleasure in seeking one of these at the ebb and sleeping on the top until the flood lifted him off into the water—sometimes to finish his sleep there.

Though his colour changes were well defined now, he took no part in the September fighting, he was not yet sufficiently matured to seek a mate. His sex was fairly clear by now, particularly when he was with a female of his own age, for then his jaws and teeth were larger and stronger than hers would be, and his head was rather bigger. In disposition he was kind and gentle, and would play for hours with his half-sister, a baby girl seal born to his mother about the time when he sought the salmon. He taught her many of his cleverest tricks, and sometimes went with her, in pursuit of fish, to places she could not have visited alone. So she saw nothing of the savage September fights in which many male seals were quite badly torn.

Another winter passed uneventfully, another spring saw considerable increase in the seal colony, and following it a partial migration in search of fresh feeding grounds. The gulls and sea swallows told the seals they liked best the very quiet and well-stocked corners of the coast; they had the best opportunities of finding out where safety and plenty were associated.

The Young Seal took his half-sister down the coast to the river estuary, and they stayed from time to time upon the top of a high rock that was well out of the reach of man. But some of the salmon that came to the nets were very badly mauled, and the men in charge began to keep a sharp look-out. At first they were uncertain whether otters or seals were in the estuary, then a field-glass revealed the presence of the real enemy, and a Norwegian who was among the workers at the nets offered to mend matters in a certain brutal fashion practised in his own land. He rowed out to the rock when the seals were not at home, and fixed eight or ten barbed hooks round the base on a stout rope. Then, on the following morning, when the seals were at rest upon the rock, the boat appeared suddenly, and they slid off into the water.

As good luck, or their light weight, would have it, little harm was done. The Elder Seal was badly scratched, and his young companion had a torn flipper; but the injury was only bad enough to keep them from the rock and send them farther down stream to the mouth of the estuary, where they soon found the salmon too quick for them, and made up their minds to return.

When September came, the Young Seal showed fight, and actually endeavoured to enter into competition with one of his elders for the possession of a lady seal who was at least two years his senior. The contest was a brief one. A few leaps out of the water, one or two valiant attempts to bite, and the smaller combatant received a terrible scratch that put the fear of death into him, and cost quite a lot of his young hot blood.

He sought the refuge of a lonely crag, and felt exceedingly sorry for himself. There his faithful half-sister found him, and stretched herself by his side and kissed him affectionately, while the Herring-gull came and talked wisely to him, and between the efforts of his two friends and well-wishers he was induced to take a brighter view of life.

“You are much too young to take a wife,” explained the Gull cheerfully; “why, if you succeed in securing one two years from now, you will have done well.”

“I shall never get over this trouble,” groaned the Seal, showing the nasty gash left by his opponent’s flipper. “Where I fell back into the water, it was quite red and horrid.”

“Nonsense,” said the Herring-gull quite cheerfully; “you’ll be quite right by the time your dark spots have come back. Your enemy did not want to maul you very severely, or you would have had a very different tale to tell. He could have ripped you up, or cracked your skull as if it were no thicker than an egg-shell, had he been in earnest. No seal should think of fighting for a mate before he is three years old at least. There isn’t a seal of your age that has a wife in any part of the sea I ever sailed over, and very few would be so foolish as to search for one!”

This information cheered the Young Seal, but he kept away from his companions until his wounds were healed, and, returning, found that all quarrels had been forgotten, and the kindliest feelings ruled. To be sure, there were occasional fights, but they were quite friendly affairs like the dances and games of “Follow my leader” in which the community delighted.

Two years passed uneventfully, the Seal was an adult now nearly six feet long, victorious in the September fights, and master of many lady-loves. The Herring-gull was gathered to his forefathers, and it was from a younger generation that news came to the seal family of certain changes fraught with grave danger to one and all. The land lying round the little bay they knew and loved so well had passed from the hands that held it for so long and was let to a sportsman. Sport! the word had a strange and terrifying sound in the Seal’s ear, he remembered what his old friend had told him.

He was guardian of a group of seals now, the last to take his place on rock or shore, the first to rise out of the water and look for danger. His playing time was over, and responsibility had come with power.

Shots had been heard on several occasions; some young seals that had ventured on to the sand at full tide, and had forgotten about the ebb, had never returned.

The Old Seal summoned a family council, and explained matters.

“Farther to the north,” he said, “there are some islands that the Herring-gull knew. There the guns are never heard. Shall we leave our home?”

The answer to this question is plain to all visitors to the coast to-day. Sea-birds scream and play and flutter their wings over the rocks, the summer waters are bright and clear and tempting to the swimmer, but the seals have gone for good and aye.

THE GIRAFFE

Picture to yourself a wide expanse of open land covered with flowers and grasses that spring two or three feet high in the track of the rains.

To the far west stretches a high mountain range, whose topmost peaks are ever clad in snow; to the east a river bed filled with a raging torrent at one season, and dry at another; to the south an acacia wood; to the north the open land, trackless and desert as the sea.

In this land, from which the sun never takes its departure for more than a few days at a time, Maami the giraffe was born, a quaint and curious little creature, whose proportions even in those early days were almost grotesque. In the secluded spot that was his earliest home the growth was thick and luxuriant and, while one who surveyed it with a field-glass from a distant hill might have thought the grasses were comparatively short, the big antelopes that raced along from time to time showed no more than the tops of their horns, the lion who pursued them was unseen. So, too, was the leopard, as he stole along in the direction of the foot hills of the mountain, hoping to surprise some of the noisy baboons that lived and clustered there.

From time to time a lion roared close to the young giraffe’s home; once, indeed, when his mother was away, and there were other moments of danger that Maami never understood. Had he been old enough and big enough to see and understand what followed the lion’s roar, when he was lying in the soft nest that his mother’s body had made for him, his love and admiration for his parent would have been greater than ever. The Old Giraffe had been feeding in the acacia grove, and was on her way home when the lion roared. Hearing the cry, she broke into her fastest stride; it was not a gallop, it was not a canter, it was not a trot; it partook of all three, and in the rhythm of the movement there was a challenge that the lion would not wait to accept.

The great plain was full of antelopes that could be had without fighting, so he roared an assurance that he meant no harm, and hurried away to the left, while the eager mother pounded her rapid way to her calf’s side, and then seeing that he was all right, stood up to the last inch of her height and looked out over the prairie to see where danger lay. In other animals of Africa it is the sharp hearing, the extraordinary scent that puzzles the European; the giraffe was content to rely upon a power of vision second only to the eagle’s. Her bright coat lost its lustre against trees and bushes; she became part of the landscape by reason of her wonderful gift of protective colouring, and could scan the country with a certainty that no source of danger would be overlooked.

Throughout the season of rains mother and son remained in the thicket; but when the drought came it brought countless cruel insects to prey upon Maami’s tender skin, and for his sake the Mother Giraffe, who was schooled to endure such trouble, decided to leave their home.

“We will go up into the forest of the high hills,” she said, speaking in the low tones that only the animal world can hear,[2] “for the insects never climb so far. The evening cold would kill them, so they must stay on the low hot ground.”

Then Maami followed his mother through a dense growth that wrapped and hid him, over rivers that were dwindling down to the size of insignificant brooks, over the bare foot hills, where the baboons loved to play when the nights were long and bright, and up into the high forest, whose depths knew no light at all.

The silence of the place was awe-inspiring after the comparative gaiety of life upon the plains. Never a singing bird came to the forest; the snakes that climbed and clung could hang motionless for hours, and more than once Maami passed a very old elephant standing up against some tree trunk as stiffly and silently as though carved in wood by some cunning sculptor. Happily, there were consolations to make amends for the darkness and solitude. The ticks and hard-biting insects, that could thrive so well upon the plains, succumbed to the cold damp air of the high ground, and within a week Maami and his mother were free from pain and annoyance. Then, again, food was plentiful for the Mother Giraffe, and there was plenty of milk for Maami. On the plains the giraffe had often been driven to the mimosa wood, or even farther afield, in search of succulent branches and tree tops; here the meals were waiting to be eaten at every hour of the day. Giraffes have a certain contempt for the ground; they will not bend their long necks to the earth.

Living, they stand with heads erect; dying, they preserve their stately carriage until the last. Only when moving rapidly will they bend head and neck to the body level. Though the plains might have held much nourishing food the giraffes never condescended to seek it; they looked to the tree tops for their fare.

Mother and son stayed in the depths of the high forest during the dry season, and the elder giraffe seldom left her son. He could follow her when she searched for food, and it was only on the rare occasions when she needed water that she left him for a time, and went down by night towards the plains, where a pool well known to her survived the scorching heat. A few minutes there would suffice the giraffe for some days; indeed, if she found leaves that retained their moisture at all, a weekly journey to the pool would suffice for all her wants.

Only when the rains returned the two giraffes made their way hastily to the scorched plains. There could be no delay, because the dry beds of the rivers would become impassable when the rain had fallen for a few days, and many beasts would be cut off from the plains, or compelled to travel for miles through dangerous country in order to find a ford.

The scorched vegetation made way, as though by magic, for a new, green carpet, that rose hour by hour; great flocks of birds and beasts returned from the far corners whither the drought had driven them; and to the giraffes, so long pent up in the dark forest, the change was a delightful one. Maami was big enough now to look out over the advancing greenery, young enough to frisk and play, shaking his neck and whisking his tail as his mother did, and unfortunate enough to attract the attention of a jackal who chanced to be prowling about, and at once set off to the lair of his master the lion, bearing glad tidings of fresh meat. The lion was hungry, so hungry, indeed, that the jackal would not approach too close to the lair, preferring to howl without it. As soon as the lion stirred the jackal slipped away to the side, and followed at a respectful distance.

At first the lion moved in the direction of another lair, to summon two of his tribe to join him; but they were feasting on an eland bull many miles away, and he was forced to proceed alone. He moved stealthily up wind in the direction of the giraffes’ resting-place; but there were birds on every bush, and they gave the alarm, so that when the huge, tawny beast was within forty or fifty feet of his goal he saw the Mother Giraffe watching and waiting for him. He paused, and lashed his flanks with his tail, uttering a horrible challenge, at which Maami nearly died of fright; but the Mother Giraffe, in no wise alarmed, whisked her own tail by way of reply, twisted her long neck in many strange ways, planted her feet firmly on the ground and waited for the attack. With a quick succession of leaps the lion hurled himself at his prey, but as he came full at the giraffe she lashed out with her heavy feet.

The movement was timed to perfection; no eye save the giraffe’s could have calculated the aim to such a nicety, and the lion fell as though stunned, his lower jaw broken, his hunting ended for all time. Without waiting to see what had happened, the Mother Giraffe signalled to Maami to follow her, and they glided away in their own curious fashion until they were miles from the spot where the great yellow body lay writhing on the ground, a group of jackals waiting hungrily for the end.

Perhaps the two giraffes were made more careful by this adventure; certainly Maami never frisked again in the old-time happy fashion; but it was no more than an incident of daily life, and did not call for any special remembrance.

The year that followed was uneventful, and when the two giraffes came again from the forest the Mother Giraffe asked permission to join the herd from which she had departed when the time came for Maami to be born. Self-preservation took the mothers away at these most critical periods of their lives, and they were not permitted to return until their offspring were old and strong enough to obey the orders of the old bulls to whom the safety of the herd was entrusted. Experience had shown that when a calf was too young to follow the lead, mother and child fell easy victims to pursuit. Alone they might avoid attention, but a herd was a more or less certain mark for hunters, whether they went on two feet or four. So a mother looked after herself and child until both were able to face any emergency, and then they were readmitted to the pack.

Maami was now in his fourth year and well able to look after himself, cognisant of many, if not all, the dangers that beset giraffes, and the old bull in charge of the herd gave him welcome in most approved fashion by bending down certain high branches of edible trees until they were within the newcomer’s reach.

For the Young Giraffe a new life seemed to have opened. He could follow the herd to feeding places where never a giraffe would have gone alone, he was entrusted with sentry duty from time to time, he acquired a measure of confidence, and, above all, he fed entirely upon vegetable matter. When he claimed his mother’s care no longer, he knew that he had gained independence.

The herd numbered thirty or more, and was led by an old bull giraffe and two lieutenants, whose skins were darker than those of the old females or any of the young giraffes. All the males were thicker in the neck than the females, and heavier in the foot, and they were more nervous than their companions. Even when the herd rested against the woodland trees in the extreme heat of the day, or sought for their favourite branches at feeding time, the old bulls would never cease from scanning the surrounding country. The leader went a little lame; he, too, had killed a lion, but not without damage to some leg muscles that made him move much as a camel moves, the natural ungainliness of a giraffe’s stride being made more than ever apparent by the accident.

In spite of hours of duty, in spite of the feeling that he must obey orders, Maami was happy enough. He learned to signal the events of hill and prairie by certain definite movements of head, neck and tail, so that when he was watching while others fed, his inability to cry aloud might not lead to trouble.

Nature, in her infinite care for these her most helpless surviving children, had granted protective colouring and something akin to telegraphic signalling to the giraffe world, and for two years the old bull giraffe kept his little company together with no other loss save that which came when one of the cows retired to some quiet breeding ground. Three out of four would come back in the course of time bringing a little one old enough to feed himself and obey orders, the fourth would not return. She would fall a victim to some enemy, some black huntsman searching for the giraffe because his hide fetched a big price in the African market, where it was made into whip-thongs, or she would fall to a company of lions that could unite against a giraffe, and by surrounding disable her.

Under the guidance of the old bull giraffe, the herd travelled far afield, covering a wide expanse of country and gathering much information about good quiet pools and feeding grounds from many other tree and grass-feeding animals. Zebras, deer of all kinds, elephants and even hippopotami were ready to give all the hints that were sought for, and many a time, in response to warnings that belong to the freemasonry of the animal world, the bull giraffe led his company away from feeding grounds that, for all their tempting aspect, held hidden dangers. The zebras and the deer could hear trouble, elephants could scent it, and when the wind played havoc with the scent and hearing, the giraffes could use their eyes in fashion that brought much-needed guidance to those who had served them at other seasons.

With the exception of the leopards, who worked alone, few animals sought their food or their safety by themselves. Even the lions united for the hunt, and man, the destroyer, reaching the confines of the unexplored lands where wild beasts dwelt, travelled with a company. More than once Maami saw man in the dim distance, with tents, baggage bearers, and the impedimenta associated with the pursuit of big game, but more often than not these destroyers never saw the giraffes at all.

But disaster cannot be avoided for all time, and it was written that Maami’s mother should be the first of the company to pay tribute to man the implacable. One night, as the herd came from feeding among some young tree tops, she fell into one of the cunningly contrived pits that a company of native hunters had set in the path—a trap intended for even bigger game, but readily discovered by the solitary elephant for whom it had been set. He had scented it a hundred yards away, and made a new path into the forest that sheltered him, conquering the pangs of thirst that had drawn him from his lair. The giraffes having little scent and paying small attention to the ground beneath their feet, were not so fortunate; the mother beast fell, and the herd, yielding to brute instinct, turned in its tracks, and ambled away all night to a distant place of safety.

Maami understood his loss very vaguely, if at all. With the advancing years mother and son had forgotten the ties that bound them to one another in the far-off days of motherly affection and childish need; and, when morning broke, bringing lingering surcease to the poor creature’s pain, terror and life, there was none of the herd within sight of the scene of the misfortune. It was one of the chances that giraffes must take, this deep pit covered lightly with grasses spread about a slender support of boughs; and the shapeless carcase that the hunters cast aside when they had stripped off the hide served to give the carrion a hearty meal. Within twenty-four hours the white bones alone remained to tell of the graceful and harmless creature that had haunted wood and plain so long.

Years have passed since Maami’s mother met her fate in the hunters’ pit, and, of the giraffe herd that still haunts the plains, seeking the high woods only in a season of drought, few of the older ones remain. Maami himself is very near to the leadership; he is second to an old bull some three years his senior. The leader of the early days lives solitary now, if he lives at all. When his eyes grew dim and his limbs began to lose their elasticity, he was compelled to pass his duties and responsibilities to another and to go his way alone.

To be sure he was no match for young lions or for huntsmen, but there was no appeal from forest law, which recognises the herd’s need for sound and sure guidance, and since he had left the ranks others had followed, all to lead solitary lives, happy indeed and fortunate if inevitable death did not come to them in cruel fashion. Calves new born when Maami joined the herd are now responsible adults, and the herd moves with more care than of old time; for, although the lions tend to decrease, the white hunters have penetrated into the district; and even the black ivory and hide hunters organised by the big trading companies are armed with weapons of precision, and have learned to use them with a measure of accuracy hitherto unknown. In districts known to Maami as great homes of game in the years when he first joined the herd, you may travel for miles seeing nothing but a few whitening bones spread out here and there; and the general trend of wild life is towards the marshy malarial lands where hunters will not follow willingly.

The giraffe has seen strange sights in these latter days—lions, hyænas, leopards and jackals coming to the stream to drink with big deer and giraffes and zebras, and then moving off without as much as a growl because man the hunter is on the track, and before his advance one and all must retreat in terror. There are nights that Maami will remember as long as he lives, when among the beasts that come to the pools his sharp eyes have counted wounded lions, leopards and elephants. He has seen a great tawny lion permanently lame, his shoulder inflamed to an indescribable condition, an old bull elephant staining the pool red, a leopard drinking with feverish haste and then dropping dead by the side of the hard-sought water. All these things tell the tale of the destroyer with an eloquence beyond words, and account for the strange spirit of fraternity that seizes upon the beasts as they retreat pell-mell before the irresistible advance of the white man.

Maami is travelling alone now; it is his last journey. The white hunter has been too much for the herd; he has dropped one and wounded another, the rest have gone off in their odd swinging style, tails flapping, necks waving, heads erect.

Terror-stricken and badly hurt, Maami is running alone, he does not quite know where. He passes over a great expanse of plain, through a wood strip wherein he has often taken his fill of tender leaves, but, for once, no thought of food comes to him, he is conscious only of growing weakness and increasing thirst. It is the pool that he is running for, and happily it is not far off. He drinks deep of dwindling waters; the dry season has come upon the land of late—now he is running quite aimlessly through the scrub and high grasses. He thinks the herd is before him, always a little out of reach; he makes a special effort to overtake it and sinks down very slowly, his head still high.

From a neighbouring tree a white bird with red bills looks down compassionately. The heat is intense, thirst is coming back, a dark pool is forming by his side, but this is not water. High up in the air a vulture is looking at him; it descends very slowly.

Two bright eyes shine for a moment from the grass; the jackal is investigating the case. He meets Maami’s eye and cannot face it, so he slinks away to a safe distance and howls to his heart’s content. “Blood!” he cries; “meat for one and all!” And to far corners of the plain, to rocky holes that form a day refuge for carrion, the shrill cry penetrates. If there are any lions near by they are sleeping after a successful night’s hunting, for never an answering cry follows the jackal’s summons.

Maami is conscious of a strange gathering of ugly birds and foul beasts, but it does not concern him now. He is growing so cold that even the tropical sun above his head is powerless to warm him; his eyes are being veiled, the landscape is very blurred, the herd has passed from sight. His head droops slowly—he does not feel the teeth of the old hyæna that, mad with hunger, has flung herself upon him.

[2]

Though the giraffe is perhaps the only large animal that never makes a sound, travellers and hunters are agreed that these animals can communicate many thoughts to each other.

THE WHITE STORK

In the afternoon little Tsamani would go in the company of Fatima, his mother, to the flat roof of his father’s house, but in the morning he was allowed to go up there by himself, with only the little slave girl Ayesha to guard him.

The happiest hours of Tsamani’s young life were passed upon the flat house-top, where he could see the Tensift river winding its way among the palms, and the Atlas mountains with their peaks covered in snow, and the wonderful tower called Kutubia, that flanks the Mosque of the Library. He could see one of the markets, crowded with heavily laden camels and noisy tribesmen from the South; and at times when the Sultan was in the city he would watch him riding in state under the green umbrella that is Morocco’s symbol of sovereignty. These sights pleased Tsamani, and delighted the little slave-girl, who was at once his guardian and his playmate; but Father and Mother Stork pleased him most of all.

When the warm spring weather came, and most of the storks in Marrakesh took their long flight oversea to cooler climes, Father Stork and Mother Stork remained behind. She sat in her rough nest upon three white eggs and he stood on one leg by her side, with his neck bent, and his bill resting on his breast. They both looked at Tsamani with great interest, perhaps because he was the son of a powerful governor—more likely because they were sorry for him on account of his loneliness. For, though Tsamani had a very soft white djellaba and bright yellow slippers, he was a lonely boy enough—not half so happy as many of the little beggars who ran all over the streets in the bazaars, as merry as they were hungry.

Father Stork made a great rattling noise with his bill, and his mate responded rather more quietly.

“That’s a funny noise, O Father of the Red Legs,” said Tsamani. “I can’t make it with my mouth.”

“No,” said Father Stork, “I don’t suppose you can. And you can’t fly, and you can’t catch frogs and fish, and you can’t build a nest or hatch eggs—can you, little Tsamani? But don’t let that worry you, for grown-up men can’t do these things either, and never think how foolish they are.”

“You are very clever, I know,” said little Tsamani, wondering. “And my father has told me you are very good too. Where do you come from, and where have the other storks gone?”

“I must tell you,” replied Father Stork rather pompously, “for it is impossible to know too much about us. We are, perhaps, the most interesting, the most highly honoured of all birds that fly. Our wisdom, our virtue have been the talk of all ages. We have been favoured by every nation, but the followers of Mohammed have always treated us more kindly than the others. You are a Mohammedan, and this house was built by your great-great-grandfather. Since he built it some of my family have always lived in this corner of the roof. We remain here when our children have joined the great procession to the North, and give up our place to one or other of the children only when we have gone on the still greater journey from which there is no return. Some day you will be a man and the friend of our family, so it is right that I should tell you all you want to know.”

“Why do you sit so closely by your nest?” asked the little boy.

“Because all storks are not honest,” replied the Father of the Red Legs. “These sticks that make the nest are collected with great difficulty and hard work. A dishonest stork—and there are such birds, I’m sorry to say—waits for the parent to leave his nest, and then steals his best twigs. So one has to be very careful.”

The little slave-girl came across the roof-top, but she only heard Father Stork clapping his beak—she could not understand anything of the words he spoke. She was not a “True Believer,” only a little girl stolen by slave-raiders from the Western Sudan, and brought across the terrible desert to the slave-market in Marrakesh, where Tsamani’s father had bought her for a little pile of silver Moorish dollars, amounting in value to about twelve English pounds. It was no part of her business to interfere if her little charge stood by the storks’ nest and Father Stork made that rattling noise with his bill. She was content to stroll round the roof, listening to the tinkle of the camels’ bells, looking down at the people in the streets beyond, or at her master’s other slaves who worked in the patio below, and passed the hours singing, shouting or quarrelling as fancy urged them.

“We have been a long time in the world,” began the stork. “Even in the Bible—which is as the Koran to people in the far countries whither my relatives go—there is a reference to us. A prophet, Jeremiah by name, testified to our wisdom as he watched us in Palestine gathering for our yearly flight. ‘Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth his appointed times,’ he said, realising, as he did, that we followed the seasons with never a mistake or approach to hesitation. His people, the Jews, ancestors of the Hudis who live to-day in the Mellah, called us Chassidim, which means the pious ones, because they understood something of our great love for our children. Can you wonder, then, if we storks are proud? Yet storks were not always birds.”

“What were you?” asked the astonished Tsamani.

“The first stork was born a Sultan,” replied the bird solemnly. “He was a merry soul, but had no fear of Allah. He sat at the head of his high staircase and received his wazeers and subjects. One day, to make them ridiculous, he had the stairs greased; and when grave, pious men were about to salute him, they slipped and fell upon those behind, and all were sorely hurt and confused. Among those hurt was a very great saint whose groans were heard in heaven. Then Allah was wrath with the Sultan, who sat back on his throne convulsed with laughter, moving his head so that his long beard fell and rose from his breast. In an instant the beard became a bill—the Sultan was turned to a stork, and in place of his laughter one heard the chatter of his bill. But happily, on account of our high descent, and our great love for our children, we are set above all other birds.”

“Are you as fond of your three white eggs as my mother is fond of me?” asked Tsamani in astonishment.

“Every bit,” replied Father Stork; and Mother Stork repeated the words after him in a lower tone. “They are to us more than all the wealth of Marrakesh, and when, in the fulness of time, the shells open and the three little babies are given to us they will be dearer still. You must wait patiently until their day arrives, and then you will be able to see for yourself.”

“O, little master,” said the slave-girl, “it is time to descend. The sun is hot, and thy lady mother will await thee.”

So Tsamani went down to the hareem of his father’s house, where his mother passed most of her day lying on soft cushions and eating sweets and contradicting his father’s other wives and favourites because she was above them all. And when he went upon the roof with her in the afternoon the voices of the storks were no more to him than they were to her—no more than the click-clack of their long heavy bills. But on the following morning the sound had a meaning for him—to his great delight.

Sometimes Father Stork would relieve Mother Stork in the performance of her duties, for, as he said: “Our love is equal, why then should the service not be divided?” And in the course of a few days there were three little storks in the nest, with down for feathers, and such awkward bodies and ugly heads on them that you and I, not knowing better, would have laughed. Tsamani was rather disappointed when he saw them for the first time, but Father Stork reassured him.

“Look at me,” he said, putting his second leg firmly on the ground, and lifting the heavy bill off his breast. “I am a big, fine bird—nearer four feet long than three. See how beautifully my bright red bill contrasts with the black of my great wing-coverts and the chief quill feathers, and the pure white of the rest of my body. Look at my bright red legs and toes; think what an effective finish they give to me. Two of my children will grow to be like me, as they are males; the third will be like her mother—not quite as large and not so brightly coloured as the others. And all the big feathers will be brown before they are black.”

Each bird in turn would fly from the roof to the pools in the gardens of the Moorish grandees, and would come back with food for the little ones. If the father went, the mother stayed; if the father stayed, the mother went; the nestlings were never left alone by night or day. It was hard work, for the three babies were anxious to grow and to have feathers in place of down, and to be able to fly or flutter to the ponds and feed themselves. “Sometimes,” said Father Stork, “they try too soon, and tumble down into the street and are killed; at other times they must stop half-way because of exhaustion—but then every Moslem picks them up and returns them to their nest, for it would be a terrible misfortune to harm one of us. If some were hurt we should all leave the country.”

“Far away to the north-west,” continued Father Stork, “there is a country called Great Britain, and we used to go there every year; but when men saw us they would say that we were very rare, and would shoot us, without pausing to think that that would make us rarer still. So for fifty years we have not been to those islands, and I do not think we shall ever go there again, though one or two stray birds may alight there, blown out of their course by a gale. Though we are kind to all who treat us well, we can fight when it is necessary to do so. We aim at the head and eyes of those who ill-use us; but against men who carry guns no fighting avails, so we leave them—and now on all the myriad roofs of Great Britain no stork builds its nest.”

“Are the Mohammedans the only people who are good to you, O Father of the Red Legs?” asked Tsamani.

“They are our best friends,” said the Stork; “though in parts of Europe we are welcomed, particularly in Holland, where the people respect us for the love we bear our little ones. They tell the story of a great fire in one of their cities called Delft, where some storks, unable to remove their nestlings, died with them. We thought nothing of it—any storks would have done the same; but the good people of Delft were very impressed and told all the Dutch folk far and wide, and increased our welcome from that day. They even put up cart-wheels on poles for us to build our nests on in districts where the house-roofs have no flat surface that will help us. As a rule, when we go to a town where the inhabitants are of mixed race and religion, we find out where the Mohammedan quarter is, and build there. Uneducated people think it is because we prefer one faith to another; but the truth, of course, is that the Mohammedans respect us, welcome our arrival, regret our departure and never disturb our nests. They even say that we bring good luck to the dwellers in the house we choose for our building.”

“To-day,” said Father Stork, a week or two after the last conversation, “we are taking our young to the marshes. Ask your mother to let you walk in the Sultan’s garden near the great pomegranate orchards by the Spanish gate.”

So Tsamani hurried down to the hareem and the room where his mother lay upon soft cushions, with her gimbri for company; and she gave her permission readily enough, and called the old lady who had charge of the women’s quarter, and bade her go to the main courtyard and summon two men slaves to accompany Tsamani and his little nurse to see that no harm befell them.

So the little party went out to the gardens that lie round the great green-tiled palace of the Sultan, and when they came to the marsh by the orchard of pomegranates Tsamani cried to his little companion: “O Ayesha, let us stay here and play.” He had seen Father and Mother Stork with their family on the marsh. Then the two men slaves sat in the shade of the red-blossomed pomegranate trees, and little Ayesha picked wild flowers, while Tsamani went up to the stork family and saw the little ones that had only just as many feathers as enabled them to fly feebly for short distances. They splashed about in the shallow waters of the marsh, and tried to catch frogs and little fishes; but they were not skilful enough to do so; they could secure nothing better than a few worms, and would have fared ill but for Father and Mother Stork, from whom no frogs or fishes could escape. When the parent birds caught anything they washed it very carefully in the water before giving it to their young to eat, and no trouble seemed too much for them in satisfying the hunger of their little ones. Tsamani watched them while the two slaves slept under the pomegranate trees; and Ayesha, picking more flowers than she could carry, forgot that the sun’s heat was growing greater.

“You must go home soon,” said Father Stork at last, “or you will be hurt by the sun, and you will have to go to the hospital, just as our family has to go when it is sick or ailing.”

“Is there a hospital for storks?” said Tsamani, very much astonished.

“Certainly there is,” replied Father Stork. “It is in the old northern city of Fez, home of pious and learned Moors, and was founded many generations ago by a good Moslem. All sick or wounded storks are brought there and put in the charge of the pious men who conduct the hospital. The ailing ones are doctored, the hungry ones are fed, the dead are buried. It is not for nothing that we serve Moorish cities.”

“Serve Moorish cities,” repeated Tsamani curiously. “How do you do that?”

“We are the scavengers,” said Father Stork. “In the western countries men are employed to remove the rubbish and refuse from the houses, but here and all over the East we take their places. To be sure, we cannot eat the offal, as the vultures do; but we eat a great deal that would spread sickness through any city if left lying on the ground under the hot sun. If there were no gardens and river-shallows here we could live in the city itself, and would thrive there. Very many of my family keep in the city of Fez, although there is a river and they can go out to the marshes if they felt inclined.”

The summer, and the rainy season that takes the place of winter passed, bringing another spring in their train; and still Tsamani spoke to the storks when the weather permitted him to go upon the roof, and learned a great deal of their lives and ways. With the completion of their feathers and the change of colour in their wing quills from brown to black the young birds had gone afield, and were to be seen in the well-watered meadows by the tomb of Sidi Bel Abbas, the saint who wrought so nobly for the poor in his days on earth that he has become the patron of all the beggars in the white-walled city. One sat on a corner of the tomb itself, the others on the flat housetops near the gardens.

“They will go away with this summer,” said Father Stork. “They will join the hundreds of others that came back from the North before the cold weather sets in. Did you not notice how full the gardens became at the beginning of the winter, and how the streets and the market places were full of birds? They do not like the cold weather of Holland and Denmark and Poland, and other countries of Europe, where they go to rear their young. At a given season of the year the desire for home takes them. In spring they seek a milder clime and leave Africa, so that the people of the countries they favour may know that the summer has come.”

“The swallow and the nightingale go with them. Indeed, they go into countries that my family will not visit. Think what those countries have lost. There is France, and there is Britain, for example; no stork builds in either.”

“Do you all come back and go away at the same time from all countries?” asked Tsamani. “And if you do how do you manage it, O Father of the Red Legs?”

“You ask more than I can answer,” replied Father Stork. “I can only tell you that within three days of the start for the North there is not one stork in Morocco that intends to take the journey, and within a week of the time the first stork comes southward from oversea the entire migration is accomplished. It is one of Nature’s secrets that she has chosen to tell to all the birds of passage but has not given to you and your fellow-creatures, and consequently nothing I can say would make the reason clear to you.

“We know when to go and when to return as well as you know when to go to sleep and when to rise. It is bird law. At times the summons comes to us to fly earlier than usual, even before all the eggs are hatched, or the young ones have learned to fly. Then we must forget our love. We must destroy the eggs that are not yet hatched; we must kill the little ones that cannot face the journey. Nothing could be more terrible to us. We would prefer to die for our little ones, but we have no choice but to obey the law. For generations uncounted we have done so, and now it is no more strange to us than the regulation of our day—the morning search for food, the long rest for digestion and contemplation that follows, the evening search for another meal, the following sleep. In a day or two now we shall commence our love-flights, and my wife will fill our nest with eggs once more.”

“What are your love-flights?” said Tsamani.

“Wait a little while, and you will see,” replied Father Stork.

Some two or three mornings later, when Tsamani and Ayesha climbed to the roof-top, Father Stork was no longer to be seen. It was then too late for him to be eating. He should have been standing by the nest, in accordance with custom; but there were no signs of him. Mother Stork sat looking skywards, as though in an ecstasy of happiness.

“I am not lost, Tsamani,” said Father Stork’s voice. It sounded far away up in the sky; but when the boy looked up into the blue his eyes could hardly pierce the dazzling light. He saw nothing for a few minutes, and then Father Stork descended slowly, apparently from the heavens. He was singing a strange new song, such as Tsamani had never heard in all his life before—the song that had lighted so much happiness in the eyes of Mother Stork.

“Listen, Ayesha!” he cried. “Do you hear the white stork’s song.”

“No, no,” laughed stupid Ayesha, showing her beautiful white teeth. “The storks do not sing, my little lord; they chatter with their beaks, but they have no song. The doves in the gardens have more song than storks.” Tsamani said no more; he was afraid to let the girl know that he could hear things she did not dream about.

“Quite right, Tsamani,” said Father Stork, gliding easily and gracefully through the air to the roof’s edge. “To Ayesha there is nothing to be heard but the clattering of my mandibles. To my wife it is a beautiful love-song. She thinks I brought it down from heaven, for I soared out of her sight so high that even to my keen eyes Marrakesh was no more than a dull speck on the ground. Now you shall see my lower love-flight.” So saying, he sprang into the air, and, reaching a point as far from the roof as the roof was from the ground, went through a series of movements that were like those of a great yacht with all her sails set to catch a favouring wind. Tsamani never saw his wings flap, never saw him in any difficulty to turn in an exact angle at a given point; the motion was smooth, easy, graceful, and it thrilled Mother Stork with joy.

“We are great lovers,” said Father Stork, when he had settled; “so well known that all the lovesick youths of Moorish cities ask us to give their messages to the well-beloved. They stand in the white street below and sing to us.”

Once again Mother Stork sat on three eggs, once again Father Stork stood on one leg by the nest-side, his beak upon his breast, and helped in all love and loyalty to fetch the food when the babies came. The weeks hurried towards the summer, the birds were nearly fledged, and one morning when they were feeding in the gardens Father Stork came back hurriedly with another of his tribe. They talked vigorously upon the roof-top and then the newcomer went his way, leaving Father Stork angry and disturbed.

“What is the matter?” asked Tsamani uneasily. He felt sure that trouble was brewing, that some disaster was at hand.

“Matter enough!” said Father Stork gravely. “My companion came to give me and my wife notice that we must join in battle with the ravens on the fourth day from now.”

“Why are you ill friends?” asked the boy.

“That is a secret of stork and raven life that I cannot attempt to explain,” replied Father Stork. “We must fight them and prevail, or must leave this city. The battle will be a few miles from the Dukala Gate. I think we shall win and return. You will soon know.”

All through the third day Tsamani watched and waited, seeing no grown stork on roof or in street, straining eyes and ears in vain. Even the townsfolk were alarmed, and crowded the Mosques, and prayed devoutly.[3] On the following morning he rose when the Mueddin called for the first prayer, and the guardian of the hareem allowed him to pass the door and to climb the steep steps to the roof. He saw the sun come up from the East and he heard the camels’ bells as the caravan moved out to cross the desert, carrying salt, that it might return with slaves. He was listening to the earliest notes of stock-doves in the gardens, when with swift flight a stork swept over the Dukala Gate. He was one of the younger birds of that year’s brood.

“We have won!” he cried. “We have won! The ravens are in full flight. The storks will return to Marrakesh; and my parents sent me to bid you good-bye.”

“Are they well and safe?” cried Tsamani, sorely afraid, for he was old enough to know that he had no other friends.

“They live,” replied the young stork, “but are sorely wounded, and are flying northward, slowly and carefully, to the City of the Sickle, the place of the hospital, where their wounds may be healed. I must return to them. Haply, we may all come back again.”

“How the young stork chatters!” said Ayesha sleepily.

But Tsamani said no word as he went down the narrow stairs, for he felt that he was alone in the world.

[3]

This incident occurred when I was in Southern Morocco where some reliable observers told me that fights between the storks and ravens are of almost annual occurrence.

THE WILD BOAR

He trotted along happily enough through the great open spaces of the Argan Forest,[4] parts well-nigh unknown to men. All around him the giant Argan trees defied the sun. Stray goats climbed their broad branches to eat the fruit, the tiny asphodel flowered in their shade, and the stock-doves cooed.

Little Tusker knew the forest better in darkness than by morning light, for the herd rested during the heat, and the grown up ones fed at night; but they often drank by day in that secluded place, and would seek the pools by the tiny river where trout flashed and otters fished and kingfishers shone in the bright sun. It was pleasant to go down to the pool in the middle of the hot night and listen to the nightingales in the woods around. By day the numbers of the herd stood in the way of complete enjoyment, for the strong ones got to the water first and the weakest had to wait.

“Why do we all go together like this?” asked little Tusker.

“For safety,” replied the mother, who had no tusks and was naturally of a timid, shrinking disposition. “There are hyænas and other wild things in the forest. We might be attacked if we went by ourselves. You will remain with the herd until you are four or five years old, and then you will do as your father has done, and will live by yourself, for your tusks will have grown until you can protect yourself against anything but the Man.”

“What is the Man?” he asked.

“He is the enemy who never tires,” answered his mother. “He has two legs instead of four, he has no tusks, he does not know the forest as we know it, but he carries death with him, and the boar he follows is doomed.”

All this was quite unintelligible to little Tusker, and the first few years of his life brought him no reminder of the warning. He travelled with the herd, but as soon as he was able to look after himself his mother’s affection came to an end, and she would push him out of her way on the feeding grounds, as readily as though he had been a stranger. The herd went many miles in search of food, and did most of their travelling and eating by night, when only the jackals and hyænas made a noise in the forest. They rooted for sweet potatoes and wild turnips, tearing up great patches of ground, and they hunted for the young maize at the proper season of the year, ravaging the lands of the farmers to get the grain.

Luckily for them the farmers, being Moors, were without guns and full of superstition. They would not sit up at night to wait for the marauders, and so the herd grew fat. Every season saw some of the full-grown boars leave to live their solitary life, and in the early winter sows would go away for some months and bring their litter back with them later on.

On his nightly rambles little Tusker often met the porcupine who also fed after dark, and was quite harmless in spite of his formidable bristles. He heard the jackals crying and was amused; he saw the shining eyes of the hyæna and was afraid. Slowly he learned all the lessons that a boar must know, and the forest yielded him some of her many secrets.

There was no real winter there. The forest enjoys almost perennial summer, but there is a rainy season when the days are cooler than at other times. Then the best lairs are under the Argan trees; when the greatest heat is on the land, the moist sandy places high up above the valley are best. Again, in the brief days of tempest the hollows and gorges are most sought for, since the wind cannot reach them.

Young Tusker learned to know how and when the weather would change. He knew if any stranger were coming down the wind ever so far away. The meaning of the cries that the herd uttered, the signs that showed if water was near, and the significance of the footmarks that crossed the forest in all directions; he learned all these things.

As he grew up, sleeping under the sun and feeding under the stars, finding food plentiful and life pleasant, Tusker gradually ceased to be little. His shaggy skin became covered with bristles, a bristly ridge covered his spine; his heavy head grew larger and heavier, and the milk-white tusks developed until the lower ones took the upward curve that made them formidable. He could fight now with his fellows, but little harm was done, for all boars learn to receive their neighbour’s tusk-thrusts on their own tusks or on the shoulders, where the hard, coarse skin is not readily torn.

With consciousness of strength came the desire to travel, and when Tusker found any track that moved him to curiosity, he would leave the herd to follow it. One night, when he was rather more than three years old, he saw the mark of a boar, the track of a large hoof, and he followed it industriously, leaving the herd far behind. The big hoof-prints fascinated him, he tracked them all through the night, and through the next night, too. Then, under an Argan tree, he found the stranger in his lair.

“What are you doing here?” said Tusker rather rudely.

“I am a recluse from the mountains,” said the stranger. “I have left family, friends and home, that I may live my life alone, and there is good feeding ground about here. I am three years’ old, and it is time to lead the solitary life.”

He spoke at length of the joys of the single state in which he lived all the year save for the brief period beginning with November, when he drove some charming young lady pig from the nearest herd to be his companion for a few weeks. He would tend her with all the care and love and affection of which a boar is capable, but leave her to rear the young and join the herd again when her litter was strong enough.

WILD BOAR [Photo by Ottomar Anchutz, Berlin]

Thereafter Tusker made his home under an Argan tree, separated from the rest of the forest by a wide clearing where wild thyme and toad flax and dwarf palm grew, and creeping plants climbed over the double-thorn bushes. During the fine weather he never went out by daylight unless it was to drink, but when the rains came he would eat by day. He was so constituted that one visit to the pools would suffice him for two or even three days; but the visit was a prolonged one, accompanied by endless precautions, for since he had become solitary he had become more nervous than ever, and when he ate or drank he would make sudden pauses to make sure that nobody was about. He relied more upon hearing than sight. The slightest unaccustomed sound when he was coming to the pool would send him grunting into the thicket, but if all was well he would permit himself to enjoy a very lively time. First, he would drink deeply, and then he would wallow in the mud for two or three minutes to ease the irritation of his skin.

The forest was very quiet at night in spite of hungry jackals and stray hyænas, and Tusker made very little noise as he travelled to his feeding grounds, always working against the wind. There were a few duars, or native villages, in the forest, and one or two large farmhouses built on the sun-dried clay called tapia that glows so white under the light of the moon. Tusker avoided farm and village but he could not leave the crops alone, and for the chance of a meal of young maize he was content to go where no other food would have taken him.

His keener perceptions taught him now that there was a great, inexplicable danger in the forest—something his mother had spoken about when he first joined the herd by her side; and, though he had forgotten the details, the sense of fear was never really absent from him, and it was strengthened by one or two events that took place in his first solitary year.

One night he met the recluse from his mountains looking as he had never seen pig look before. His coarse hair was matted with perspiration, he breathed heavily, his little eyes were full of the terror that comes to the hunted beast.

“I must eat a little,” said the recluse hoarsely, “my strength has almost gone,” and so saying he fell to and found a number of Argan nuts which he ate eagerly, though he paused to sniff the breeze every moment and ate head to wind. Tusker was astonished and uneasy.

“What’s the matter?” he said, when both had eaten.

“The Hunter of the Forest has been on my track these three days,” said the boar of the mountains. “I cannot shake him off, and unless I can reach the hills where he will not follow, I must die. The hills are two day’s journey and I am tired already. Twice I have broken through the pack.”

“The pack? What is that?” said Tusker curiously.

“There are twenty or more of them,” replied the mountain boar. “Dogs of mixed breed, some large, some small, all savage. With them come the stalkers, and in the track of the stalkers comes the hunter, and when he reaches me I must die. I have tried every trick known to me, you will learn in your time what they are, but now I am not sure if I shall get to the hills. I must seek a lair now and sleep. Perhaps this good food and a quiet rest will restore my strength.” He shambled off into the darkness, leaving Tusker full of terror, so fearful indeed that he would not go back to his old home, but wandered for some hours in the darkest part of the forest.

Only in the spring-time did he become quite courageous, but with the coming of April every living thing in the forest took heart of grace; even the stock-doves were ready to fight in defence of nest and young. Tusker felt the full joy of life too in November, when he had fought with several brother boars for the sake of a sow who summed up for him all his understanding of grace and beauty. He drove her from the herd and followed her for days when her other lovers were routed, he pursuing and she retreating all through the wild places of the forest.

Even the Hunter laid down his rifle for a brief season knowing that should he find boar and sow together, the boar would send the sow to make her escape, and would stand and fight to the death to give his beloved time to get away. When the season of love and war had passed Tusker left his companion to raise her litter and shift for herself; while, all his love forgotten, he resumed his solitary life and his accustomed nervousness.

Seven long years passed in the forest, and then in the third year of his seclusion, when he was in splendid condition, and provided with tusks that made him respected by all his fellows, the Hunter of the Forest found his tracks. All the forest paths had tracks of boars, old and new, some of small animals, some of large, and every track was plain as print to the Hunter. When he first caught sight of Tusker’s footmarks, he jumped off his horse.

“A great beast, Mohammed,” he said to the wiry, muscular Moor who followed him; “leans to the left when he walks, and must have some defect in his right hind hoof, for it makes the faintest mark of the four, he goes so lightly on it.” Then he made a few measurements and recorded them, and noted the exact position of the spot, and rode home very happy indeed, for his eyes, trained to the forest for nearly forty years, told him he was on the track of a very fine boar.

That night Tusker fed upon the green maize in the fields of a neighbouring farmer, returning before daybreak to his lair, where he slept until a slight rustle in the bushes near at hand startled him to wakefulness. A moment later, and a little lean mongrel dog showed at the entrance to his home.

“Come out and fight,” said the little lean mongrel dog showing his white teeth.

“Show me something worth fighting,” replied Tusker, showing his own terrible weapons, “and I’ll talk to you.”

“O Father of Tusks,” replied the little mongrel, “wait until I summon my twenty-three brethren,” and then he gave the call that summons the pack and gladdens the huntsman’s heart. Tusker, hearing answering yelps near and far, knew in a moment that the dogs had been hunting for him with their heads to the wind, so that he could not scent them, and realised that he was face to face with the most serious trouble of his life. He dashed out at once, before the pack had found time to gather round him, and made off as hard as he could through the forest.

Tusker led the pack through the most difficult country. He ran at double thorn bushes and passed right through them; the little dogs of the pack followed on his heels, and the big ones kept well on either side of the cover. And while he used his legs Tusker used his brain as well. “The hunter cannot keep up with us,” he said to himself, “if I turn to bay I’ll hurt a few of these fellows, and while he attends to them I’ll get further off.”

Ten minutes later, he slowed down and allowed the foremost among the pack to reach him. Most were scratched and torn by the thorns that could not penetrate Tusker’s hide, but they were game, and the first comers flung themselves upon him. Tusker enjoyed the next minute or two, bitten and worried though he was, and when he broke through the pack and started off again his tusks, that had been white, were red, almost as red as his angry little eyes, Three dogs were gasping on the ground, one dying and the other two so badly ripped that had they been in an air less pure they must have died before nightfall.

The Hunter came up before the sound of the pursuit had quite rolled away, examined each dog quickly but carefully, gave a surgical needle, some thread and a little bottle to one of the trackers, and started off with the rest of the company. The tracker washed and sewed the wounds of the two living dogs, made them as comfortable as he could and left them for one of the servants to bring home. As they had not been fed for four and twenty hours he knew they would recover from their wounds.

Meanwhile Tusker rumbled through a scrub so dense and prickly that, by taking a sudden turn in a thicket, he was able to let the pack pass him. Quick as thought he doubled on his own tracks a little way, then turned sharp to the right avoiding the huntsman and his party, and made straight for a little river. He paused on the brink and drank, but did not dare to wallow or cover his hot head with the cool mud, for he heard in the distance the cry of the hounds at fault and the voice of the huntsman cheering them to find the line again. He forded the river, landing some distance lower down on the opposite bank, and travelled a few hundred yards into the forest.

“Safe at last,” said Tusker, and began to hunt for a lair, going backwards and forwards, sometimes travelling in a circle, and testing the softness of the ground with his snout. At last he found a soft sheltered thicket, and rested from his labours, resolving to wallow by the river at nightfall.

The Hunter was puzzled while his pack endeavoured in vain to find the line. The trackers went on to where the scrub became thin, and tracks could show, but there were no fresh marks to guide them. Then the Hunter cast back, guessing shrewdly that Tusker had doubled on his own line; but the ground gave him no help, and the luncheon hour found the party still perplexed.

“If he went to the north,” said the Hunter, “we may not find his track for weeks. If he went in any other direction he must cross the river so we will work the banks.” And when the simple meal was over the Hunter led his trackers to the water, and they studied every mark on the bank. Several times the trackers thought they had found their quarry, for they met perfectly fresh prints among others that were any age from a day to a week, but the Hunter’s eye was looking for the marks of a certain set of hoofs, of which the right hind one made the least mark, while the balance was ever on the left side, and the distances were as recorded in his notes.

Some time about four o’clock the Hunter found the track, and forded the river; and, just before sunset, saw where it led to the forest. He summoned his admiring trackers, but forebore to proceed. “The day after to-morrow at daybreak,” was all he said, and then the party made its way home in the fast failing light, by no means dissatisfied with the day’s work.

On that night Tusker wallowed long and comfortably, and uprooted a fine lot of wild radishes and turnips. His new lair was comfortable and he was no worse for his adventure, but he was ill-pleased on the morning of the second day when without word or warning a mongrel, whose face seemed familiar, showed at the entrance to his lair and called on him to fight.

Quick as thought, without word of parley Tusker rushed out and sought the impenetrable covers that had helped him before. He crossed the river and gained on his pursuers.

In a clearing amid the thickets he came suddenly upon a herd that scattered in all directions as he gave word of the following pack.

Once more dogs were at fault, but the Hunter was not. Within an hour after, careful scrutiny of a score of tracks, he had picked out that of a boar that ran with a list to the left, and trod lightly on its right hind hoof, and moved at a certain recorded pace with certain recorded distances between the hoofs.

Within two hours the hounds were closing in on Tusker whose way to comparative safety lay over a large expanse of forest that was more or less open. Beyond that part the thicket was the worst in the forest, and the Hunter knew that the chances would be with the boar if he could reach that stronghold. When Tusker heard the pack bearing down upon him, he realised that the Hunter was his master, and that only good luck could save him now. He thought of the solitary pig from the mountains and wondered if he looked like him in the hour of his distress.

“I’ll try again,” said Tusker to himself, as he found the dogs gaining on him in the more open country. “The Hunter may be far behind,” and then he set his fore-legs firmly on the ground and faced the furious howling pack, using his terrible tusks with all the force he could put behind them.

A few moments later he saw the Hunter emerging from the bush, and broke through again with the dogs, cut and wounded, upon his heels, encouraged by their master’s voice.

He could not go far now. Once again he turned and faced his adversaries, forgetting everything now in his rage and conscious only of a lust for blood.

Suddenly there was a shrill whistle, and before it ceased to echo, the pack opened to the right and left, leaving Tusker alone. He looked up uncertain what to do, saw the Hunter standing sixty or seventy yards away from him with a shining barrel at his shoulder, felt a sudden violent shock, heard as in the far distance a sharp strange sound, knew that the dogs were upon him again, but could not feel their teeth or the ground he was lying on.

Another whistle, the dogs parted again, the Hunter came up knife in hand, his trackers following.

“No need,” he said, thrusting the shining steel into its case. “The bullet went to the heart. A splendid fellow.”

[4]

The Argan Forest is in Southern Morocco, and takes its name from the Argan, a species of olive tree.

THE STORY OF A SLAVE

In the early days Marzuk saw life from a secure position on his mother’s back. So soon as morning dawned, the pair would leave their mud hut beyond the northern gate of Timbuctoo, and seek the market, there to spread out and arrange such produce as had been collected overnight for the day’s sale.

In their season Aminah, the mother of Marzuk, sold the three fruits we have never seen in our western world, the rich karita or butter fruit, the satisfying nata which yields a sort of sweet flour in pods, and the cheese fruit, upon which a man may dine and not go hungry.

Marzuk’s mother was a black woman from below the Niger, in the Soudan, and very ugly to the eyes of all save her little boy. But her white loin cloths and shifts were cleaner than those of most of her neighbours, and worn with some nicety.

She wore her hair in three rolls on the top of her head, supported by a white fillet about her brows, and she was so industrious and cheery that the day’s end seldom found any of her market stock unsold, and generally saw quite an imposing heap of cowries in the old calabash that was kept for use as a till. Money was unknown.

So Marzuk, well-fed, grew strong and straight and comely, learning to help his mother in her work, and to play truant from his duties and adventure alone into Timbuctoo itself, and to the Niger banks beyond. When he returned Aminah would beat him soundly, and cry over him in mother fashion, while painting for him luridly the dangers of the road.

She spoke with rolling eyes and bated breath of the fierce Touaregs, the brigands from the Sahara, who went through the streets of Timbuctoo veiled against the glare of the African sun; of the hippopotami by the Niger’s bank that were ever lying in wait to make meals of naughty boys; of the treacherous and pathless sand-dunes to the north, and of hungry monkeys chattering in the trees—monkeys that were really little children changed from their natural shape for disobedience to parents. But neither stripes nor warnings could keep Marzuk’s feet from straying.

The grass lands near the river, where the sheep pastured, were Marzuk’s favourite resort, because of the white ospreys that dwelt there. These birds loved to follow the sheep from place to place, taking no notice of shepherds or farmers, but ever intent upon the actions of their four-footed friends.

Yet the boy kept well out of the way of all Touaregs, the veiled men of the desert of whom his mother had spoken. He watched them from a safe distance when they roamed through the city, spear in hand, ready and willing to quarrel with any native who should cross their path.

They wore a head-dress that covered their fore-heads and helped to shade their eyes, and a veil that shrouded the lower part of the face and kept the mouth free from sand.

Their true home was the desert, where they reared vast flocks on scanty pasture, but they held the natives of Timbuctoo in no respect, and would stalk through the market-place, spear at the ready and sword beside them, and call the men of the city “Sand-eaters,” because they went with mouths and nostrils uncovered. On their side the natives spoke of the Touaregs as the “Abandoned of God,” and would have kept them from the city altogether, had their strength been equal to their will.

Day by day camel caravans reached Timbuctoo, coming across the desert from Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia. Marzuk’s one interest in his home district was connected with these caravans.

Twice a year, in midwinter and midsummer, the camels would arrive in huge convoys. There would be many hundreds of the unhandy supercilious beasts there at one time, enjoying their longed-for rest, and making hearty meals on the more succulent growths of the dwarf forest.

The camel-drivers themselves, gaunt, hard-lived men, with faces like birds of prey, had many adventurous tales to tell, and Marzuk was a very ready listener. He heard how the veiled thieves of the desert held up whole caravans and taxed them, helping themselves moderately if unopposed, but quite ready for wholesale killing if resisted in any way. He heard, too, of the great salt country, visited by all caravans coming from Morocco.

“It is a wonderful place,” said Hadj Abdullah the camel-driver, on a day when he arrived at Timbuctoo after six months’ absence, “and Allah has set it in the midst of the desert where no unbeliever may see it. The houses are fashioned out of salt, and so is the mosque, there are camel-skins over all the buildings, and the people live on their salt.”

“Oh, my master, do they eat it?” asked Marzuk.

“Silence, little empty head,” said Aminah, his mother, who listened beside him. And the camel-driver continued:—

“Twice a year we go there, carrying away the white salt, which is the best, and the red-veined if the other supply has failed. In return we leave dates and corn and cotton, and so these people live.

“So terrible is the glare of the salt,” added the camel-driver, “that if we have women or children, we leave them in the oases, a day’s journey from the city.”

Besides the precious salt of El Djouf, which was stamped in Timbuctoo and sent down the Niger to districts where it was worth its weight in gold, the caravans brought indigo, blue cotton and white, mirrors for the women, calico, sugar, tea and coffee, and white paper for the Marabouts. On their journey home they were supposed to take gold dust and ivory, the long feathers of the wild ostrich and undressed leather. But the head of the caravan knew of a commodity more valuable than these, and some of the panniers that had carried salt to Timbuctoo had living freight on the way back.

Hadj Abdullah employed agents in the city, and well he knew how to arrange such business as he had, of whatever kind it might be, without exciting the suspicion of the natives.

The camels slowly recovered their strength, the produce of Hadj Abdullah’s great caravan had been disposed of profitably by barter, and the goods he had received in exchange would afford plenty of work for his beasts.

One morning the Moor stopped before the calabashes where Aminah’s stores were placed. Marzuk was by his mother’s side for once. Already in his thirteenth year, he looked strong, healthy and intelligent. Hadj Abdullah noted these things, whilst seeming to examine Aminah’s little store.

“Oh, my mother,” he said with grave courtesy, “have you any cheese-fruit, or has all gone for the year?”

“I fear it has been eaten, my lord,” replied the black woman respectfully.

“The pity,” he replied. “For a plentiful supply such as my house (family) desires, I would give a whole piece of fine blue cloth—the last that is left me. Perhaps some fruit remains yet in the plantations by the river. Can the boy go seek it?”

“I will send him, my lord,” replied Aminah, delighted beyond measure at the idea of getting a piece of the cloth that cowries could not buy.

“He must be back before the second day at sunrise,” said the Moor, and resumed his walk.

So Marzuk set off at daybreak on the following morning with many warnings of the ill that would befall if his return were delayed. He passed through the town, leaving it by the southern gate before anybody but the guard was awake, and was soon knee-deep in the meadows that the Niger keeps ever green.

He tramped along merrily enough, quite unconscious that two Arabs had followed him from the huts beyond the southern wall. The ospreys were everywhere—Marzuk saw nothing but the white birds, and the shining river, and the butterflies, blue and gold, that fluttered over the meadows.

On a sudden he heard footsteps, and saw the Arabs hurrying in his direction. He stood to see them pass, and as they reached him they turned suddenly and flung themselves upon him. There was no struggle, only the white birds heard one choked cry of terror, and some few rose from the meadow to the comparative safety of a neighbouring tree.

His captors carefully gagged Marzuk, and bound legs and arms tightly with cords of palmetto, then he was rolled in sacking and carried back to a hut. When the Arabs returned to the city they carried what seemed to be a bale of raw cotton slung on a pole between them, and they made unchallenged way to the caravan quarter, beyond the city’s northern gate.

Within the vast enclosure of thorn and cactus that inclosed the caravanserai only the last great bales of merchandise remained for the camels, and among these Marzuk was left to pant for breath in an atmosphere that would have stifled any but a negro. Towards the afternoon, when he had seen his latest acquisition safely stored, Hadj Abdullah sought the market-place by the mosque.

“Oh, mother,” said he to Aminah, “has the lad returned with the cheese-fruit?”

“No, my master,” she replied angrily. “I am cursed in the boy. He goes on errands and returns when he likes.”

“I am sorry, mother,” replied Hadj Abdullah, “for by Allah’s grace to-morrow’s sunrise will see us on the road again.”

From the mosques of the city the Mueddin called for the prayer said by devout Moslems at the hour of the false dawn. On walls and battlements the early wakened doves were fluttering sleepily, the guards at the gates still slept, the life of the city had not stirred. But beyond the caravan quarter the camels and mules of Hadj Abdullah were moving out slowly in single file.

There were seventy or eighty camels in all and ten mules, some of which carried Arab women who sat in the comfort born of habit, smoking pipes of the native tobacco.

First on the road were six camels, each carrying two children in what had been salt-panniers.

Marzuk, whose thongs had been loosened, and whose thirst had been assuaged, was but one of the twelve whom Hadj Abdullah had bought secretly or stolen, and, beyond the men engaged by him and the natives he had bribed, none knew aught of the camel’s freight.

Frightened as never in his life before, bruised and sickened by the camel’s irregular stride, his flesh scarred and his bones aching from the pressure of the raw hide thongs that had bound his limbs, faint for lack of food, and with nerves strained almost to breaking point, Marzuk was never in doubt about what had befallen him. He had been captured to be sold as a slave.

From the resting-place of the caravan the last camel had started on the road to Morocco, across eight hundred miles of desert, steering a north-north-westerly course over a track marked by the skeletons of men and beasts that had fallen by the way.

In her mud hut Aminah, never suspecting the truth, thought angrily and fearfully of the absent boy, and prayed that he might safely escape the hippopotami coming for their nightly prowl along the river banks.

As day succeeded day, other caravans arrived from the desert, but never a sign of the lad from the riverside came to relieve a mind grown weary now from anxiety and self-reproach. Weeks passed, and months, until Aminah knew that her prayers had failed to prevent evil spirits sacrificing her boy to the wild beasts of the river. And then she grew old suddenly, and within the year her place in the market was vacant.

Hadj Abdullah’s caravan made slow progress. The dwarf forest left behind, the sand waves of the Sahara stretched out before them, and in traversing this dry and burning sea the caravan endured days and weeks of travelling that taxed men and beasts to the uttermost.

Once a day, at sunset, the caravan halted, and then Marzuk and his eleven companions were taken from their panniers and fed. The Hadj feared to travel by starlight, save when forced to it by anticipation of an attack by the veiled brigands of the desert, lest the track should be missed.

Marzuk’s companion, a girl younger than himself, proved unable to endure the camel’s irregular stride, the scanty food, and the blinding sunlight. Before they had been two weeks on the road she could not eat. One morning she broke out into a fit of screaming that passed gradually into moans, and then stopped abruptly. In the evening, when the baskets were lowered, Hadj Abdullah was summoned in haste, but he could do no more than curse the man who had sold the child to him for half a bar of salt, and had sworn that she was sound and fit for the caravan journey. A little hole was scooped out in the sand; the tally of the caravan had been reduced by one. Next morning the burdens were rearranged, and Marzuk was carried in a basket with another lad, the camel that had carried him being requisitioned to carry one of the drivers who had fallen sick.

For many years the hardships of the journey remained fresh and vivid in Marzuk’s memory. Oases were long days apart, the brackish water was always hot and never plentiful, they saw no living things unless a viper ran across their path, or a few desert antelopes showed for a moment on the horizon. Sometimes, when the eyes ached behind tight-closed lids from the cruel glare of sky and sand, Marzuk would wake with a start at his companion’s cry—“See, Marzuk! they are taking us home again”. Then they saw Timbuctoo spread before them, the mosques clearly to be distinguished, the tall palm trees and clay-built houses seemingly but a few miles away. The camels would raise their heads and lengthen their stride. But the visionary city would come no nearer, and gradually it would fade before their longing eyes—the mirage that had set it down amid the sands had vanished into aching sun-scorched space.

Weeks passed slowly, so slowly that Marzuk’s pannier mate, a weakling at best, succumbed to the trials of the road, and was left to rest under a little mound of sand that the first wind would level. Marzuk, too, began to lose strength, and passed long hours in a state of semi-consciousness, but he had been reared well and generously, and before he had time to break down altogether, the oasis of Tindouf was reached.

The back of the weary journey was broken. Thereafter oases were more frequent, the caravan passed great weekly markets, the country of the Touaregs was quite left behind, and the natives met were men of fair skin, though sunburnt. The Atlas Mountains appeared on the eastern horizon, filling Marzuk with brief terror, for he had never seen snow, or imagined hills like those that filled the far distance. To the little black boy from Timbuctoo, the great mountain range appeared as the awesome wall of a new world, but his curiosity helped him to pluck up spirit and prepare to face whatever the future might have in store. The Draa country was left behind, the Sus country reached and passed, Tarudant being seen hull down on the western horizon, like a ship far out at sea; and one fine morning, when rosy light peeping over the snow-filled caverns of the higher Atlas found the caravan already upon the road, the Moors raised their voices and praised a saint whose name the lad had never heard.

Marzuk rubbed sleepy eyes and saw in the plains a long way before them a great city in a forest of palm. Countless minarets glittered in the early light, the sun lighted some river of size and importance.

“Oh, my master!” cried Marzuk to the Moor who led a camel by his side, “is that a real city?”

“Truly,” was the grave reply, “it is Marrakesh[5] itself.”

II.

The long file of camels came at last to rest outside the Dukala gate and Hadj Abdullah placed his praying carpet on the ground, turned towards Mecca and returned thanks. No brigand had claimed dues of his merchandise, and out of the twelve children he had bought or stolen eight remained alive—a higher average than most travellers could record.

Marzuk, used from early days to fend for himself, with no special ties, and a feeling of confidence in his own capacities that none but a Soudanee would have felt under similar circumstances, gazed about him in deep wonderment. Before him stretched a city far exceeding Timbuctoo in area and importance, a place surrounded by a wall that seemed without end; he saw more palms in one direction than his native place boasted on all sides together, and the minarets of countless mosques standing slender and erect as the palms themselves.

That night they slept within Morocco City, in a great fandak indescribably filthy. The tired mules were brought in with the slaves, the camels remaining in the outer market in charge of their owner. Hadj Abdullah hired his beasts in Morocco City, paying a sum equivalent to two pounds a head for the journey out and home. In the fandak he addressed a brief warning to the children. They would have three days’ rest and all the food they could eat, and on the evening of the third day they would be sold. Let them do their best and all would be well with them, if they were rebellious—he closed his mouth abruptly, but his silence was significant enough.

Left in charge of the keeper of the fandak, the children lay at their ease in the reeking straw, and gave their three days to eating and drinking and singing odds and ends of songs they had heard at home. No sound of the city reached them, save at the hours of prayer, when from every minaret the faithful were called to acknowledge the Unity of Allah. On the afternoon of the third day they were taken to the baths by a strange man, and each child was arrayed in clean white linen garments, supplemented in the case of the girls by kerchiefs of many colours.

“Follow me, O slaves,” said the Moor, when they were all ready to return. He led them unresisting through the heart of the city, through the bazaars with their roofs of palm branches and box-like shops, past the arcades of the workers in brass and linen and leather and sweatmeats, to a corner where the passage ended in a heavily barred gate.

The gatekeeper drew the bolts, and showed through the open door a bare circular market-place with a broken and dilapidated arcade stretching down the centre of it, and booths all round the walls. Marzuk cast one desperate look round, as a bird at the door of a cage, but the fear of Hadj Abdullah was upon him. In another moment they had been shepherded through the gate-way and commanded to stand still while their guardian went to a Moorish official, who sat cross-legged on a carpet, and gave the numbers and description of the party.

“Five boys, three girls, Timbuctoo,” repeated the official, and wrote the details laboriously on a slip of paper with a bamboo pen.

“Follow,” commanded the Moor, and the children marched obediently to one of the huts or booths built out from the wall like covered pens.

“Go within, and stay there until the market is opened. Let none stir beyond the entrance,” he said curtly, and seeing them safely housed, went off.

Marzuk left his companions whose terror annoyed him, and going to the mouth of the pen looked out at the scene.

He saw at once that he and his little party were not alone in the slave-market. Nearly a dozen of the other pens were tenanted for the most part by adults, who could be heard chattering or singing happily enough, and in one pen, at least, quarelling violently. Certainly, they were in no way cast down, and their indifference helped to bring further confidence to Marzuk, who beckoned the most distressed of the party—a little nine-year-old girl—to come to his side and look out.

It was the eve of a great sale. The “Court Elevated by Allah” was about to leave the southern capital for the North; the great Wazeers would be seeking to make the last changes in, or additions to, their harems and households before leaving home. On this account Hadj Abdullah had not kept the slaves longer to fatten them, preferring to take the prices that would rule at a big sale for inferior goods, than what he would get for better material when the city was half empty.

The sun was beginning to decline, and a faint freshness was coming into the sultry air. The last batch of slaves had been entered; a group of auctioneers surrounded the Government official in charge of the market, and speculated hopefully upon the prices that would rule. The keeper of the gate flung it back, and Marzuk saw the arrival of the earliest buyers.

They came in singly for the most part—Moors whose wealth was indicated by their portly presence, and by their outer robes of white and blue cloth woven in the north of England. They walked into the market-place and sat down at their ease on the ground against the unoccupied pens, or the long arcade that bisected the market-circle. Some were very old men with white beards, and a few were of forbidding appearance; but most were fat and well-favoured, True Believers to whom life came easily.

The last buyer had arrived. There must have been thirty or forty in all, and Marzuk knew that the sale was about to begin. A very old slave walked over the dusty ground, with a goatskin watering-can, and sprinkled it liberally. The dilal (auctioneer) who had brought them to the pen came up hurriedly, counted them with raised fore-finger as though they had been sheep, and told them to be ready to follow him, using the native tongue of Guinea, since Marzuk alone of the little company had as much as a smattering of Arabic.

His instructions understood, the auctioneer hurried away to the centre of the market-place, where the other dilals surrounded their chief. He looked at the sun as though to tell the hour; it was sinking behind the saint’s tomb on the edge of the market-wall. He gave a signal; the selling brethren formed themselves into a line, with their chief in the centre. Then the venerable leader lifted up his voice and prayed. He praised Allah; dilals and buyers said “Amen”. He cursed Satan; the company reiterated the curse. He employed the blessing of Sidi bel-Abbas, the city’s patron saint, friend of sellers and buyers. Might he bless the market, the dilals and the patrons. Might he send prosperity to one and all. The dilals stood with closed eyes and extended hands and said “Amen.”

Their chief’s prayer came to an end. Quickly as possible the dilals hurried to the pens they presided over.

“Come forward, all,” cried the one in charge of Marzuk’s pen, and the frightened children needed no second bidding.

“Do as you see the others doing,” said the dilal, as, with deft fingers, he rearranged the shawls of the girls and set the boy’s robes straight.

Marzuk seized his little girl friend by the hand; she took the hand of another girl; the dilal stood in the centre of the line of children, four on either side of him. Meanwhile, the other auctioneers had arranged their slaves in much the same way, and the companies stepped forward to walk slowly round the market.

They moved round the circle of the market, and the dilals called loudly upon intending buyers.

“O, Abdel Karim,” cried a burly Moor, as Marzuk’s dilal passed him for the first time, “let me see the lad who has your right hand.”

Marzuk was pushed forward. Coarsely, rather than unkindly, the Moor laid his fat hands upon the boy, felt his muscles, opened his mouth to note the state of his teeth, and asked a dozen questions that the boy’s Arabic could not have compassed had he been attending. But it happened that at the moment when he was thrust into the old man’s arms Marzuk looked up, just as a company of white ospreys swept high over the market, and in a moment he saw the Niger rising before him, and the scented fields he knew so well. Brave though he was, his eyes were flooded, and the words could not pass his throat.

“Newly arrived from the South,” admitted the dilal rather impatiently, in explanation of what he feared would be one of the outbursts that the market saw so often; “but he is strong and well, and knows a few words.”

“Forty dollars, Salesman,” said the Moor briefly; “let me see the girl.”

Marzuk’s little companion was pushed forward and, too frightened to speak, kissed the old man’s hand. He handled her with an approach to gentleness, asking the auctioneer all he wanted to know.

“Forty dollars also,” he said, when the last word was spoken.

Forthwith the dilal shifted the children for whom no bid had been yet made from the right to the left hand, and took the first vacant place in the line of auctioneers and slaves, proclaiming with a loud voice: “For the boy and the girl, forty dollars each”.

A quarter of an hour passed, while the salesman marched round and round with his charges, and in that brief period two smaller children passed from the left to the right hand side of the dilal. They were the remaining girls, for whom seventy dollars were offered, an amount working out in English money at ten pounds.

“A bad price—a bad price,” muttered the auctioneer sadly, and then he withdrew from the line and returned to the pen. “Wait here,” he said to the four boys who had not yet been asked for; “wait till the rest are sold.”

Then he hurried back to the line of auctioneers with Marzuk and the three girls, proclaiming the price and merits of his wares as loudly as possible. Several times Marzuk was summoned by an intending purchaser, and his price went slowly up to fifty-five dollars, while his companion stayed at forty-eight.

For the other two girl children, a bright, intelligent pair, and not without good looks of a kind, there was a very brisk bidding; three country Kaids were bent upon purchasing them. The three sat along the arcade some twenty yards from one another, and raised the price of the two little girls three, four, sometimes five dollars at a time, the auctioneer thanking them with a “Praise be to Allah the One!” every time the price was augmented.

At last the Kaid from a town on the far side of the Atlas Mountains raised the price to one hundred and thirty-five dollars at which figure the bidding ceased, and the two children were handed over to their new master.

Greatly elated at the thought of his commission, which, though but two and a half per cent., would be quite appreciable, the auctioneer took Marzuk in one hand and the girl in the other, and marched briskly round, declaring their merits and the last bid.

The girl caught up her companion in price, and, passing from hand to hand, was chosen at last by one of the Kaids, who had failed to purchase the pair of girls, at eighty-two dollars. Marzuk saw her frightened eye and quivering lip, she looked once at him and burst into a violent paroxysm of sobbing.

But there was never a big sale in the Sok-el-Abeed without tears in plenty. They were of no more moment to the crowd than the water that the carriers from the south country sprinkled over the sandy market-place.

The auctioneer fetched another boy from the pen and walked round with him and Marzuk.

The latter felt now that the end was coming, he knew that his purchase lay between a fat white-bearded Moor from the country and the keeper of the fandak. He heard the price raised slowly to seventy-five dollars, at which the keeper of the fandak declared with an angry word that he would go no higher.

It was to no hard servitude that Marzuk was taken in the early days when he went for the first time to a master’s house. He was appointed to wait upon his master’s son, a lad of little more than his own age, and if a few blows and some ill-usage were his portion from time to time, he was troubled but little so long as food was good and plentiful.

When the two boys grew towards manhood, their relations became more intimate and friendly, and Marzuk, who had been told off to the fields at every harvest time, was raised to a rather more responsible position, and called upon to superintend the labour of the others. They worked on the land, ploughing and reaping, cultivating the orchards and digging water-pits, or they carried the produce of their master’s fields to the markets of the city.

Here he succeeded, and was sent by his master to the far country markets with corn and oil, sometimes taking journeys of two or three weeks’ duration. Once again his record was satisfactory, and he was further promoted to carry letters and messages to the great country chiefs, with whom his master had commercial or social relations.

So it happened that he escaped the harder fate that waits upon slaves who are idle or vicious or so unfortunate as to find a bad master. Marzuk learned to ride fearlessly, and to know the great tracks that pass for roads in Morocco, and stretch between the far scattered cities.

His master’s house held many slaves—they were regarded as a source of wealth, and were encouraged to do their best. In earlier days, when slaves were very cheap, they had not fared so well, but now that a master must pay heavily, he would not waste man or woman as he could afford to do in times when Mulai Ismail ruled and England held Tangier.

To-day Marzuk is the chief of his master’s household, a strong, intelligent fellow, who rejoices in the whitest of djellabas and the largest size of yellow slippers, carries a long rosary, and rules his master’s other servants with a rod of iron.

Marzuk has picked up a great deal of Arabic; he has become a Mohammedan, and looks forward to the day when he will be manumitted, and will be able to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Thereafter he will embark his small store of dollars in trade, and with his knowledge of markets and capacity for sustained work he should end by employing slaves of his own.

I have set down the main features of his story as he told them to me in his master’s house, in days not long gone past when I was a guest there, and entered, so far as I might, into the fascinating life of the East, and I cannot refrain from adding that Marzuk stands to-day on a far higher rung in the ladder of civilisation and progress than he would have reached if the curse of slavery had not fallen on him in far Timbuctoo.

And therein (a wholesome reflection for the more arrogant among us) slavery, as understood and practised in the world of Islam, differs mightily from slavery as understood and practised in Christian lands a few years ago.

I make no mention of the sort of slavery still existing, under European auspices, on the Congo, and in many of the cities of every country of Europe. Allah forbid that sleek, smiling Marzuk, upon whose ample shoulders the burden of labour has fallen so lightly, should ever know the bitterness of such sad lives as these.

[5]

Marrakesh, known in England as Morocco City, is the southern capital of the Moorish Empire.

Telephone: | Telegrams:
Gerrard 7745. | “Milnopolis London.”

AUTUMN, 1908
A List of New Books
PUBLISHED BY
JOHN MILNE Publisher
29 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

| PAGE
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll. 6s. | 4
Archibald Menzies. Agnes Grant Hay. 6s. | 12
Broken Honeymoon, The. Edwin Pugh. 6s. | 5
Call of the South, The. Louis Becke. 6s. | 16
Disinherited. Stella M. Düring. 6s. | 10
Duchess of Dreams, The. Edith Macvane. 6s. | 11
Enchantress, The. Edwin Pugh. 6s. | 15
Gentle Thespians, The. R. Murray Gilchrist. 6s. | 16
Graven Image, The. Mrs. Coulson Kernahan. 6s. | 7
Half-Smart Set, The. Florence Warden. 6s. | 14
Heart of the Wild, The. S. L. Bensusan. 6s. | 3
“I Little Knew—!” May Crommelin. 6s. | 15
Ichabod. James Blyth. 6s. | 11
Insane Root, The. Mrs. Campbell Praed. 6d. | 16
Irene of the Ringlets. Horace Wyndham. 6s. | 15
King’s Cause, The. Walter E. Grogan. 6s. | 9
Lady Mary of Tavistock, The. Harold Vallings. 6s. | 14
Last of Her Race, The. J. Bloundelle-Burton. 6s. | 14
Lost Angel, The. Katharine Tynan. 6s. | 15
Lost Heir, The. G. A. Henty. 6d. | 16
Love that Kills, The. Coralie Stanton & H. Hosken. 6s. | 8
Moth and the Flame, The. Alice Maud Meadows. 6s. | 14
’Neath Austral Skies. Louis Becke. 6s. | 6
Orphan-Monger, The. G. Sidney Paternoster. 6s. | 7
Potiphar’s Wife. Kineton Parkes. 6s. | 9
Quest of the Antique, The. R.& E. Shackleton. 10/6 net | 13
Quicksands of Life, The. J. H. Edge, K.C. 6s. | 8
Tobias and the Angel. Helen Prothero Lewis. 6s. | 10
Two Goodwins, The. R. Murray Gilchrist. 6s. | 6
Wilful Woman, A. G. B. Burgin. 6d. | 16
Within Four Walls. J. Bloundelle-Burton. 6s. | 5

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

INDEX TO AUTHORS

| PAGE
Becke Louis. ’Neath Austral Skies. 6s. | 6
Becke Louis. The Call of the South. 6s. | 16
Bensusan S. L. The Heart of the Wild. 6s. | 3
Bloundelle-Burton J. Within Four Walls. 6s. | 5
Bloundelle-Burton J. The Last of Her Race. 6s. | 14
Blyth James. Ichabod. 6s. | 11
Burgin G. B. A Wilful Woman. 6d. | 16
Carroll Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 6s. | 4
Crommelin May. “I Little Knew—!” 6s. | 15
Düring Stella M. Disinherited. 6s. | 10
Edge J. H. K.C. The Quicksands of Life. 6s. | 8
Gilchrist R. Murray. The Two Goodwins. 6s. | 6
Gilchrist R. Murray. The Gentle Thespians. 6s. | 16
Grogan Walter E. The King’s Cause. 6s. | 9
Hay Agnes Grant. Archibald Menzies. 6s. | 12
Henty G. A. The Lost Heir. 6d. | 16
Hume Fergus. New Novel. 6s. | 12
Kernahan Mrs. Coulson. The Graven Image. 6s. | 7
Lewis Helen Prothero. Tobias and the Angel. 6s. | 10
Macvane Edith. The Duchess of Dreams. 6s. | 11
Meadows Alice Maud. The Moth and the Flame. 6s. | 14
Parkes Kineton. Potiphar’s Wife. 6s. | 9
Paternoster G. Sidney. The Orphan-Monger. 6s. | 7
Praed Mrs. Campbell. The Insane Root. 6d. | 16
Pugh Edwin. The Broken Honeymoon. 6s. | 5
Pugh Edwin. The Enchantress. 6s. | 15
Shackleton R. & E. The Quest of the Antique. 10/6 net. | 13
Stanton Coralie & Hosken H. The Love that Kills. 6s. | 8
Tynan Katharine. The Lost Angel. 6s. | 15
Vallings Harold. The Lady Mary of Tavistock. 6s. | 14
Warden Florence. The Half-Smart Set. 6s. | 14
Wyndham Horace. Irene of the Ringlets. 6s. | 15

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

The Heart of the Wild
Wild Life Studies from Near & Far
BY
S. L. BENSUSAN

Author of “A Countryside Chronicle,” “Wild Life Stories,”

“Morocco,” etc.

Illustrated with actual Wild Life Photographs.

Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

The Heart
of the
Wild

The specimen in the cage is a comparatively familiar animal, and the difference between him and the hunted creature at bay in the wild, or the timorous beastie suddenly encountered in the field, is obvious to the least observant; but what of the beast in his own lair? This is the side of nature that Mr. Bensusan lays bare to the reader.

You are invited to spend a season in Mr. Beastie’s home, to hear his family history, to accompany him on his foraging expeditions, to criticise and admire the architecture of his house, to help fight his enemies, to romp with his youngsters and train them for the battle of life, which appears to be just as stern for the animal as for the human.

The lives dealt with include the Water-Rat, Giraffe, Ferret, Cuckoo, Badger, Eagle, Camel, Stork, Wild Boar, Fighting Bull, Red Grouse, Seal, Roebuck and Flamingo, and, if the reader will accept the analogy, every life story is a human document.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

A Charming Gift Book for Children

THE CHILDREN’S ALICE
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland
BY
LEWIS CARROLL
Nine full-page Illustrations in Colour by
Bessie Gutmann.

Together with numerous simple Drawings in Line, suitable for copying
and colouring by youthful artists. Illuminated Text.

Demy 8vo, cloth, fully gilt, 6s.

The
Children’s
Alice

This edition of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece is confidently placed before the public, in spite of numerous competitors, because it is felt that it will supply a want. In many recent editions of “Alice in Wonderland” the true object of the book has been overlooked, for the illustrations in more than one instance have been rather above the heads, and the appreciation, of the youthful readers. Here is an edition, the coloured illustrations of which, while being truly artistic, will appeal more directly to the young folk. Here is a childlike and natural Alice and a new and jovial Gryphon, while the gorgeous liveries of the fish and frog footmen are emphasised by the new “direct” process by which the coloured pictures are reproduced.

The illuminated text is sure to appeal to children to whom a blank page of type is often uninviting, while the simple line drawings will be a source of endless amusement for the re-creation in the nursery drawing book, of types, scenes and characters from “Alice in Wonderland.”

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

The Broken Honeymoon

By EDWIN PUGH

Author of “The Man of Straw,” “Tony Drum,” “The Spoilers,”

“The Enchantress,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

The Broken
Honeymoon

Here, as in “The Enchantress,” Mr. Pugh treats his subject with that candour of which his work is typical. “The Broken Honeymoon” concerns the wooing, marriage and honeymoon of a London clerk and a schoolmistress, and is a sidelight on life in Suburbia, stripped of all its conventional appurtenances, and shown with that naked reality which is characteristic of all this author’s work. “The Broken Honeymoon” is a worthy successor to “The Enchantress.”

Within Four Walls

By J. BLOUNDELLE-BURTON

Author of “The Last of Her Race,” “The Hispaniola Plate,”

“The Clash of Arms,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

Within
Four
Walls

The talented author of “The Last of Her Race” has again dipped into his vast fund of historical knowledge and has weaved a romance out of the intrigues that surrounded the life and death of Henri IV, who was assassinated by Raviallac at the same time that a conspiracy was on foot among some of the nobles of the Court to murder the king. The discovery of this conspiracy by the heroine, leading to her imprisonment “Within Four Walls,” and the adventures of her lover in effecting her rescue, are incidents that provide Mr. J. Bloundelle-Burton with all the matériel for a powerful historical novel.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

The Two Goodwins
BY
R. MURRAY GILCHRIST

Author of “The Gentle Thespians,” “Beggar’s Manor,”

“The Courtesy Dame.”

Crown 8vo, cloth.

The Two
Goodwins

Mr. Murray Gilchrist’s pictures of rural life have a large circle of admirers, and this book, which deals with the rich farming folk of the Peak district, is quite up to his usual high standard.

The torchlight procession at the great house, the loves of the rustic characters, and, finally, the wedding dance in the “Old Barn,” are all described in the dainty style with which this author has won such great popularity in his former works.

Life in the Southern Pacific
’Neath Austral Skies
BY
LOUIS BECKE
Author of “The Call of the South,” etc.
Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

’Neath
Austral
Skies

This volume is sure of a warm welcome from Mr. Becke’s numerous readers. The descriptions of life in the South Seas are told with his own particular charm, and the stories of “Tom Dennison,” the dare-devil hero of many of his former works, make this collection especially attractive.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

The Orphan-Monger
BY
G. SIDNEY PATERNOSTER

Author of “The Motor Pirate,” “The Folly of the Wise,”

“The Lady of the Blue Motor,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

The
Orphan-
Monger

Mr. Varden-Kingdom, “The Orphan-Monger,” can only be described as a “philanthropist” with the pious hypocrisy of a Uriah Heep, and the fiendish cunning of a Mr. Squeers.

How his schemes to obtain the fortune of Margaret Marston were brought to nought by the course of true love, forms a theme which holds the reader spell-bound to the last page.

The Graven Image
BY
Mrs. COULSON KERNAHAN

Author of “An Unwise Virgin,” “An Artist’s Model,”

“The Mystery of Magdalen,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

The
Graven
Image

This story tells of the many strange and thrilling adventures which befell a beautiful young girl, who, thrown on her own resources, determines to fight against adverse fortune, and incidentally, to unravel the mystery of “The Graven Image,” which plays an important part in the family affairs of her lover. With this material Mrs. Coulson Kernahan weaves a plot rich in startling and dramatic incidents, with a romantic and happy climax.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

The Quicksands of Life

BY

J. H. EDGE, K.C.

Author of “An Irish Utopia,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

The
Quicksands
of Life

Mr. Edge has already shown the public that he can tell a good story of Ireland, for his last book, “An Irish Utopia,” met with an enthusiastic reception. He has now drawn still further on his life experiences, for most of the scenes of his new novel are laid in London and very intimately connected with the Temple, while the Irish portion of the plot places the reader amidst the grazing farms of Munster, the extinction of which is now such a burning question.

“The Quicksands of Life” is, however, a novel pure and simple, and the reader need not be apprehensive of finding the work a mere treatise on the Irish Question.

The Love That Kills
BY
CORALIE STANTON & HEATH HOSKEN
Authors of “A Widow by Choice,” etc.
Crown 8vo, cloth.

The Love
That Kills

Giving the reader a sense of mystery to be unravelled from the very first chapter, excitement of situation is the keynote of “The Love That Kills,” right to the very end.

This story, of a supreme sacrifice made for love, will go far to enhance the reputation of its clever authors.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

Potiphar’s Wife
BY
KINETON PARKES

Author of “Love à la Mode,” “Life’s Desert Way,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

Potiphar’s
Wife

The dales of Derbyshire have furnished a fine setting to Mr. Kineton Parkes’ story of the rugged lives and passionate loves of their sturdy farmers and cattle raisers.

“Powerful in plot, brilliant in execution and possessing an intensely human interest” was the verdict of the reader who read this story in manuscript, and it is placed before the public with the confidence that this opinion will be thoroughly endorsed.

The King’s Cause
BY
WALTER E. GROGAN

Author of “The Dregs of Wrath,” “The King’s Sceptre,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

The
King’s
Cause

No writer of fiction has yet given us a book on the exciting events of the Seventeenth Century, when Bristol was twice successfully besieged within two years. In this story Mr. Grogan tells of the adventures of Bevil Copleigh, of the part he took in the surrender of Bristol to Prince Rupert, and in the subsequent capitulation of that Prince to Sir Thomas Fairfax.

With a strong element of love running through it, “The King’s Cause” will appeal to all as full of exciting adventure, while the careful manner in which the author has studied the period makes his work instructive as well as highly entertaining.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

Tobias and The Angel
BY
HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS

Author of “The Rudder and the Rock,” “Hooks of Steel,” “Thraldom,”

“The Unguarded Taper,” etc.

Crown 8vo, cloth.

Tobias and
the Angel

This is a pleasant, bright, wholesome novel, with a hint of difficulties manfully faced and the power of love to save. Dealing with the present the author does not shirk its difficulties, indeed, the drink question, too old at forty, divorce law, and other everyday problems all receive careful and delicate yet masterful handling; nevertheless, the story is the opposite of prosy, and makes good enjoyable reading.

Disinherited
BY
STELLA M. DÜRING
Author of “In the Springtime of Life,” etc.
Crown 8vo, cloth. Coloured Frontispiece.

Disinherited

In this novel of present-day England Mrs. Stella M. Düring portrays the life of the heir to a baronetcy, who, brought up in the expectation of succeeding to the title, finds himself suddenly disinherited by the late marriage of his aged relative. Written with brilliance and with wit, and with an air of mystery pervading the story, the reader’s interest is sustained throughout to a clever and convincing termination.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

Ichabod
BY
JAMES BLYTH

Author of “Juicy Joe,” “The Same Clay,” “Celibate Sarah,” etc.

Ichabod

Mr. James Blyth has turned his attention from social problems to historical anticipation, and in his latest book, “Ichabod,” he gives a picture of England during the next fifty years, endeavouring to show the result of the present ever-increasing alien immigration.

The story is powerfully told, full of incident from cover to cover, and is sure to leave the reader, whatever his views may be, full of thoughts.

The Duchess of Dreams
BY
EDITH MACVANE
Frontispiece in Colour. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

The
Duchess of
Dreams

A tale of social ambition, of startling adventure and of passionate love, placed against the background of the dazzling world of diplomacy.

Miss Macvane has written a story which is both pleasing and interesting, in fact, she has most successfully entered the domain where Anthony Hope and Henry Harland found such entertaining inspiration for the treatment of a highly romantic situation.

The portrayal of the characters is convincing; and the pictures of brilliant diplomatic functions are particularly vivid and realistic.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

New Six Shilling Novels

Archibald Menzies, Mystic
BY
AGNES GRANT HAY
Author of “Malcolm Canmore’s Pearl,” etc.

Archibald
Menzies,
Mystic

As a study of the effect of worldly trials on a highly-developed and enquiring character, Archibald Menzies is sure to command attention from all who are interested in the developments that have recently taken place in the world of religion. A boy, reared by his mother in a quiet Midland town, suddenly is brought face to face with a hitherto unknown side of the history of his family; this, followed by a series of disappointments, has the effect of causing him to take a doubting view of the principles in which he has been brought up, and leads him to espouse the cause of a “New Religion,” in which, however, he fails to find a solution of the problem of present social conditions.

Further particulars will shortly be announced of a

NEW NOVEL
BY
FERGUS HUME
Author of “The Mystery of a Hansom Cab,” etc.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

Furniture

The Quest of the Antique
Being some Personal Experiences in the
Finding of Old Furniture
BY
ROBERT and ELIZABETH SHACKLETON

Illustrated with 44 Photographs, and a Frontispiece
in Colour; Chapter Headings and Decorations
by Harry Fenn.

Demy 8vo, 425 pp., 10s. 6d. net.

The Quest
of the
Antique

This is not a book to appeal only to lovers of Old Furniture, but it is a work to stir and hold the interest of those who have never fallen under the spell of the charming and stately Furniture of the Past.

The two who write this unusual book inherited a kettle, bought a pair of candlesticks, and were given a Shaker chair; with this beginning they entered upon the enthusiastic pursuit of the walnut, the brass and the china of the Olden Time.

The story of what they found and their experiences in the finding, of the quaint old houses which, as circumstances permitted, they made their home, is all told with rare charm. In addition, the book is rich in reliable information concerning Antique Furniture of every kind and in helpful hints for others, both as regards buying and taste.

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

Recent Six Shilling Novels

NEW EDITIONS are now ready of the following
recently published successful Novels:
SOME PRESS OPINIONS

The Last of Her Race

By J. BLUNDELLE-BURTON

COUNTRY LIFE.—“Strongest characters in modern fiction.”

THE QUEEN.—“The book is instinct with romance and fine feeling, and makes delightful reading all through.”

The Half-Smart Set

By FLORENCE WARDEN

ABERDEEN FREE PRESS.—“This is the best book Miss Warden has written.”

LIVERPOOL DAILY POST.—“It is as good as anything the authoress has done, and will delight her large circle of admirers.”

The Moth and the Flame

By ALICE MAUD MEADOWS

MADAME.—“A thrilling love story. The delicate and charming way in which Miss Meadows tells of the difficulties caused by jealousy and passion is most interesting and attractive.”

The Lady Mary of Tavistock

By HAROLD VALLINGS

THE LADY.—“An excellent story, abounding in careful characterisation and dramatic moments ... the interest and excitement are sustained with never a break from the first page to the last.”

DAILY CHRONICLE.—“A delightful story.”

JOHN MILNE, Publisher

Recent Six Shilling Novels

The Lost Angel

By KATHARINE TYNAN

MADAME.—“Miss Tynan is already well known as a writer of short stories, and the book in question even surpasses her usual standard.... Told in the delightfully simple manner which sets Miss Tynan’s work far above that of the usual writer of love stories.”

THE LADY.—“Such stories are always welcome, so simple, so natural, so pleasant are they ... abounding in pathos and humour.”

Irene of the Ringlets

By HORACE WYNDHAM

PALL MALL GAZETTE.—“As bright and agreeable as any one could wish.”

DAILY CHRONICLE.—“Its humour is happier than that of any novel Mr. Wyndham has yet given us.”

“I Little Knew—!”

By MAY CROMMELIN

DUNDEE ADVERTISER.—“Many books though Miss Crommelin has written, nothing better than ‘I Little Knew—!’ has come from her pen.”

T.P.’s WEEKLY.—“A companionable book for a traveller.”

The Enchantress

By EDWIN PUGH

The most widely discussed book of the Spring Season, 1908, which the Critics themselves were at a loss to diagnose.

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Table of Contents

- THE HEART OF THE WILD
- THE GOLDEN EAGLE
- THE BADGER
- THE STORY OF A CAMEL
- THE RED GROUSE
- THE ROEBUCK
- THE WATER-RAT
- THE FLAMINGO
- HOB, THE FERRET
- THE FIGHTING BULL
- THE CUCKOO
- THE SEAL
- THE GIRAFFE
- THE WHITE STORK
- THE WILD BOAR
- THE STORY OF A SLAVE
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE