All power of escape crushed out of it by that saw-toothed grip, the victim might safely have been dropped and devoured at leisure. But the great loon was too hungry for leisure. Moreover, he was an expert and he took no risks. With a jerk he threw the fish into the air, caught it as it fell head first, and gulped it down. For a moment or two he floated motionless, his small, fierce and peculiarly piercing eyes warily scrutinizing the lake in all directions. Then, lifting his black head, which gleamed in the sun with green, purple, and sapphire iridescence, he gave vent to a strange wild cry like a peal of bitter laughter. The cry echoed hollowly from the desolate shores of the lake. A moment or two later it was answered, in the same hollow and disconcerting tones, and from behind the islet his mate came swimming to meet him.
For a few minutes the two great birds swam slowly around each other, uttering several times their weird cry. As they floated at their ease, unalarmed, they sat high in the water, showing something of the clean pearly whiteness of their breasts and under parts. Their sturdy, trimly modelled bodies were about three feet in length, from the tips of their straight and formidable green beaks to the ends of their short stiff tails. Their heads, as we have seen, were of an intense and iridescent black, their necks encircled by collars of black and white, their backs, shoulders, and wings dull black, with white spots and bars. Their feet, very large, broadly webbed, and set extraordinarily far back, almost like those of a penguin, glimmered black as they fanned back and forth in the clear amber water.
Suddenly some movement among the bushes along the near shore, perhaps two hundred yards away, caught their watchful eyes. In an instant, by some mysterious process, they had sunk their bodies completely below the surface, leaving only their snaky heads and necks exposed to view. This peculiar submerged position they held, it seemed, without difficulty. But whatever it was that alarmed them, it was not repeated; and after perhaps five minutes of cautious watchfulness, they slowly emerged and floated on the surface. Presently the female swam back again behind the islet, laboriously scrambled out upon the shore, waddled to her nest, and settled herself once more to the task of brooding her two big gray-green, brown-blotched eggs. It was the first week in June, and the eggs were near hatching.
The pair of loons were restless and annoyed. Their lake, set in a lonely valley, which was drained by a branch of the Upper Quah-Davic, had seemed to them the perfection of solitude and remoteness. For three years now they had been coming to it every spring with the first of the northern flight. But this spring their solitude had been invaded. A pioneer, a squatter, with a buxom wife and several noisy children, had come and built a cabin on the shore of the lake. To be sure, the lake was large enough to overlook and forget such a small invasion, but for the loons it was a great matter. That cabin, those voices, and laughter, and axe-strokes, and sometimes gun-shots, though almost a mile away from their nesting-place, were a detestable and unpardonable intrusion.
The loon was just about to resume his fishing—a business which, on account of his phenomenal appetite, took up most of his time—when once more a movement in the bushes caught his vigilant eye. At the same instant a flash of white fire jetted through the leafy screen, a vicious report rang out, and a shower of shot cut the water into spurting streaks all about him. But he was not there. Inconceivably swift, he had dived at the flash itself. The lead that would have riddled him struck the empty swirl where he had vanished. A lanky youth with a gun stepped out from behind the bushes, stared in sulky disappointment, and presently strolled off down the shore to look for less elusive game.
The shattered calm of the lake surface had time to rebuild itself before the loon reappeared. A hundred yards away from the spot where he had dived, his head thrust itself above the water, a tiny black speck on the silvery sheen. It disappeared again instantly. When it once more came to the surface, it was so far out from shore that its owner felt safe. After a few moments devoted to inspection of the hunter’s retreating form, the loon arose completely and sent a long derisive peal of his wild laughter echoing down the lake. The lanky youth turned and shook his fist at him, as if threatening to settle the score at a later day.
The loon had come by this time to a part of the lake where the depth was not more than six or seven feet, and the bottom was of rich firm mud, covered with rank growths. Here and there a solitary lily-plant, a stray from the creamy-blossomed, nectar-breathing colony over in the near-by cove, lifted to the surface its long pipe-like stems and flat sliding disks of leaves. It was a favorite resort, this, of almost every kind of fish that inhabited the lake, except, of course, of the minnows and other little fry, who would have been promptly made to serve as food for their bigger kinsmen had they ventured into so fatal a neighborhood.
Floating tranquilly, the loon caught sight of the silvery sides of a fat chub, balancing just above the bottom, beside one of the slender pipes of lily-stalk. The fish was lazily opening and closing its crimson gills, indifferent and with a well-fed air. It hung at a depth of perhaps six feet, and at a distance of perhaps sixteen or twenty. So smoothly as scarcely to leave a swirl on the surface, the loon dived straight down, then darted for the fish at a terrific pace. His powerful feet, folding up and opening out at each lightning-swift stroke, propelled him like a torpedo just shot from tube, and tiny bubbles, formed by the air caught under his feathers, flicked upward along his course.
The chub caught sight of this shape of doom rushing upon him through the golden tremor of the water. He shot off in a panic, seeking some deep crevice or some weed-thicket dense enough to hide him. But the loon was almost at his tail. There was no crevice to be found, and the weed thickets were too sparse and open to conceal him. This way and that he darted, doubling and twisting frantically around every stalk or stone. But in spite of his bulk, the loon followed each turn with the agility of an eel. The loosed silt boiled up in wreaths behind his violent passage, and the weeds swayed in the wake of the thrusting webs. In less than a minute the chase—the turmoil of which drove every other fish, large or small, in terror from the feeding-ground—came suddenly to an end. Rising abruptly with the fish gripped in his great beak, the loon burst out upon the surface, sending shoreward a succession of circling ripples. Without ceremony he gulped his meal. Then, swimming rather low in the water, and with head thrust out before him, he hurried to his nesting-place on the islet, as if he thought he had been too long away from his domestic duties.
The spot on the islet where the loons had their nest was almost unconcealed. It was in a grassy cup within four or five feet of the water’s edge, and sheltered only by a thin screen of bushes on the landward side. Toward the sky it was quite open. There had seemed to be little need of concealment before the intruder, man, came to the lake. The islet was too far from the main shore to be in danger from the visits of foxes or bears, fishers or raccoons. And as for the sky—well, the loon had little fear of anything that flew. Because of this lack of apprehension from skyward, even his coloring was not very protective, his glossy black, barred and mottled with pure white, being fairly conspicuous against the grays, and greens, and browns which surrounded the nest. Neither he nor his mate had any particular objection to being seen by any marauder of the air. Even the murderous goshawk, or the smaller but even more fearless duck-hawk, would know better than to swoop down upon the uplifted dagger of a nesting loon. And as for the eagle, though doubtless strong enough to master such an antagonist in the end, he is wise enough to know that the loon’s punishing beak and bulldog courage in defence of the nest would make the victory an expensive and painful one.