Children of the Wild

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

"But all passes—even an Arctic winter. The sun began to make short daily trips across the horizon. It got higher and higher, and hotter and hotter. The snow began to melt, crumble, shrink upon itself. Up to within a couple of hundred yards of the hidden snowhouse, what had seemed to be solid land broke up and revealed itself as open sea, crowded with huge ice cakes, and walrus, and seals. Sea birds came splashing and screaming. And a wonderful thrill awoke in the air.

"That thrill got down into the snowhouse—the roof of which was by this time getting much thinner. The cub found himself much less sleepy. He grew restless. He wanted to stretch his sturdy little legs to find out what they were good for. His mother, too, woke up. She found herself so hungry that there was no temptation to go to sleep again. Moreover, it was beginning to feel too warm for comfort—that is, for a polar bear's comfort, not for yours or mine—in the snowhouse. She got up and shook herself. One wall of the snowhouse very civilly gave way a bit, allowing her more room. But the roof, well supported by the rock, still held. The snowhouse was full of a beautiful pale-blue light.

"Just at this particular moment a little herd of walrus—two old bulls and four cows with their fat, oily-looking calves—came sprawling, floundering and grunting by. They were quite out of place on land, of course, but for some reason known only to themselves they were crossing over the narrow neck of low ground from another bay, half a mile away. Perhaps the ice pack had been jammed in by wind and current on that side, filling the shallow bay to the bottom and cutting the walrus off from their feeding grounds. If not that, then it was some other equally urgent reason, or the massive beasts, who can move on land only by a series of violent and exhausting flops, would never have undertaken an enterprise so formidable as a half-mile overland journey. They were accomplishing it, however, with a vast deal of groaning and wheezing and deep-throated grunting, when they arrived at the end of the crevice wherein the snowhouse baby and his mother were concealed.

"Lifting their huge, whiskered and tusked heads, and plunging forward laboriously on their awkward nippers, the two old bulls went by, followed by the ponderous cows with their lumpy, rolling calves. The hindermost cow, a few feet to the right of the herd, came so close to the end of the crevice that the edge of the snow gave way and her left nipper slipped into it, throwing her forward upon her side. As she struggled to recover herself, close beside her the snow was heaved up, and a terrible, grinning white head emerged, followed by gigantic shoulders and huge, claw-armed, battling paws.

"This sudden and dreadful apparition startled the walrus cow into new vigor, so that with a convulsive plunge she tore herself free of the pitfall. For a couple of seconds the old bear towered above her, with sagacious eyes taking in the whole situation. Then, judiciously ignoring the mother, she sprang over her, treading her down into the snow, fell upon the fat calf, and with one tremendous buffet broke its neck.

"With a hoarse roar of grief and fury the cow wheeled upon her haunches, reared her sprawling bulk aloft, and tried to throw herself upon the slayer. The bear nimbly avoided the shock, and whirled round to see where her cub was. Blinking at the light and dazed by the sudden uproar, but full of curiosity, he was just crawling up out of the ruins of the snowhouse. His mother dragged him forth by the scruff of the neck, and with a heave of one paw sent him rolling over and over along the snow, a dozen paces out of danger. At the same time something in her savage growls conveyed to him a first lesson in that wholesome fear which it is so well for the children of the wild to learn early. As he pulled himself together and picked himself up he was still full of curiosity, but at the same time he realized the absolute necessity for keeping out of the way of something, whatever it was.

"He soon saw what it was. At the cry of the bereaved mother the two great walrus bulls had turned. Now, with curious, choked roars, which seemed to tear their way with difficulty out of their deep chests, they came floundering back to the rescue. The cub, a sure instinct asserting itself at once, looked behind him to see that the path of escape was clear. Then he sat up on his haunches, his twinkling little eyes shifting back and forth between those mighty oncoming bulks and the long, gaunt, white form of his mother.

"For perhaps half a minute the old bear stood her ground, dodging the clumsy but terrific onslaughts of the cow, and dealing her two or three buffets which would have smashed in the skeleton of any creature less tough than a walrus or an elephant. But she had no notion of risking her health and the future of her baby by cultivating any more intimate acquaintance with those two roaring mountains of blubber which were bearing down upon her. When they were within just one more crashing plunge, she briskly drew aside, whirled about, and trotted off to join her cub. They were really so clumsy and slow, those walruses, that she hardly cared to hurry.

"For a few yards the two bulls pursued her; so she and the cub strolled off together to a distance of some fifty paces, and there halted to see what would happen next. Even creatures so dull-witted as those walrus bulls could see they would waste their time if they undertook to chase bears on dry land, so they turned back, grumbling under their long tusks, and joined the cow in inspecting the body of the dead calf. Soon coming to the conclusion that it was quite too dead to be worth bothering about, they all three went floundering on after the other cows, who had by this time got their own calves safely down to the water, and were swimming about anxiously, as if they feared that the enemy might follow them even into their own element. Then, after as brief an interval as discretion seemed to require, the old bear led the way back, sniffed at the body of the fat walrus calf, and crouched down beside it with a long woof of deepest satisfaction. For it is not often, let me tell you, that a polar bear, ravenous after her long winter's fast, is lucky enough to make a kill like that just at the very moment of coming out of her den."

Uncle Andy knocked the ashes out of his pipe with that air of finality which the Child knew so well, and sometimes found so disappointing'.