The destroying talons of the great hawk clutched convulsively at the dandy curled tips of his tail as he vanished.
With his arrowy speed, his precision of stroke, his audacity and fiery spirit, the blue goshawk was little accustomed to the experience of being baulked of his prey. He knew well enough that his quarry would not show itself again, but would swim away under water and only come up to breathe in the safe shelter of some dense thicket of rushes. With a sharp yelp of wrath, he swept up from the water on a long, graceful curve, wheeled sharply above the osiers, and sailed back low above the bittern's island, seeking other prey. And his piercing gaze fell upon the bittern, standing rigid beside the nest.
His swoop was instantaneous, straight and swift as a bolt from a cross-bow. But that coiled steel spring of the bittern's neck was even swifter; and as his talons struck downward, the bittern's dagger thrust caught him in the very centre of the impending claw, splitting the foot fairly and disabling it. Nevertheless, by the shock of the attack the bittern was borne downward, and would have been caught in the breast or throat by the other talon; but at the same instant his watchful mate, who had half risen on the nest that her eggs might not be crushed in the mêlée, delivered her thrust. It went true. And it had not only the drive of her sinewy neck behind it, but also the full force of her powerful thighs, as well as the assailant's descending weight to drive it home. It caught the goshawk full in the base of the neck, pierced clean through, and severed the spine. And in a wild confusion of sprawled legs and pounding wings the three great birds fell in a heap in the grass, just beyond the nest.
The two bitterns nimbly extricated themselves, and with wings pounding, stabbed savagely, again and again, at the unresisting body of the hawk. Presently, as if by one impulse, they both stood up, erect and still as images, their yellow bills dripping with blood. The male had a bleeding gash along the side of his head, and had lost several of his haughty crest feathers. But this concerned him little. His heart swelled with triumph. He was forced to give it utterance. He snapped his bill sharply, gulped a few mouthfuls of air, and then sent forth his booming challenge across the swamp:—Klunk-er-glungk ... Klunk-er-glungk ... Klunk-er-glungk.
His mate spread her broad wings, shook herself till her ruffled plumage fell into place, wiped her conquering bill on the grass, stepped delicately back into the nest, and softly settled herself down upon her two eggs, so miraculously preserved.
Silence fell on Lost-Water Swamp. The air became gradually transfused with amethyst and pale rose. And then, far and faint, tranquil and poignant, came the entrancing cadence—Oh, spheral, spheral, oh, holy, holy, spheral—the silver vesper ecstasy of the hermit-thrush, in his tree-top against the pellucid sky.
QUILLS THE INDIFFERENT
Quills was born in a capacious hole in the heart of a huge and ancient red maple, near the banks of the Tobique River, in New Brunswick.
The hole had to be capacious, for Quills's mother was a fine porcupine, in her prime, fully two and a half feet in length, massive in build, and a good twenty pounds in weight; and, moreover, her armament of long, bristling spines made it essential that she should not be unduly crowded in her nest. But the entrance was only large enough for her to squeeze through it without discomfort, so the dusky interior was sheltered, warm and dry. It was also safe; for in all the wilderness there was no savage marauder reckless enough to invade a porcupine's nest while the owner was at home.
In proportion to the size of his mother, Quills, like all young porcupines, was an amazingly big baby—hardly smaller, indeed, than the new-born cub of the black bear. His length was about eleven inches, his weight a shade over two pounds—and this when he was not yet twenty-four hours old. He was richly clothed with long, dark fur, almost black, under which lay hidden his sprouting armament of spines, already formidable, though only about half an inch in length. Born with the insatiable appetite of his tribe, he lay stretched out between his mother's stumpy fore-legs, nursing greedily, with an incessant accompaniment of tiny squeaks and squeals of satisfaction. The sounds were loud enough to attract the notice of two little black-and-white woodpeckers who had just alighted on the trunk near the hole. With sleek heads cocked alertly, and bright eyes keen with interrogation, they listened to the curious noises inside the tree. Then they clambered on up the trunk to a safer height, wondering, no doubt, that any youngling should be guilty of such an indiscretion as thus to betray the secret of its hiding-place. They could not know that the porcupine baby, almost alone among the babes of the wild, was exempted, through the reputation of his spines, from the law of silence as the price of life. Young or old, the porcupine will make a noise whenever it pleases him to do so, and with a lofty indifference as to who his hearers may be.