Then an unusual silence fell over the garden; the majority of the birds having joined the crowd of pursuers. It is strange how we all bury our hatchets in face of a common danger!
It seemed almost death-like for the moment, till, from the top of a larch, a chaffinch bubbled forth. At least there was one happy bird left. Then I bethought me about baby-blackbird No. 2. The villain had only carried off one. We got a ladder, but no bird was in the nest!
We decided it must have fallen out in the scrimmage, and searched carefully. After a while we found it, helpless and terrified, among the ferns, just where it had fallen, in the grotto.
As it didn’t seem able to walk or fly, we left it there, and sat down to watch events. Back came poor Martha presently. She looked in the nest, then flew distractedly about. But I suppose the baby was too dazed with fright to do a thing, at any rate it never uttered a sound or call; and the distressed mother flew off again to the woods on her hopeless quest.
We remained on watch the whole afternoon and evening; but neither parent returned. Then I began to get anxious. I put a little food near the frightened crouching thing, but it took no notice. Only once it gave a piteous cry; how I wished it would keep it up! That at least would surely reach the mother in time. But it didn’t repeat the call.
At last we had to go in, because it was getting dark, and every bird but our poor little baby was safely in bed. We tried to console ourselves by saying that it would probably be all right, and it was wonderful how birds survived all sorts of dangers. But, all the same, we none of us believed we should ever see him again; and we shook our heads silently next morning, when we found an empty space under the ferns, where we had left him overnight.
During the day, my suspicions were aroused by the fact that Augustus returned again and again to the bird-board and stuffed his beak full of provender, which he carried off in the good old way. But the moment I tried to follow him, he merely went into a near-by tree, and tried to say “Chut! chut!” with his mouth full!
It took me all the afternoon, and used up all the stealth and cautiousness I possess, to track him. He would not fly any more than he could help; he kept right down on the ground, running along with his head slightly lowered, keeping close to the shadow of the wall, slipping under hedges and low growths, always looking about from side to side, standing stock still when he scented danger—in this way he got up the hill, and right across a field, to where a big Wellingtonia stands like a pyramid, against a stone wall, its outspreading branches drooping protectingly, and hiding all sorts of secrets in its dark green depths.
Behold, there was Martha, anxiously waiting on the doorstep, so to speak, for Augustus to return. She was as cautious in her movements as he was, but she couldn’t help uttering a low “Chut! chut!” of pleasure when she saw his beak so crammed with good things. Both slipped in under the lowest branch.