CHAPTER III.
BIRDS AND BOY'S PLAY.
Our schooner sailed once up and down the coast of Labrador, skirting it for a distance of five hundred miles; but in these papers I sail back and forth as many times as I please. Having, therefore, followed up the ice, I am again at Sleupe Harbor, our first port, and invite thee to go with us in a day's pursuit of Eider-Duck; for among these innumerable islands the eider breeds, and not elsewhere in considerable numbers, so far as we could learn, short of—somewhere in the remote North. Bradford, this morning, June 15th, has hired the two Canadians to take him to the bird-haunts in their own boat, and to shoot for him,—kindly offering a place to the Judge and myself.
The word Eider had long been to me a name to conjure with. At some far-away period in childhood it got imbedded in my fancy, and in process of time had acquired that subtilest, indefinable fascination which belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being chords of connection with times immeasurably bygone! only to be fed with ethereal remembrance out of a youth scarcely less ancient than the stars! Pity Tithonus no more; or pity him only because in him age had become the enemy of itself, and spilled the wine from its own cup.
The wind was ahead, and blew freshly down through the wilderness of islands, sweeping between granite shores along many and many a winding channel; the boat careened almost to her gunwale, yielding easily at first, but holding hard when well down, as good boats will; the waves beat saucily against her, now and then also catching up a handful of spray, and flinging it full in our faces, not forbearing once or twice to dash it between the open lips of a talker, salting his speech somewhat too much for his comfort, though not too much for the entertainment of his interlocutors; while overhead the rifted gray was traversed by whited seams, making another wilderness of islands in the clouds. We had gone a mile, and were now sailing smoothly in the lee of an island, when Bradford exclaimed, "See there! What's that? Why, that's a 'sea-goose.' Can you get him for me?" (to the elder Canadian). I had snuggled down in the bottom of the boat, and sprang up, expecting, from the word "goose," to see a large and not handsome bird, when instead appeared the tiniest tid-bit of swimming elegance that eye ever beheld. Reddish about neck and breast, graceful as a swan in form and motion, while not larger than a swallow, light as the lightest feather on the water, turning its curving neck and dainty head to look,—it seemed more like an embodied fancy than a creature inured to the chill of Arctic seas and the savagery of Arctic storms. What goose first gave it the name "sea-goose" passes conjecture. "Sea-fairy" were more appropriate.
This was the Hyperborean Phalarope,—a big name for so tiny a creature. Nuttall says that in 1833 great numbers of them appeared about Chelsea Beach. Ruddy, airy, fairy, feathered Graces, they must seem in our practical Yankee land like a mythology on wings, a flock of exquisite old Grecian fancies, flitting, light, and sweetly strange, and almost impossible, through the atmosphere of modern industries.
Soon a new attraction. It was a bird in the water quite near, about the size of a pigeon, though slenderer, glossy black, save a patch of pure white on the wing, and with an eye that glittered like a black jewel.
"Sea-pigeon," said the artist, and desired his skilful Canadian to secure the prize. The other arose and took deliberate aim. The bird, now not more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had been; but quicker than a flash that creature was under water and well out of harm's way! The shot could have been scarcely out of the muzzle before he had disappeared. To see such inconceivable celerity reminded one that the wings of gnats, which vibrate fifteen thousand times in a second, and light, that makes (vide Tyndale) twenty and odd millions of undulations in going an inch, are not without their fellow-wonders in Nature. Meanwhile the whole performance was so cool and neat that I could not afterwards help thinking of this creature as a humorist, and picturing it as quietly chuckling to itself under water. With reason, too; for above water was such a prolonged and ludicrous stare of amazement from at least three pairs of eyes as might satisfy the most immoderate appetite for the laughable.
This artful dodger was the Black Guillemot. It cannot be shot, if its eye is on the fowler. Eager for "specimens," I tried my long, powerful ducking-gun upon it an hour or two later, sufficiently to prove this. The birds would wait and watch, all the while glancing from side to side, and dip, dip, dipping their bills in the water with infinite wary quickness of movement, and yet with an air of audacious unconcern; but the pull at the trigger seemed to touch some nerve in them, and by the same act you fired your shot at them and fired them under water.
The curious dipping of the bill just alluded to is mentioned as characteristic of the Phalaropes, though I did not observe it, and is thought to be a snapping-up of minute Crustacea. But in the case of the Black Guillemot, I question if this be its true explanation. The bird makes this movement only when on the alert. Several of them are frolicking together; you show yourself, and instantly their bills begin to dip,—each movement being quick as lightning, but with a second of space between. I thought it partly an escape-valve for their nervous excitement, and partly a keeping in practice of their readiness to dive. To suppose them taking food under such circumstances,—one would fain think himself more formidable in their eyes than that coolness would imply.
In the afternoon, however, of this day—to anticipate a little—my specimen was obtained. While the boat waited at the shore of a low island, the Judge and I sauntered up the smooth, bare granite slope to the ridge, and, looking over a breast-high wall of solid rock, saw a flock of these birds in a cove on the opposite side.
"Shall I fire?" I said.
"You couldn't hit them; they are more than two gun-shots off. However," added the Judge, presently, "your Long Tom will reach one gunshot, and fire one and a half more; it will do no harm to try."
I fired at the farthest; they went under, but when they returned to the surface one had come to grief. I walked leisurely towards them, and stood on the shore, reloading; but they gave me no heed; they were intent on their stricken comrade. Gathering around him, they began pulling at him with their bills, trying to replace him in an upright position. The poor fellow strove to comply, for he was not yet quite dead; but quickly fell over again on the side. They renewed their efforts, assiduously playing Good Samaritan to this brother who had fallen among human thieves. At last they got impatient, and pecked at him sharply, evidently looking on him as wanting in pluck. They had seemed very human before; but when they began to be vexed at him because he would not gratify their benevolence with the sense of success, I really could see no reason why they should be masquerading there in feathers, being as human as anybody!
It was an elegant bird, with its fine shape, its plumage of glossy jet and snow, and its legs of bright scarlet, bright as name. Use it has, too, for its flame-legs in the frigid seas it frequents; for it is found in the uttermost North, and dares all the severities of Polar cold.
But we have got into the afternoon too quickly, and now return to our morning pursuit of eider-duck. It was not long after the above spectacle of magic disappearance that the elder Canadian rose, went forward, and fired his piece. Two large birds, one black and white, the other brown, sprang up from the water and flew briskly away,—flew, as I thought, out of sight; the man meanwhile returning to his seat and the helm, with the same composed silence, and the same attractive, inscrutable face as before. But three hundred yards farther on we came to the male bird, quite dead. I was near firing upon it, being led by its motion on the waves to think it alive, and not in the least connecting it with the bird. I had but just now seen flying off in all apparent health,—when the Canadian, touching Bradford, and pointing, said quietly, "Dead," and the latter shouted to me accordingly. Presently, as the boat swept past, I stooped and drew it in,—a beautiful creature, with velvety violet black accompanied by dark olive-green about the head, while the neck, breast, and back were white as snow, and all the rest a glistening black.
"An eider! King eider!" cried the Artist, joyfully. Then, "Isn't it a king eider?" he said to the Canadian, holding it up.
The other nodded.
"Really a king eider!" murmured the Artist, as he now bent over it with bright eyes.
It was not, but the male of the other species, though I knew no better at the time. The king duck is one of the most Arctic of all Arctic birds, and condescends to Lower Labrador only in winter, nor then frequently. A temperature at the freezing-point is to him a mere oven, which one should be a salamander to live in; with the thermometer thirty or forty degrees lower, he is still sweltered; while his custom of growing his own coat, though it saves him from shoddy, expense, and Paris fashions, has the disadvantage that he cannot strip it off at pleasure, not even when away from the ladies and the dinner-table. He is fain, therefore, to keep well away toward the Polar North, where the climate is more temperate and pleasing, leaving Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to roast themselves, if they will do so.
While the boat sailed on, still seeking the eider-island,—which at first, so the Artist said, was "half a mile off," then "a piece farther," then "right up here," then "just ahead," and now threatened to keep ahead,—I nested myself again in the bottom, and renewed an old boy-custom by studying the elder Canadian's physiognomy. It was strangely attractive, and yet strangely impenetrable, a rare out-door face, clean and firm as naked granite after a rain, healthful as balsam-firs, and so honestly weather-beaten that one could not help regarding it as a feature of natural scenery. All out-of-doors was implied in it, and it belonged as much to the horizon as to the nearest objects. The eye, with its unceasing, imperturbable search, never an instant relaxing its intentness, and never seeming to make an effort any more than the sky in looking blue, asserted this relationship, for by the same glance it seemed to take in equally the farthest and the nearest; only over us in the boat it passed always as over vacant space. Yet any question was answered at once with quiet, willing brevity, not as if he had been interrupted in his thoughts, or was recalled to a recognition of our existence, but just as he would turn the tiller in steering his boat,—while the eye still continued its conversation with that impersonal, elemental company which he seemed to keep. I found it out of my power to relate myself to him as an individual. In most faces you study special character; but in him it was somewhat older and more primitive,—somewhat which seemed to be rather existence itself than any special form of it. One felt in him that same world-old secret which haunts ancient woods, and would have asked him to utter it, were not its presence the only utterance it can have. Alas, he that speaks must use English, French, or some language which is partly conventional; and that pre-Adamite or Saturnian vernacular in which we are all trying to speak has no verbal sign. Poets, indeed, contrive to catch it, one knows not how, in the meshes of ordinary language, and only therefore are poets; but to frame in it any question or answer suited to the wants of the understanding is a feat beyond man's power. It is true that Mr. Herbert Spencer, having, by diligent, heroic self-desiccation, got his mind into the purely adult, dried-beef condition, well freed from all boy-juices of imagination, has discovered that all Fact in this universe, which cannot be verbally formulated and made a scientific dogma, is without significance to man's spirit, however it may be negatively implied as a vacant somewhat by his logic. For which discovery the incomparable man will please accept my profoundest ingratitude.
After "positive philosophy," the croak of ravens, the hoot of owls, anything that has the touch, the charm, and infinite suggestion of Nature and life, will be more than welcome; and in good time we have reached the desired island.
Not to find eiders, though, but only Saddle-Back Gulls, a crowd of which arose on our approach, and hovered about at safe, yet tantalizing distance, keeping up their monotonous, piping scream. The saddle-back, a large, powerful white bird, with a patch of black crossing it like a saddle, is the great enemy of the eider, pillaging its nest and devouring its young at every opportunity, and had probably driven the ducks from this place. It is a pirate of pirates, a Semmes in the air, cowardly toward equals, relentless toward the weak and unweaponed; and the chief care of the mother duck is to protect her little brood from these greedy confederates. One of the coolest, yet wariest rascals in the world, it can scarcely be surprised, but lingers about, just beyond gun-shot range, screaming, as if it said, "Why don't you fire? Fire!—who cares?" I came at length to cherish toward them no little animosity, and would willingly have played Kearsarge upon them, could any challenge have drawn them from port. But during the whole cruise not one of them consoled us with so much as a feather.
The flight of this bird meanwhile is magnificent,—so full of powerful grace, of achieving leisure and ease. Nothing can be more striking than its contrast with the labored propulsion of the duck. A few slow waves of the wing, and there it is high in the air; then a droop, a decline, but so light and soft, so exquisitely graduated, that the downward drift of a feather seems lumpish and leaden in the comparison; then again up it goes with such an ease as if it rose by specific levity, like smoke from a chimney in a day of calm; and aloft it wheels, circles, floats, and at length sails on its broad vans away, passing in a few minutes over wide spaces, and yet, with its leisurely stroke, seeming engaged only in airing its pinions. One might fancy it the very spirit of motion imaged in a picturesque symbol.
In that delightful book, "Out-Door Papers," the author celebrates charmingly the charm of birds; but I, who am more humanist than naturalist, would say rather, What exhaustless fascination in their flight!—for this appears to touch by some subtile suggestion upon the hope or dream of man. I am, indeed, now—though always, please God, a boy—not so young a boy as once, when I could be unhappy for the want of wings, and deem, for a moment, that life is little worth without them; yet never does a bird fly in my view, especially if its flight be lofty and sustained, but it seems to carry some deep, immemorial secret of my existence, as if my immortal life flew with it. Sweet fugitive, when will it fly with me? Whenever it does,—and something assures me that one day it will,—then the new heavens and new earth! Meanwhile the intimation of it puts to the lip some unseen cup, out of which, in a soft ecstasy of pain that is better than pleasure, I quaff peace, peace. It is not always nor often that one is open to this supreme charm; but it comes at times, and then to hope all and believe all is easy as to breathe.
This mood also carries me farther than almost anything else into childhood; for, in the height of it, I can go back by link after link of remembrance, and see myself ... there ... and there ... and there again ... and at last deep into the rosy suffusion of dawn,—still looking up, and intent on that airy motion. To this day I know birds better by their flight than by their forms, unless it be the form of the wing.
I tried to see what it is which gives to the flight of some birds that look of majestic ease. Partly it is due to the slow stroke, but more, I thought, to the flexibility of the wing, and to the fact that this is less directly up-and-down in its action than that of the duck, for example. The chief effort of the duck is to sustain its weight. Consequently the wing must lie flat (comparatively) upon the air, and be kept straight out, economizing its vertical pressure; and hence the noticeable stiffness and toilsomeness of its progression. The gull, less concerned to sustain itself, uses the wing more flexibly, bending it slightly at the elbow, and pressing back the outer portion with each stroke. So a heavy swimmer must keep his hands flat, pressing down upon the water to hold up his head; while one who swims very lightly handles them more freely and flexibly, using them at pleasure to assist his progress. Yet the matter refuses to be wholly explained, and remains partly a mystery. Darwin, when in Patagonia, observed condors circling in the air, and saw them sail half an hour by the watch without any smallest vibration of the wings and without the smallest perceptible descent. I used in boyhood to see bald eagles do the same for a considerable period, though I never timed them exactly, and wonder at it now as I did then.
Away now to another island, still seeking ducks. Arrived, the Canadians land, in order, in Bradford's behalf, to have the first chance; while the Judge and I, who pretend to no skill with the gun, remain awhile behind. The island had the shape described in our first paper: a gentle slope and rock-beach on one side,—a steep, broken, half-precipitous descent on the other. Landing presently, I went slowly along the slope,—slowly, for one's feet sank deep at every step in the elastic moss, so that it was like walking on a feather-bed. Some patches of shrubbery, two and a half or three feet high,—the first approach to woody growth I had seen,—drew my attention; and it is curious now to think what importance they had in my eyes, as if here were the promise of a new world. I hastened towards them, forgetting the coveted ducks; and the Canadian's gun, which sounded in the distance, did not reawaken my ambition. Forgetting or remembering were probably much the same; for I had scarcely fired a gun in twenty and odd years, never had taken a bird on the wing, and, besides, must now fire from the left shoulder,—the right eye being like Goldsmith's tea-cups, "wisely kept for show." But as I touched the shrubbery there was a stir, a rustle, a whirr, and away went a large brown bird, scurrying off toward the sea. Upon the impulse of the moment, I up gun, and blazed after. To my amazement, the bird fell. I stumped off for my prize, actually achieving a sort of run, the first for years,—pretty sure, however, that the creature was making game of me rather than I of it, and would rise and flirt its tail in my face when I should be near enough to make the mockery poignant. No, the poor thing's game was up. It was a large bird, of an orange-brown hue, mottled with faint white and shadings of black. A powerful relenting came over me, and I could have sat down and cried like a baby, had that been suitable for a "boy" of my years.
"Do you know that was pretty well done?" cried a voice.
It was Bradford, who was hurrying up. I had no heart to answer; I was not jolly.
"Why, it's a female eider," he said, when near; "you've shot an eider on the wing!"
O tempora! O mores! then the Elder was glad!—all his compunction drowned in the pleasure of connecting himself, even through the gates of death, with a youthful fascination.
It now occurred to me—and the conjecture proved correct—that these plats of shrubbery must serve as hiding-places for the duck. The Canadians, whose behavior was all along mysterious, had forborne to give us any hint. I was vexed at them then, but had no reason perhaps. This was their larder, which they could not wish to impoverish. Besides, fishermen and visitors on this coast are so sweeping and ruthless in their destructions, that one might reasonably desire to protect the birds against them. It is not so much by shooting the birds as by destroying their eggs that the mischief is done. A party will take possession of an island at night, carry off every egg that can be found, and throw it into the sea,—then, returning next forenoon, take the fresh eggs laid in the mean time for food. On the whole, I feel less like blaming our guides than like returning to make apologies. Yet to us also the ducks are necessary, for we have no fresh meat but such as our guns obtain; and to one seeking health, this was a matter of some serious moment.
The elder Canadian has also shot a duck, and, besides, a red-breasted diver, a noble bird; and with these prizes we set sail for another island, frequented by "Tinkers." The day meanwhile had cleared, the sun shone richly, and we began to see somewhat of the glory, as well as grimness, of Labrador. Away to the southwest, eminent over the lesser islands, rose Mecatina, all tossed into wild billows of blue, with purple in the hollows; while to the north the hills of the mainland lifted themselves up to hold fellowship with it in height and hue.
"Tinker," we found, meant Murre and Razor-Billed Auk. These are finely shaped birds, black above and white below, twice the size of a pigeon, and closely resembling each other, save in the bill. That of the murre is not noticeable; but the other's is singularly shaped, and marked with delicate, finely cut grooves, the central one being nicely touched with a line of white, while a similar thread of white runs from the bill to the eye.
I notice it thus, because it suggested to me a reflection. Looking at this bill, I asked myself how Darwin's theory comported with it. "The struggle for life,"—are all the forms of organic existence due to that? But how did the struggle for life cut these grooves, paint these ornamental lines? "Beauty is its own excuse for being"; and that Nature respects beauty is, to my mind, nothing less than fatal to the Darwinian hypothesis. That his law exists as a modifying influence I freely admit, and accredit him with an important addition to our thought upon such matters; that it is the sole formative influence I shall be better prepared to believe when I see that beauty is not regarded in Nature, but is a mere casual attendant upon use. The artist Greenough did, indeed, strenuously maintain this last. But the sloth and the bird-of-paradise are equally useful to themselves; if beauty were but an aspect of use, these should be equally comely in our eyes. No; "the struggle for life" has not grooved the bill of the auk, and painted the tail of the peacock, any more, so far as I can see, than it has given to evening and morning their scarlet and gold. And so my auk said to me, "Any attempt to string existence upon a single thread has failed and will fail, unless it be that thread which man can never formulate, never stretch out into a straight line,—the Eternal Unity, God."
These birds have a catlike instinct of fidelity to old haunts, and, having once chosen a habitat, adhere to it, despite many a year of persecution. They prefer inaccessible cliffs, on every projecting shelf and jut of which the eggs are laid, but also inhabit islands where are many clefts, fissures, and holes made by tumbled masses of rock. This at which we had arrived was not much more than a hundred feet high; and the cliffs in which it terminated on one side were scarcely to be named inaccessible. The number of birds upon it seemed to our novice-eyes immense, but at a later period would have seemed trivial. They are always flying about the shores, and have also a laudable curiosity, which leads them to investigate when any strange form appears or any strange noise is made in the neighborhood of their homes.
On landing, the Judge made off to the left, and was soon heard from,—as it afterwards appeared, with immediate success. The Canadian and myself took our station upon a broad platform some forty feet above the sea, with steep rocks behind, and were soon busily engaged in—missing! It was nothing but bang! pish! bang! pshaw! for half an hour. It could not be said that the birds were indifferent to the prospect of being immortalized as specimens. On the contrary, they showed an appreciation of the honor, and an open zeal to obtain it, which were worthy of the highest commendation. But they very properly declined to be bungled even into a taxidermist paradise. Nothing could be more admirably orthodox than their resolution to be immortalized secundum artem; and considering how many are ready to sneak, without the smallest regard to desert or self-respect, into any attainable post mortem felicity, this honorable cut direct to all mere aukward and heterodox inductions into happiness begot in me toward these creatures sentiments of the highest consideration. All the while they kept flying past, often near, but always going through the air like a dart, as if they would say, "Take, but earn!"
At first the effect of this superior behavior on their part was to produce humiliation, and, along with this, a weak, nervous excitement, and an attempt to reach my ends by mere determination. I accordingly got to pulling upon them with a vehemence which probably disturbed my aim, as if I had been drawing at a halibut rather than at a trigger. But the gates which are appointed to fly open before a high behavior are but as the barred gates of Destiny toward mere low strength. The gods and birds were immitigable. I must do better, not merely do more.
Meditating on these matters, and moved by the lofty demeanor of my challengers, I at length proceeded seriously to self-amendment. Exchanging my large duck-shot for some of smaller size, I no longer blurted at my auk when he was just abreast; but, deferentially allowing him to pass, and then, aiming after him, as if I accepted his lead, I gently suggested to him my desires; whereupon, in the most becoming manner, he descended and plumped into the sea, without so much as flapping a wing, or being guilty of the faintest impropriety. It was beautiful. Continuing this behavior, I found my attentions uniformly reciprocated. Once, indeed, when I fell into a shade of brusquerie, the individual whom I had complimented stood upon his self-respect, and, as I thought, flew away; but Bradford, who had courteously come up just as I began to succeed, was so kind as to see him fall punctiliously into the water, when he had gone far enough to suggest a reprimand of my slight unseemliness. And now, when the Artist was Christian enough to exclaim, "Why, Blank, I did not know you were such a shot!" I thought it high time to rest on my (back and) laurels. Reposing, therefore, upon the round leathern pillow which was my inseparable and invaluable companion, I enjoyed my spine-ache cum dignitate till the others were ready to return.
On the way to the ship an eider sprang up from a steep ridge we were passing, and fell in a second, Bradford exclaiming, "That's the best shot to-day!" The yawl soon followed us. Ph—— had taken two eiders on the wing; we had six in all. Others brought auks and murres; but the Judge still led the van. Next morning the Colonel and Judge brought in four eiders,—the last for the entire voyage. Others were afterward seen, but only seen. The Parson, some weeks later, closed our intrusive intimacy with them by an attempt to capture some of their young in the water. It couldn't be done. They were only a few days old, but, rich in pre-natal instruction, they always waited until the hand was just upon them,—not to waste any part of their stay beneath water,—and then—under in a moment. One saw that pirate saddle-back must needs bestir himself in order to catch them, and one could appreciate the sagacity of the mother duck in hurrying her brood, almost as soon as they are born, into the water.
And so farewell, eiders! If all goes to my wish, you shall yet have a place on other-world islands and seas, where saddle-backs shall not pillage your nests, nor coat-backs point at you any Long Tom!
We give account only of what was characteristic, and therefore will now jump five weeks of time and a hundred leagues of space. But since this is a long leap, a few stepping-stones will be convenient. The Parson, then, has brought in on the way a nice batch of velvet duck, noticeable for their extremely large, oval, elevated, scarlet nostrils; we have shot at seals, and almost hit them in the most admirable manner; we have hunted for an indubitable polar bear,—and found a dog and a midnight mystification; we have played at chess, euchre, backgammon, whist, debating-club, story-telling, nightmare,—one of our number developing an incomparable genius for the last; we have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and have lost the game; we have played at catching trout, and found this the best joke of all. There are beautiful brook-trout on the coast of Labrador. They say so; it is so. Beautiful trout,—mostly visible to the naked eye! Not many of them, but enough to gratify an elegant curiosity.
But here we are, July 21, lat. 54° 30'. Bradford has hooked an iceberg, and will "play him" for the afternoon. Half a mile off is an island of the character common to most of the innumerable islands strown all along from Cape Charles to Cape Chudleigh,—an alp submerged to within three hundred feet of the summit. Such islands, and such a coast! But this is a notable "bird-island." So three of us are set ashore there with our guns, the indefatigable Professor coming along also with his perpetual net.
The island—which is rather two islands than one, for straight through it, toward the eastern extremity, goes the narrowest possible chasm—proved precipitous and inaccessible, save in a bit of inlet at the hither opening of this chasm and on three rods of sloping rock to the right. Like almost all its fellows, however, it raises one side higher than the other; and conjecturing that the farther and higher face would be the favorite haunt of these cliff-loving birds,—murres and auks again,—I left my companions busily shooting near the landing, and made my way up and across. It was no easy task, for the wild rock was tossed and tilted, broken and heaped and saw-toothed, as if it represented some savage spasm or fit of madness in Nature. But clambering, sliding, creeping, zigzagging, turning back to find new openings, and in every manner persisting, I slowly got on; while deep down in the chasm on my left,—a hundred feet deep, and in the middle not more than a foot wide, though champered away a little at the top,—the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It was awfully impressive,—so impressive that I reflected neither upon it nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled, sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy creeping over the bare peaks of existence, while out of the blind heart of the world issued an everlasting prayer,—a prayer without hope! And this, too, if not boy's play, was a true piece of boy-experience. I can recall—and better now by the aid of this half-hour—moments in childhood when existence became thus awful, when it overpowered, overwhelmed me, and when time, instead of melting in golden ripeness into the fruitful eternity that lies before, seemed to fall back, doomed forever, into the naked eternity behind. Goethe's "Erl-King," almost alone in modern literature, touches truly, and on its shadowed side, the immeasurable secret which haunts and dominates the heart of a child; while Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood" is our noblest suggestion of its illuminated obverse side.
At length I issued upon the opposite face of the island, and found myself on a shelf of rock about three feet wide, with one hundred and fifty feet, more or less, of vertical cliff beneath, and about the same height of half-cliff behind and above. It was a pretty perch, and gave one a feeling of consequence; for what pigmy perched on Alps ever failed to consider his elevation one of stature strictly, and not at all of position? The outer edge of the shelf rose, inclosing me as in a box, so that I was safe as the owner of an annuity based upon United States securities. Away to my right the perpendicular cliff rose higher still, and, being there covered with clefts, cavelets, and narrow shelves, was the peculiar home of the birds, who had taken possession of this island on a long lease.
Their numbers were inconceivable. Two hundred yards off in the water was an island of them, an acre of feathery black. To the right I could see them now and then ascending in literal clouds; and the sober Ph——, who rowed along here beyond my view, saw the cliffs, as he looked up, white for a half-mile with their snowy breasts, and could find no words to express his sense of their multitude.
But so far as I was concerned,—for my comrades did better,—it was the birds themselves that did the sporting that afternoon. They came streaming by, never crowding together so that more than one could be included in the chances of shot, but incessantly trailing along, and scurrying past with the speed of an arrow. I peppered away, with little result but that of spicing their afternoon's enjoyment for them; for the wicked creatures took it all in the jolliest way, flinging themselves past with a flirt and a wink, just as if I had been no lord of creation at all. I had disdained to shoot them when at rest; for there seemed to be some ancient compact between us, by which they were to have their chance and I mine. But when one came and planted himself on a little jut thirty yards to my right, and mocked me with a look of patronage, seeming to regard me as the weaker party and to incline to my side, I broke the pact, and, masking my hurt conceit under some virtuous indignation against him as a deserter and traitor, turned and smote him under the fifth rib.
And now it came upon me that I must secure that bird. To shoot without obtaining were mere wantonness. Yes, I would have him, and justify myself to myself. To do it was difficult, even in Labradorian boy-eyes. Between me and the auk the upper half of the cliff made a deep recess, terminating in a right angle, with a platform of granite some seventy-five feet below. Along both faces of this recess, nearly on a level with myself, ran a shelf not more than six inches wide, with vertical wall above and beneath; and on this I must go. I began, therefore, working along this, proceeding with care, observing my footing, and clutching with my hands whatever knob or crevice I could find. But when near the angle, I found that the shelf terminated some two feet short of its apex, and began again at about the same distance beyond. Seeking about cautiously for finger-hold, I reached out my left foot, and planted it on the opposite side, but could not stretch far enough to make a place for the right foot when I should withdraw it. I began debating with myself, whether, in case I should swing across and rest on the left foot alone, I could work this along and make room for the right. I knew that the process would have to be repeated on my return; so I must estimate two chances at once.
And now for the first time, as I stood thus, some faint misgiving arose in me, some faint question whether I was not doing one unjustifiable thing to avoid doing another. It occurred to me that there was another personage,—not a bird-seeking boy, like this one here, but a grave man,—with whom I had an important connection, and who cherished serious purposes and had many hopes of worthy labor yet to fulfil. Was I doing the fair thing by him? He was not here, to be sure; I had left him somewhere between Worcester and Labrador, with due pledge of reunion; but even in his absence he was to be considered. Besides, he was my master, and though he had permitted me to go gambolling off by myself, on my promise to bring him back a more serviceable spine, yet his claim remained, and I should be dishonorable to ignore it.
At first, indeed, these considerations seemed vague, far-fetched, little better than affectations. The clear thing to be done was to get that bird. This done, I could consider the rest. To admit any other thought militated in some way against the singleness and compactness of my being. Wise or unwise, what had I to do with far-off matters of that sort? My business was to succeed in a certain task, not to be sage and so forth. I actually felt a kind of shame to be debating any other than the all-important question, Can I get my right foot over here beside the left? Nor was it till certain faces pictured themselves to my mind, that the heart took part with reason, and the tangential left foot returned, rounding itself once more into the proper orbit of my life. I had been standing there perhaps a minute.
It was an invaluable experience. It carried me farther into the heart of the boy-world than I had gone for twenty-five years and more. And as the boy-world is the big world, the life of too many being but another and less attractive phase of boyhood, it supplied a gloss to the book of daily observation, which I could on no account part with. The inconceivable indifference of most men to considerations of speculative truth became conceivable. The way in which the axioms of sages slip off from multitudes, as mere vague "glittering generalities," good enough for cherishers of the "intuitions" to lisp of by moonlight, but sheer fiddle-dee-dee to firmly built men,—the commentary of the able lawyer upon Emerson's lecture, "I don't understand it, but my girls do!"—all this appears in a new light. Are not most men working along some cliff, financial or other, after a bird? And do they not honestly regard it as mere nonsense to be thinking about being sage and so forth, when the real question is how to get the right foot across here beside the left?
I had gone back to my perch, where a rueful, puerile remorse tugged now and then at my elbow, and said, "But that bird! You haven't given up that bird?" when the Professor appeared on the apex of the island above, shouting, "Here's a"—hawk, I thought he said, and caught up my gun. But what? Fox? Yes,—"blue fox."
Now, then, up the cliff! Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping—actually jumping, I!—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds—many thanks to them!—which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves firmly in the rock; at last I reached the height, puffing like a high-pressure steam-engine.
"H-h-h-where—ff! ff!—h-is-ee?"
"Right over here. I've been chasing him this last half-hour. Finally, the audacious little rascal would stick up his head over a rock, and bark at me."
I soon had him; and was again struck with the vivacity which may be exhibited by a creature whose life is really ended. As I fired, the animal gave a loud "whish!" and sped away like the wind, disappearing behind a jut of rock five or six rods farther away; but five feet from that point I found it dead. This post mortem activity, they told me, was made possible by the small size of the shot. Perhaps, then, a creature slain with a missile sufficiently subtile might go an indefinite time without finding it out, supposing itself alive and well. Institutions and politicians, we have all known, possess this power of ignoring their own decease. Judaism has been dead these eighteen hundred years; yet here are Jew synagogues in New York and Boston. Were the like true of individuals, it might explain to us some lives which seem inexplicable on any other hypothesis. I think, for example, of some editors, who are evidently post-dating their decease; and when these go on writing leading articles, and being sweet upon "our brethren of the South," one does not say, "Disloyal," but only, "So long in learning what has happened!"
My prize was the white fox, a year old, and not quite in adult costume. How it got upon this island were matter for conjecture. Probably on the ice.
Another skip,—and here we are upon another of these summits surrounded by sea. The home of Puffins this is. The puffin is an odd little fellow, smaller than the auk, but of the same general hue, with a short neck and a queer bill. This is very thin from side to side, twice as wide up and down as it is long, strongly marked with concentric scarlet ridges, and altogether agrees so little with this plain-looking bird, that one can scarcely regard it as belonging naturally to him, and fancies that he must lay it aside at night, as people do false teeth. It is an easy bird to take flying; for, on seeing you, it peaks its wings downward in a manner indescribably prim and prudish, and scales past, turning its stubby neck, and inspecting you with an air of comical, muddy gravity and curiosity. My comrade, Ph——, got two dozen to my eight; but I was consoled with a large Arctic falcon, which had been dining at fashionable hours on a full-grown puffin, having set its table in a deep gorge between vertical walls. It was of the kind called by Audubon Falco Labradora, concerning which Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institute, who has had the kindness to write to me, doubts whether it may not be an immature stage of Falco Candicans, one of the two undoubted species of Arctic falcons. Captain Handy, however, a very observant and intelligent man, was sure, from the feeling of the bones, that it must be an old bird.
Once more only I will ask the reader to accompany me. We had gone ashore in a place called Stag Bay, not to hunt stags, but to seek a bear, to whose acquaintance we seemed to have obtained a preliminary introduction by trustworthy informations. Bruin, however, positively declined the smallest approach to intimacy, refusing even to look at our cards, and sending out the most hopeless "Not at home." Separating, therefore, we strolled on the beach,—for a beach there actually was at this place,—and observing some Piping Plovers, tiny waders, I made for them. One of them stood as sentinel on a rock, and, thinking the ornithologist might like him for a specimen, I fired. The large shot scattered around him, the distance being considerable, without injury; but I insisted on his being dead, and searched as if enough of searching would in some way cause him to be so. It wouldn't, however; and I was about turning away, when, a rod or two off, I saw him evidently desperately wounded. "Ah! there is my bird, after all," I muttered, and started with a leisurely step to pick it up. Terrified at my approach, the little wretch began to hobble and flutter away, keeping about his original distance. I quickened my pace; he exerted his broken strength still more, and made out to mend his. I walked as rapidly as I could; but new terror lent the poor thing new wings, and it contrived—I could not for my life conjecture how—to keep a little beyond my reach. It would not do to leave him suffering thus; and I coaxed myself into a quick run, when up the little hypocrite sprang, and scudded away like a bee! Not the faintest suspicion of its being otherwise than at death's door had entered my mind until that moment, though I had seen this trick less skilfully performed before.
Returning, I went to the top of the beach and began examining the coarse grass which grew there, thinking that the nests must be hereabout, and desirous of a peep at the eggs. I had hardly pushed my foot in this grass a few times, when another wounded bird appeared but a few feet off. The emergency being uncommon, it put forth all its histrionic power, and never Booth or Siddons did so well. With breast ploughing in the sand, head falling helplessly from side to side, feet kicking out spasmodically and yet feebly behind, and wings fluttering and beating brokenly on the beach, it seemed the very symbol of fear, pain, and weakness, I made a sudden spring forward,—off it went, but immediately returned when I pushed my foot again toward the grass, renewing its speaking pantomime. I could not represent suffering so well, if I really felt it. With a convulsive kick, its poor little helpless head went under, and it tumbled over on the side; then it swooned, was dying; the wings flattened out on the sand, quivering, but quivering less and less; it gasped with open mouth and closing eye, but the gasps grew fainter and fainter; at last it lay still, dead; but when I poked once more in the grass, it revived to endure another spasm of agony, and die again. "Dear, witty little Garrick," I said, "had you a thousand lives and ten thousand eggs, I would not for a kingdom touch one of them!" and I wished he could show me some enemy to his peace, that I might make war upon the felon forthwith.
And in this becoming frame of mind I ended my chapter of "Boy's Play in Labrador."
THE OLD HOUSE.
My little birds, with backs as brown
As sand, and throats as white as frost,
I've searched the summer up and down,
And think the other birds have lost
The tunes you sang, so sweet, so low,
About the old house, long ago.
My little flowers, that with your bloom
So hid the grass you grew upon,
A child's foot scarce had any room
Between you,—are you dead and gone?
I've searched through fields and gardens rare,
Nor found your likeness anywhere.
My little hearts, that beat so high
With love to God, and trust in men,
Oh, come to me, and say if I
But dream, or was I dreaming then,
What time we sat within the glow
Of the old-house hearth, long ago?
My little hearts, so fond, so true,
I searched the world all far and wide,
And never found the like of you:
God grant we meet the other side
The darkness 'twixt us now that stands,
In that new house not made with hands!