The Backwoodsmen Part 14

The Grip in Deep Hole

The roar of the falls, the lighter and shriller raging of the rapids, had at last died out behind the thick ma.s.ses of the forest, as Barnes worked his way down the valley. The heat in the windless underbrush, alive with insects, was stifling. He decided to make once more for the bank of the stream, in the hope that its character might by this time have changed, so as to afford him an easier and more open path.

Pressing aside to his left, he presently saw the green gloom lighten before him. Blue sky and golden light came low through the thinning trees, and then a gleam of unruffled water. He was nearing the edge now; and because the underbrush was so thick about him he began to go cautiously.

All at once, he felt his feet sinking; and the screen of thick bushes before him leaned away as if bowed by a heavy gust. Desperately he clutched with both hands at the undergrowth and saplings on either side; but they all gave way with him. In a smother of leaf.a.ge and blinding, las.h.i.+ng branches he sank downwards--at first, as it seemed, slowly, for he had time to think many things while his heart was jumping in his throat. Then, shooting through the lighter bushy companions of his fall, and still clutching convulsively at those upon which he had been able to lay his grasp, he plunged feet first into a dark water.

The water was deep and cold. Barnes went down straight, and clear under, with a strangled gasp. His feet struck, with some force, upon a tangled, yielding ma.s.s, from which he rose again with a spring.

His head shot up above the surface, above the swirl of foam, leaf.a.ge, and debris; and splutteringly he gulped his lungs full of air. But before he could clear his eyes or his nostrils, or recover his self-possession, he was stealthily dragged down again.

And with a pang of horror he realized that he was caught by the foot.

A powerful swimmer, Barnes struck out mightily with his arms and came to the surface again at once, rising beyond the shoulders. But by so much the more was he violently s.n.a.t.c.hed back again, strangling and desperate, before he had time to empty his lungs and catch breath.

This time the shock sobered him, flas.h.i.+ng the full peril of the situation before his startled consciousness. With a tremendous effort of will he stopped his struggling, and contented himself with a gentle paddling to keep upright. This time he came more softly to the surface, clear beyond the chin. The foam and debris and turbulence of little waves seethed about his lips, and the sunlight danced confusingly in his streaming eyes; but he gulped a fresh lungful before he again went under.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He realized that he was caught by the foot."]

Paddling warily now, he emerged again at once, and, with arms outspread, brought himself to a precarious equilibrium, his mouth just above the surface so long as he held his head well back. Keeping very still, he let his bewildered wits clear, and the agitated surface settle to quiet.

He was in a deep, tranquil cove, hardly stirred by an eddy. Some ten paces farther out from sh.o.r.e the main current swirled past sullenly, as if weary from the riot of falls and rapids. Across the current a little s.p.a.ce of sand-beach, jutting out from the leafy sh.o.r.e, shone golden in the sun. Up and down the stream, as far as his extremely restricted vision would suffer him to see, nothing but thick, overhanging branches, and the sullen current. Very cautiously he turned his head--though to do so brought the water over his lips--and saw behind him just what he expected. The high, almost perpendicular bank was scarred by a gash of bright, raw, reddish earth, where the brink had slipped away beneath his weight.

Just within reach of his hand lay, half submerged, the thick, leafy top of a fallen poplar sapling, its roots apparently still clinging to the bank. Gently he laid hold of it, testing it, in the hope that it might prove solid enough to enable him to haul himself out. But it came away instantly in his grasp. And once more, in this slight disturbance of his equilibrium, his head went under.

Barnes was disappointed, but he was now absolutely master of his self-possession. In a moment he had regained the only position in which he could breathe comfortably. Then, because the sun was beating down too fiercely on the top of his head, he carefully drew the bushy top of the poplar sapling into such a position that it gave him shade.

As its roots were still aground, it showed no tendency to float off and forsake him in his plight.

A very little consideration, accompanied by a cautious investigation with his free foot, speedily convinced Barnes, who was a practical woodsman, that the trap in which he found himself caught could be nothing else than a couple of interlaced, twisted branches, or roots, of some tree which had fallen into the pool in a former caving-in of the bank. In that dark deep wherein his foot was held fast, his mind's eye could see it all well enough--the water-soaked, brown-green, slimy, inexorable coil, which had yielded to admit the unlucky member, then closed upon the ankle like the jaws of an otter trap. He could feel that grip--not severe, but uncompromisingly firm, clutching the joint. As he considered, he began to draw comfort, however, from the fact that his invisible captor had displayed a certain amount of give and take. This elasticity meant either that it was a couple of branches slight enough to be flexible that held him, or that the submerged tree itself was a small one, not too steadfastly anch.o.r.ed down. He would free himself easily enough, he thought, as soon as he should set himself about it coolly and systematically.

Taking a long breath he sank his head under the surface, and peered downward through the amber-brown but transparent gloom. Little gleams of brighter light came twisting and quivering in from the swirls of the outer current. Barnes could not discern the bottom of the pool, which was evidently very deep; but he could see quite clearly the portion of the sunken tree in whose interwoven branches he was held. A s.h.i.+mmering golden ray fell just on the spot where his foot vanished to the ankle between two stout curves of what looked like slimy brown cable or sections of a tense snake body.

It was, beyond question, a nasty-looking trap; and Barnes could not blink the fact that he was in a tight place. He lifted his face above the surface, steadied himself carefully, and breathed deeply and quietly for a couple of minutes, gathering strength for a swift and vigorous effort. Then, filling his lungs very moderately, the better to endure a strain, he stooped suddenly downward, deep into the yellow gloom, and began wrenching with all his force at those oozy curves, striving to drag them apart. They gave a little, but not enough to release the imprisoned foot. Another moment, and he had to lift his head again for breath.

After some minutes of rest, he repeated the choking struggle, but, as before, in vain. He could move the jaws of the trap just enough to encourage him a little, but not enough to gain his release. Again and again he tried it, again and again to fail just as he imagined himself on the verge of success; till at last he was forced, for the moment, to acknowledge defeat, finding himself so exhausted that he could hardly keep his mouth above water. Drawing down a stiffish branch of the sapling, he gripped it between his teeth and so held himself upright while he rested his arms. This was a relief to nerves as well as muscles, because it made his balance, on which he depended for the chance to breathe, so much the less precarious.

As he hung there pondering, held but a bare half-inch above drowning, the desperateness of the situation presented itself to him in appalling clearness. How sunny and warm and safe, to his woods-familiar eyes, looked the green forest world about him. No sound broke the mild tranquillity of the solitude, except, now and then, an elfish gurgle of the slow current, or the sweetly cheerful _tsic-a-dee-dee_ of an unseen chicadee, or, from the intense blue overhead, the abrupt, thin whistle of a soaring fish-hawk. To Barnes it all seemed such a safe, friendly world, his well-understood intimate since small boyhood. Yet here it was, apparently, turned smooth traitor at last, and about to destroy him as pitilessly as might the most scorching desert or blizzard-scourged ice-field. A silent rage burned suddenly through all his veins--which was well, since the cold of that spring-fed river had already begun to finger stealthily about his heart. A delicate little pale-blue b.u.t.terfly, like a periwinkle-petal come to life, fluttered over Barnes's grim, upturned face, and went dancing gaily out across the s.h.i.+ning water, joyous in the sun. In its dancing it chanced to dip a hair's-breadth too low. The treacherous, bright surface caught it, held it; and away it swept, struggling in helpless consternation against this unexpected doom. Before it pa.s.sed out of Barnes's vision a great trout rose and gulped it down. Its swift fate, to Barnes's haggard eyes, seemed an a.n.a.logue in little to his own.

But it was not in the woodsman's fibre to acknowledge himself actually beaten, either by man or fate, so long as there remained a spark in his brain to keep his will alive. He presently began searching with his eyes among the branches of the poplar sapling for one stout enough to serve him as a lever. With the right kind of a stick in his hand, he told himself, he might manage to pry apart the jaws of the trap and get his foot free. At last his choice settled upon a branch that he thought would serve his turn. He was just about to reach up and break it off, when a slight crackling in the underbrush across the stream caught his ear.

His woodsman's instinct kept him motionless as he turned his eyes to the spot. In the thick leaf.a.ge there was a swaying, which moved down along the bank, but he could not see what was causing it. Softly he drew over a leafy branch of the sapling till it made him a perfect screen, then he peered up the channel to find out what the unseen wayfarer was following.

A huge salmon, battered and gashed from a vain struggle to leap the falls, was floating, belly-upward, down the current, close to Barnes's side of the stream. A gentle eddy caught it, and drew it into the pool. Sluggishly it came drifting down toward Barnes's hidden face. In the twigs of the poplar sapling it came to a halt, its great scarlet gills barely moving as the last of life flickered out of it.

Barnes now understood quite well that unseen commotion which had followed, along sh.o.r.e, the course of the dying salmon. It was no surprise to him whatever when he saw a huge black bear emerge upon the yellow sandspit and stand staring across the current. Apparently, it was staring straight at Barnes's face, upturned upon the surface of the water. But Barnes knew it was staring at the dead salmon. His heart jumped sickeningly with sudden hope, as an extravagant notion flashed into his brain. Here was his rescuer--a perilous one, to be sure--vouchsafed to him by some whim of the inscrutable forest-fates.

He drew down another branchy twig before his face, fearful lest his concealment should not be adequate. But in his excitement he disturbed his balance, and with the effort of his recovery the water swirled noticeably all about him. His heart sank. a.s.suredly, the bear would take alarm at this and be afraid to come for the fish.

But to his surprise the great beast, which had seemed to hesitate, plunged impetuously into the stream. Nothing, according to a bear's knowledge of life, could have made that sudden disturbance in the pool but some fish-loving otter or mink, intent upon seizing the booty.

Indignant at the prospect of being forestalled by any such furtive marauder, the bear hurled himself forward with such force that the spray flew high into the branches, and the noise of his splas.h.i.+ng was a clear notification that trespa.s.sers and meddlers had better keep off. That salmon was his, by right of discovery; and he was going to have it.

The bear, for all the seeming clumsiness of his bulk, was a redoubtable swimmer; and almost before Barnes had decided clearly on his proper course of action those heavy, grunting snorts and vast expulsions of breath were at his ear. Enormously loud they sounded, shot thus close along the surface of the water. Perforce, Barnes made up his mind on the instant.

The bunch of twigs which had arrested the progress of the floating salmon lay just about an arm's length from Barnes's face. Swimming high, his mighty shoulders thrusting up a wave before him which buried Barnes's head safely from view, the bear reached the salmon. Grabbing it triumphantly in his jaws, he turned to make for sh.o.r.e again.

This was Barnes's moment. Both arms shot out before him. Through the suffocating confusion his clutching fingers encountered the bear's haunches. Sinking into the long fur, they closed upon it with a grip of steel. Then, instinctively, Barnes shut his eyes and clenched his teeth, and waited for the shock, while his lungs felt as if they would burst in another moment.

But it was no long time he had to wait--perhaps two seconds, while amazement in the bear's brain translated itself through panic into action. Utterly horrified by this inexplicable attack, from the rear and from the depths, the bear threw himself shoulder high from the water, and hurled himself forward with all his strength. Barnes felt those tremendous haunches heaving irresistibly beneath his clutching fingers. He felt himself drawn out straight, and dragged ahead till he thought his ankle would snap. Almost he came to letting go, to save the ankle. But he held, on, as much with his will as with his grip.

Then, the slimy thing in the depths gave way. He felt himself being jerked through the water--free. His fingers relaxed their clutch on the bear's fur--and he came to the surface, gasping, blinking, and coughing.

For a moment or two he paddled softly, recovering his breath and shaking the water from nostrils and eyes. He had an instant of apprehensiveness, lest the bear should turn upon him and attack him at a disadvantage; and by way of precaution he gave forth the most savage and piercing yell that his labouring lungs were capable of. But he saw at once that on this score he had nothing to fear. It was a well-frightened bear, there swimming frantically for the sandspit; while the dead salmon, quite forgotten, was drifting slowly away on the sullen current.

Barnes's foot was hurting fiercely, but his heart was light. Swimming at leisure, so as to just keep head against the stream, he watched the bear scuttle out upon the sand. Once safe on dry land, the great beast turned and glanced back with a timid air to see what manner of being it was that had so astoundingly a.s.sailed him. Man he had seen before--but never man swimming like an otter; and the sight was nothing to rea.s.sure him. One longing look he cast upon the salmon, now floating some distance away; but that, to his startled mind, was just a lure of this same terrifying and perfidious creature whose bright grey eyes were staring at him so steadily from the surface of the water. He turned quickly and made off into the woods, followed by a loud, daunting laugh which spurred his pace to a panicky gallop.

When he was gone, Barnes swam to the sandspit. There he wrung out his dripping clothes, and lay down in the hot sand to let the sun soak deep into his chilled veins.

The Nest of the Mallard

When the spring freshet went down, and the rushes sprang green all about the edges of the shallow, marshy lagoons, a pair of mallards took possession of a tiny, bushy island in the centre of the broadest pond. Moved by one of those inexplicable caprices which keep most of the wild kindreds from too perilous an enslavement to routine, this pair had been attracted by the vast, empty levels of marsh and mere, and had dropped out from the ranks of their northward-journeying comrades. Why should they beat on through the raw, bl.u.s.tering spring winds to Labrador, when here below them was such a nesting-place as they desired, with solitude and security and plenty. The flock went on, obeying an ancestral summons. With heads straight out before, and rigid, level necks--with web feet folded like fans and stretched straight out behind, rigid and level--they sped through the air on short, powerful, swift-beating wings at the rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour. Their flight, indeed, and their terrific speed were not unlike those of some strange missile. The pair who had dropped behind paid no heed to their going; and in two minutes they had faded out against the pale saffron morning sky.

These two were the only mallards in this whole wide expanse of gra.s.s and water. Other kinds of ducks there were, in plenty, but the mallards at this season kept to themselves. The little island which they selected for their peculiar domain was so small that no other mating couples intruded upon its privacy. It was only about ten feet across; but it bore a favourable thicket of osier-willow, and all around it the sedge and bulrush reared an impenetrable screen. Its highest point was about two feet above average water level; and on this highest point the mallard duck established her nest.

The nest was a mere shallow pile of dead leaves and twigs and dry sedges, sc.r.a.ped carelessly together. But the inside was not careless.

It was a round smooth hollow, most softly lined with down from the duck's own breast. When the first pale, greenish-tinted egg was laid in the nest, there was only a little of this down; but the delicate and warm lining acc.u.mulated as the pale green eggs increased in number.

In the construction of the nest and the acc.u.mulation of the eggs no interest whatever was displayed by the splendid drake. He never, unless by chance, went near it. But as a lover the lordly fellow was most gallant and ardent. While his mate was on the nest laying, he was usually to be seen floating on the open mere beyond the reed-fringe, pruning his plumage in the cold pink rays of the first of the sunrise.

It was plumage well worth pruning, this of his, and fully justified his pride in it. The s.h.i.+ning, silken, iridescent dark green of the head and neck; the snowy, sharply defined, narrow collar of white, dividing the green of the neck from the brownish ash of the back and the gorgeous chestnut of the breast; the delicate pure grey of the belly finely pencilled with black lines; the rich, glossy purple of the broad wing-bars shot with green reflections; the jaunty, recurved black feathers of the tail; the smart, citron-yellow of the bill and feet;--all these charms were ample excuse for his c.o.xcombry and continual posings. They were ample excuse, too, for the admiration bestowed upon him by his mottled brown mate, whose colours were obviously designed not for show but for concealment. When sitting on her nest, she was practically indistinguishable from the twigs and dead leaves that surrounded her.

Having laid her egg, the brown duck would cover the precious contents of the nest with twigs and leaves, that they might not be betrayed by their conspicuous colour. Then she would steal, silently as a shadow, through the willow stems to the water's edge, and paddle cautiously out through the rushes to the open water. On reaching her mate all this caution would be laid aside, and the two would set up an animated and confidential quacking. They would sometimes sail around each other slowly in circles, with much arching of necks and quaint stiff bowing of heads; and sometimes they would chase each other in scurrying, napping rushes along the bright surface of the water. Both before and after these gay exercises they would feed quietly in the shallows, pulling up water-weed sprouts and tender roots, or sifting insects and little sh.e.l.lfish from the mud by means of the sensitive tips and guttered edges of their bills. The mallard pair had few enemies to dread, their island being so far from sh.o.r.e that no four-footed marauder, not even the semi-amphibious mink himself, ever visited it.

And the region was one too remote for the visits of the pot-hunter. In fact, there was only one foe against whom it behoved them to be on ceaseless guard. This was that bloodthirsty and tireless slayer, the goshawk, or great grey henhawk. Where that grim peril was concerned, the brown duck would take no risks. For the sake of those eggs among the willow stems, she held her life very dear, never flying more than a short circle around the island to stretch her wings, never swimming or feeding any distance from the safe covert of the rushes.

But with the glowing drake it was different. High spirited, bold for all his wariness, and magnificently strong of wing, from sheer restlessness he occasionally flew high above the ponds. And one day, when some distance from home, the great hawk saw him and swooped down upon him from aerial heights.

The impending doom caught the drake's eye in time for him to avoid the stroke of that irresistible descent. His short wings, with their muscles of steel, winnowed the air with sudden, tremendous force, and he shot ahead at a speed which must have reached the rate of a hundred miles an hour. When the swooping hawk had rushed down to his level, he was nearly fifty yards in the lead.

In such a case most of the larger hawks would have given up the chase, and soared again to abide the chance for a more fortunate swoop. But not so the implacable goshawk. His great pinions were capable not only of soaring and sailing and swooping, but of the rapid and violent flapping of the short-winged birds; and he had at his command a speed even greater than that of the rus.h.i.+ng fugitive. As he pursued, his wings tore the air with a strident, hissing noise; and the speed of the drake seemed as nothing before that savage, inescapable onrush.

Had the drake been above open water, he would have hurled himself straight downward, and seized the one chance of escape by diving; but beneath him at this moment there was nothing but naked swamp and sloppy flats. In less than two minutes the hiss of the pursuing wings was close behind him. He gave a hoa.r.s.e squawk, as he realized that doom had overtaken him. Then one set of piercing talons clutched his outstretched neck, cutting clean through his wind-pipe; and another set bit deep into the glossy chestnut of his breast.

For several days the widowed duck kept calling loudly up and down the edges of the reeds--but at a safe distance from the nest. When she went to lay, she stayed ever longer and longer on the eggs, brooding them. Three more eggs she laid after the disappearance of her mate, and then, having nine in the nest, she began to sit; and the open water beyond the reed fringes saw her no more.

At first she would slip off the nest for a few minutes every day, very stealthily, to feed and stretch and take a noiseless dip in the shallow water among the reeds; but as time went on she left the eggs only once in two days. Twice a day she would turn the eggs over carefully, and at the same time change their respective positions in the nest, so that those which had been for some hours in the centre, close to her hot and almost naked breast, might take their turn in the cooler s.p.a.ce just under her wings. By this means each egg got its fair share of heat, properly distributed, and the little life taking shape within escaped the distortion which might have been caused by lying too long in one position. Whenever the wary brown mother left the nest, she covered the eggs with down, now, which kept the warmth in better than leaves could. And whenever she came back from her brief swim, her dripping feathers supplied the eggs with needed moisture.

It is a general law that the older an egg is the longer it takes to hatch. The eggs of the mallard mother, of course, varied in age from fifteen days to one before she began to sit. This being the case, at the end of the long month of incubation they would have hatched at intervals covering in all, perhaps, a full day and a half; and complications would have arisen. But the wise mother had counteracted the working of the law by sitting a little while every day. Therefore, as a matter of fact, the older eggs got the larger share of the brooding, in exact proportion; and the building of the little lives within the sh.e.l.ls went on with almost perfect uniformity.

During the long, silent month of her patient brooding, spring had wandered away and summer had spread thick green and yellow lily blooms all over the lonely meres. A bland but heavy heat came down through the willow tops, so that the brown duck sometimes panted at her task, and sat with open bill, or with wings half raised from the eggs. Then, one night, she heard faint tappings and peepings beneath her. St.u.r.dy young bills began chipping at the inside of the sh.e.l.ls, speedily breaking them. Each duckling, as he chipped the sh.e.l.l just before the tip of his beak, would turn a little way around in his narrow quarters; till presently the sh.e.l.l would fall apart, neatly divided into halves; and the wet duckling, tumbling forth, would snuggle up against the mother's hot breast and thighs to dry. Whenever this happened, the wise mother would reach her head beneath, and fit the two halves of sh.e.l.l one within the other, or else thrust them out of the nest entirely, lest they should get slipped over another egg and smother the occupant. Sometimes she fitted several sets of the empty sh.e.l.ls together, that they might take up less room; and altogether she showed that she perfectly understood her business. Then, late in the morning, when the green world among the willows and rushes was still and warm and sweet, she led her fluffy, st.u.r.dy brood straight down to the water, and taught them to feed on the insects that clung to the bulrush stalks.