THE DANCE OF DEATH
O
ON this first day of August I was awakened early by something about the hut which I could not understand. It kept shaking, and there was a noise as of something in some kind of indirect contact with it. I only thought of man; and what any one should be doing on this solitary hill at such an hour I could not for the life of me imagine. The shaking and straining, however, continued; so I got up, and, on opening the door, away, with startled looks, rushed two sheep—a dam and her big lamb—who had been rubbing themselves against the iron wires that run from each corner of the roof of my little sentry-box to stakes set in the ground, to which they are fastened in order to strengthen the building. How they stared at me through the thin, damp mists of the morning, petrified at first! and then how wildly they plunged away! I remembered then often to have seen sheep's wool hanging to these wires; and one of them is very much loosened. So there is a little harm done, even by these "woolly fools"; and were they wild creatures, the Philistine mind, which is the great controlling power in everything, would have nothing to set against it. Only the pleasure of killing it is thought worthy to be set in competition against the smallest degree of damage that a wild animal, however beautiful and interesting, may do; but this is such a great set-off that the whole country might be ruined by beasts before any true sportsman would wish to have the evil ended together with his daily blood-draught. The same man who would keep up foxes, to the ruin of agriculture and the depopulation of poultry-yards, makes a shout against the poor cormorants, because to the million enemies that prevent any one kind of fish from crowding out every other kind, it adds its wholly inappreciable efforts. "This also is vanity and a great evil." But what a picturesque morning call to receive!
The three young guillemots are still where they were, but the fourth, which was the first one I saw, and the largest, seems to be gone. I saw this little bird pretty plainly through the glasses, and often flapping its little wings; and it seemed to me evident that it could not yet fly. But who shall say absolutely that it could not, seeing how soon young pheasants do, and how strange and little fitted for it they look? Still more, who shall say that, though it cannot fly, it may not have been able to flutter down to the sea? Until, therefore, the young guillemot is actually seen to leave the ledge, there can be no certainty as to the manner in which it leaves it. Perhaps it has been seen to. Je n'en sais rien, nor do I want to except through experience. What is a cake to me if I cannot eat it?
I have just seen a curious contrast. A pair of birds, for some reason, began to fight, and fought most vigorously. Suddenly they stopped, both of them in a funny set attitude, and each the counterpart of the other. A moment afterwards they were cossetting with the greatest tenderness—every mark of the strongest affection. It is to be presumed, therefore, that they were bird and wife. Guillemots, in their marital relations, are the most affectionate of birds; but this is compatible with the most violent jars—just as it is amongst ourselves. "Ce sont petites choses qui sont de temps en temps nécessaires dans l'amitié; et cinq ou six coups de bâton entre gens qui s'aiment, ne font que ragaillardir l'affection."
Now a bird flies in with a fish, and one of the two chicks left on this part of the cliffs is fed. It was just the same as in the make-believe yesterday—attitude, etc., and the other parent bustling up—except that as the chick was there to take the fish, and wanted no pressing, the ceremony was much sooner over. It is such a cold, sharp wind, now, though the 2nd of August, that I have to tent myself in my Scotch plaid as though I were a young guillemot, besides having a Shetland shawl round my waist, to keep away the lumbago—which, for all that, still plays light fantasias on this poor "machine that is to me." So "here I and sorrow sit," on a razor-blade between two precipices, the one sheer, the other a horrible slant, and look down at another, on the ledges of which are my guillemots and shrieking kittiwakes. Heavens, on what slopes and inclines some of the former sit and crawl! They can fly, it is true; but I cannot, and cannot but remember this, though I am so altruistic that I keep on imagining myself to be them. Now I see the chick that I thought had gone, making the fourth again, in all. It must have moved some distance, to get to where it is. And now comes the Shetland rain.
This was a sharp shower, and by being driven to take refuge I have found a better place. I now look down upon the same slab of rock, not thirty feet below me, that I watched before across a gulf. Seven grown guillemots are full in view, and, now and then, two of the chicks. In these I notice that the black of the upper surface is beginning to encroach upon the white of the throat, which, a day or two back, extended to the beak, being continuous with the breast and belly. Now a little collar of black is pushing round from both sides under the chin, and trying to meet, thinly and faintly, in the centre. The colouring of the adult bird, therefore, in which the neck and throat are dark like the body, is in process of establishing itself.
Each of these two chicks is guarded by a parent bird, who stands between it and the sea; but one of them more relentlessly so than the other. Another parent, who may pass for the mother, stands a little behind one of them, and stretches out a wing. The little one, snuggling up to her, presses its little head amongst the feathers of her side, just under this wing. The mother immediately clasps him with it, and, with half of him thus concealed, he squats down on the rock and evidently goes to sleep. And so close and tight is the embracement that if the mother moves a little, to one or the other side, the chick, moving its little legs, goes with her, partly pulled and partly waddling, but as though all in one with her. Thus they sit together, mother and child, for half an hour or more at a time; and, at these intervals, the chick wakes up, comes out of his feathery dark-closet, and, standing on the rock, preens himself, like a spruce little gentleman. Then, in a few seconds, he goes in again, and the mother, as ready as ever, covers him up as before. The wing is just like an arm, tenderly pressing the child to the mother's side. But all this while—and I think I must have watched them about two hours—the other little chick stands free on the rock, and most busily preens himself. He is guarded, however, as I said. Had it not been for that other chick that I saw go for quite a little walk by itself, I should have thought that they always were, till they left the ledge. But probably as they get older they become just a trifle more independent, and possibly also the size of the ledge or cranny they are born on makes a difference.