"THE PLUCKY LITTLE ANIMAL JUMPED AS FAR AS HE COULD."
For perhaps an hour the squirrel journeyed thus without incident or further adventure. Then, in a wide, comparatively sluggish reach of the river, some whimsical cross-current had borne his log over to the neighbourhood of a whole, voyaging fleet of brown timbers. Unable to see how far this group extended, the squirrel inferred that it might possibly afford him passage to the shore. With a tremendous leap he gained the nearest of the timber. Thence he went skipping joyously, now up river and now down, skirting wide spaces of clear water, and twice swimming open lanes too broad to jump, till he was not more than a hundred yards from the line of trees that marked the flooded bank. Some thirty feet beyond, and that much nearer safety, one more log floated alone. The plucky little animal jumped as far as he could, landed with a splash, and swam vigorously for this last log. He gained it, and was just dragging himself out upon it, when there was a rush and heavy break in the water, and a pair of big jaws snapped close behind him. An agonized spring saved him, and he clung flat, quivering, on the top of the log. But the hungry pickerel had captured nearly half his tail.
A minute or two later he had recovered from this shock; and thereupon he sat up and chattered shrill indignation, twitching defiantly the sore and bleeding stump. This outburst perhaps relieved his feelings a little; for apparently the red squirrel needs to give his emotions vent more than any other member of the wild kindreds. But he had learned a lesson. He would not again try swimming in a water which pickerel inhabited. Then, a little later, he learned another. A fish-hawk passed overhead. The fish-hawk would not have harmed him under any circumstances. But the squirrel thought of other hawks, less gentle-mannered; and he realized that the loud volubility which in the security of his native trees he might indulge would never do out here on his shelterless log. He stopped his complaints, crouched flat, and scanned the sky anxiously for sign of other hawks. He had suddenly realized that he was now naked to the eyes of all his enemies.
Presently a new terror came to sap his courage. A little way ahead the banks were high and the channel narrow; and the river, no longer able to relieve the freshet strain by spreading itself over wide meadows, became a roaring rapid. The squirrel heard that terrifying roar. He noted how swiftly it was approaching. In a half-panic he stared about, almost ready to dare the pickerel and make a try for shore, rather than be carried through those rapids.
In this extremity of terror he saw what, at other times, would have frightened him almost as much as hawk or pickerel. A rowboat slowly drew near, picking its way through the logs. The one rower, a grizzled old river-man, was surging vigorously, to avoid being swept down into the thunderous narrows. But as he approached, he noticed the trembling squirrel on the log. In a flash he took in the situation. With a sheepish grin, as if ashamed of himself for troubling about a "blame squirrel," he thrust out the tip of an oar toward the log, with a sort of shy invitation.
The squirrel, fortunately for himself, was one of those animals which are sometimes open to a new idea. He did not trust the man, to be sure. But he trusted him more than he did the rapids ahead, and feared him less than he feared the pickerel. Promptly he skipped aboard the boat, and perched himself on the bow, as far away as possible from his rescuer. The man wasted no time on sentimentalizing, but pulled as hard as he could for shore. When near the bank, however, and out of the stress of the current, he permitted himself what he considered a piece of foolishness. He turned the boat about, and backed in till the stern touched land. He wanted to see what the squirrel, up there in the bow, was going to do about it.
The little animal made up his mind quickly. Scared but resolute, he darted along the gunwale. The rower, with both arms outspread, was directly in his way. He hesitated, gave a nervous chirrup, then launched himself high into the air. His little feet struck smartly on the top of the man's head. Then he was off up the bank as if hawk and pickerel and rapids were all after him together. A moment later from the thick top of a fir-tree came his shrill chatter of triumph and defiance.
"Sassy little varmint!" muttered the old river-man, looking up at him with indulgent eyes.