The Way of the Wild

by F. St. Mars

Here was a bird accustomed to power, to respect, and to wield fear, as a king might do; but he was no king, even among birds. He was a great black-backed gull, immense, austere, and cruel, with eyes as cold as the waves whose glitter they reflected, and a heart as implacable as the storm that cherished it; sea-rover, pillager, pirate, swashbuckler, son of the storm in whose fierce buffetings he rejoiced, master of the gale upon whose fury he flourished—the very spirit of the ocean's frontiers, arrayed in the spotless uniform of the sea, sailing under her bold colors.

And then, as he suddenly came, the watcher, had there been one, would have looked at him expectantly, for an eagle, bristling with weapons, so to speak, fierce-eyed, mighty, and scowling, came flapping heavily across the white-fretted bay. There is expression in birds, and most have their feelings and their character stamped upon their whole body. But there was no expression in Cob. His cold eyes continued to stare with steady stoniness, his vast vans to waft an occasional shallow, lazy quarter-flap, his spotless head to peer down at times. Once only, as the real king of the birds, on his course, drew very near, so that you could hear the deep, dry "hough! hough!" of the powerful wings, did Cob open his red-stained—as it were blood—yellow beak, and give utterance—one could call it no more—and so instantly close his beak again and revert to his absolute expressionlessness that one had a job to realize what, or who, in all that vast scene, had spoken.

"I'm-Great-Black-Back!" he said very quietly, quickly, gratingly, and tersely; and then, as if expecting an answer, added, "Eh?" in a hollow undertone.

The eagle's imperial head jerked round as he flew, and he shot a stabbing, sheathed glance at the great sea-bird, as a king might at a man in a crowd who begins to fumble at his hip-pocket. But, save for that, he took no further notice, and beat on with his terrific, piston-like, regular wing-beats; and the gull, that speckless, dazzling, hardened, hard giant, laughed—laughed, I say, softly and to himself, hoarsely and insolently: "How-how-how-how!" It was as if he laughed in derision.

And then a strange thing happened. From the opposite stupendous cliffs, draped in snow, bejeweled with icicles, frowning and desolate, an ominous black shape flung itself furiously, and made straight for the eagle, barking hoarsely with rage as it came. Another hollow bark followed, and a second evil ebony form hurled down from the tottering cliff-top, and flapped towards the eagle in the path of the first. Bark echoed bark above the deep mutter of the breakers, and the echoes along the cliffs answered both uncannily and mockingly.

They were a raven, disturbed from her wool-quilted nest, and her mate; but if they had been hobgoblins straight from an evil dream, they could not, in that immense, grim setting, have been much more impressive.

The great black-backed gull said no more, but wheeled on as if nothing had happened.

The eagle said nothing, and tried to beat on as if nothing had happened, too. He did not succeed, for the ravens who had been addressing him most particularly soon addressed themselves personally to him; and before he knew just how it all came about, they had summoned a quite amazing and unexpected aerial acrobatic power, and were shooting and diving, striking and flapping, about his regal head in a manner that even he could not pretend any longer to ignore. No one, not even a king of all the birds, feels comfortable under the imminent possibility of losing an eye—and such a haughty, wonderful eye, too. Nor did the eagle. And he showed it. One presumes he might have abolished the pair—one or both—but the eagle never let on what he presumed. What he knew was that he had nothing to gain in a fight with such super-hooligans, and everything to lose, for one wound only might mean a dead eagle viâ starvation and a dead raven—what was a dead raven worth, anyway, to him, or anybody else?

Therefore the eagle changed his mind about continuing his course, which would have taken him above the ravens' nest. He did it grandly, and without giving the impression that the ravens had anything to do with it—he could have squeezed the life out of them with one awful handshake, if his heart had been as big as his claws. But they had something to do with it. And they knew it. So did Cob, who laughed again, hoarsely and as one appreciating a joke, while he wheeled and wheeled over the following waves, seeing all things and never appearing to see anything.

Then at last, when the king of all the birds had sunk, like a speck of floating burnt paper, away over the far, white-mantled hills, the ravens suddenly evaporated into nowhere. Probably no one had seen them go except Cob, and Cob was by now a lonely, dwindling speck away over the restless ocean. Then he was not. He was coming back, swinging along with great, easy, shallow half-flaps, so sublimely lazy that he seemed merely to swim through the gale. But he covered distance; there was speed as well as majesty in his flight, for all that.