Children of the Wild

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

"The baby, on the other hand, was momentarily expecting that the bear would come over and bite her. Why else, if not from some such sinister motive, had he come aboard her raft, when he had been traveling on a perfectly good tree? The tree looked so much more interesting than her bare raft, on which she had been voyaging for over an hour, and of which she was now heartily tired. To be sure, the bear was not much bigger than her own Teddy Bear at home, which she was wont to carry around by one leg, or to spank without ceremony whenever she thought it needed discipline. But the glossy black of the stranger was quite unlike the wild and grubby whiteness of her Teddy, and his shrewd little twinkling eyes were quite unlike the bland shoe buttons which adorned the face of her uncomplaining pet. She wondered when her mother would come and relieve the strain of the situation.

"All at once the raft, which had hitherto voyaged with a discreet deliberation, seemed to become agitated. Boiling upthrusts of the current, caused by some hidden unevenness on the bottom, shouldered it horridly from beneath, threatening to tear it apart, and unbridled eddies twisted it this way and that with sickening lurches. The tree was torn from it and snatched off reluctant all by itself, rolling over and over in a fashion that must have made the cub rejoice to think that he had quitted a refuge so eccentric in its behavior. As a matter of fact, the flood was now sweeping the raft over what was, at ordinary times, a series of low falls, a succession of saw-toothed ledges which would have ripped the raft to bits. Now the ledges were buried deep under the immense volume of the freshet. But they were not to be ignored, for all that. And they made their submerged presence felt in a turmoil that became more and more terrifying to the two little passengers on the raft.

"There was just one point in the raft, one only, that was farther away than any other part from those dreadful, seething-crested black surges—and that was the very center. The little bear backed toward it, whimpering and shivering, from his corner.

"From her corner, directly opposite, the baby too backed toward it, hitching herself along and eyeing the waves in the silence of the terror. She arrived at the same instant. Each was conscious of something alive, and warm, and soft, and comfortable—with motherly suggestion in the contact. The baby turned with a sob and flung her arms about the bear. The bear, snuggling his narrow black snout under her arm as if to shut out the fearful sight of the waves, made futile efforts to crawl into a lap that was many sizes too small to accommodate him.

"In some ten minutes more the wild ledges were past. The surges sank to foaming swirls, and the raft once more journeyed smoothly. The two little voyagers, recovering from their ecstasy of fear, looked at each other in surprise—and the bear, slipping off the baby's lap, squatted on his furry haunches and eyed her with a sort of guilty apprehension.

"Here it was that the baby showed herself of the dominant breed. The bear was still uneasy and afraid of her. But she, for her part, had no more dread of him whatever. Through all her panic she had been dimly conscious that he had been in the attitude of seeking her protection. Now she was quite ready to give it—quite ready to take possession of him, in fact, as really a sort of glorified Teddy Bear come to life; and she felt her authority complete. Half-coaxingly, but quite firmly, and with a note of command in her little voice which the animal instinctively understood, she said: 'Turn here, Teddy!' and pulled him back unceremoniously to her lap. The bear, with the influence of her comforting warmth still strong upon him, yielded. It was nice, when one was frightened and had lost one's mother, to be cuddled so softly by a creature that was evidently friendly, in spite of the dreaded man smell that hung about her. His mother had tried to teach him that that smell was the most dangerous of all the warning smells his nostrils could encounter. But the lesson had been most imperfectly learned, and now was easily forgotten. He was tired, moreover, and wanted to go to sleep. So he snuggled his glossy, roguish face down into the baby's lap and shut his eyes. And the baby, filled with delight over such a novel and interesting plaything, shook her yellow hair down over his black fur and crooned to him a soft, half-articulate babble of endearment.

"The swollen flood was comparatively quiet now, rolling full and turbid over the drowned lands, and gleaming sullenly under a blaze of sun. The bear having gone to sleep, the baby presently followed his example, her rosy face falling forward into his woodsy-smelling black fur. At last the raft, catching in the trees of a submerged islet, came softly to a stop, so softly as not to awaken the little pair of sleepers.

"In the meantime two distraught mothers, quite beside themselves with fear and grief, were hurrying downstream in search of the runaway raft and its burden.

"The mother of the baby, when she saw the flood sweeping the raft away, was for some moments perilously near to flinging herself in after it. Then her backwoods common sense came to the rescue. She reflected, in time, that she could not swim—while the raft, on the other hand, could and did, and would carry her treasure safely enough for a while. Wading waist deep through the drowned fields behind the house, she gained the uplands, and rushed dripping along the ridge to the next farm, where, as she knew, a boat was kept. This farmhouse, perched on a bluff, was safe from all floods; and the farmer was at home, congratulating himself. Before he quite knew what was happening, he found himself being dragged to the boat—for his neighbor was a strenuous woman, whom few in the settlement presumed to argue with, and it was plain to him now that she was laboring under an unwonted excitement. It was not until he was in the boat, with the oars in his hands, that he gathered clearly what had happened. Then, however, he bent to the oars with a will which convinced even that frantic and vehement mother that nothing better could be demanded of him. Dodging logs and wrecks and uprooted trees, the boat went surging down the flood, while the woman sat stiffly erect in the stern, her face white as death, her eyes staring far ahead, while from time to time she muttered angry phrases which sounded as if the baby had gone off on a pleasure trip without leave and was going to be called to sharp account for it.

"The other mother had the deeper and more immediate cause for anguish. Coming to the bank where she had left her cub in the tree, she found the bank caved in and the tree and cub together vanished. Unlike the baby's mother, she could swim; but she knew that she could run faster and farther. In stoic silence, but with a look of piteous anxiety in her eyes, she started on a gallop down the half-drowned shores, clambering the heaps of debris, and swimming the deep, still estuaries where the flood had backed up into the valleys of the tributary brooks.