Linnæus, however, did not doubt the lady, and called the spider (which belongs to the genus Mygale), "avicularia" (bird-eating). Whether this ferocious-looking hunter does occasionally capture small birds; or whether he subsists entirely on the wasps, bees, ants, and beetles which every where abound, what I chanced myself to see in the forest will help to determine.
Shortly after daybreak, one morning in 1848, while staying at a wood-cutting establishment on the Essequibo, a short distance above the confluence of that river and the Magaruni, we—a tall Yorkshireman and myself—started in our "wood-skin" to examine some spring hooks which we had set during the previous evening, in the embouchure of a neighboring creek. Our breakfast that morning depended on our success. Our chagrin may be imagined on finding all the baits untouched save one; and from that, some lurking cayman had snapped the body of the captured fish, leaving nothing but the useless head dangling in the air. After mentally dispatching our spoiler—who had not tricked us for the first time—to a place very far distant, we paddled further up the creek in search of a maam, or maroudi; or, indeed, of any thing eatable—bird, beast, or reptile. We had not proceeded far, when my companion, Blottle, who was sitting, gun in hand, prepared to deal destruction on the first living creature we might chance to encounter—suddenly fired at some object moving rapidly along the topmost branch of a tree which overhung the sluggish stream a short way in advance. For a moment or two the success of his aim seemed doubtful; then something came tumbling through the intervening foliage, and I guided the canoe beneath, lest the prey should be lost in the water. Our surprise was not unmingled, I must confess, with vexation at first, on finding that the strange character of our game removed our morning's repast as far off as ever. A huge spider and a half-fledged bird lay in the bottom of our canoe—the one with disjointed limbs and mutilated carcass; the other uninjured by the shot, but nearly dead, though still faintly palpitating. The remains of the spider showed him larger than any I had previously seen—smaller, however, than one from Brazil, before me while I write—and may have measured some two-and-half inches in the body, with limbs about twice that length. He was rough and shaggy, with a thick covering of hair or bristles; which, besides giving him an additional appearance of strength, considerably increased the fierceness of his aspect. The hairs were in some parts fully an inch long, of a dark brown color, inclining to black. His powerful jaws and sturdy arms seemed never adapted for the death-struggle of prey less noble than this small member of the feathered race, for whom our succor had unhappily arrived too late. The victim had been snatched from the nest while the mother was probably assisting to collect a morning's meal for her offspring. It had been clutched by the neck immediately above the shoulders: the marks of the murderer's talons still remained; and, although no blood had escaped from the wounds, they were much inflamed and swollen.
The few greenish-brown feathers sparingly scattered among the down in the wings, were insufficient to furnish me with a clew toward a knowledge of its species. That it was a humming-bird, however, or one of an allied genus, seemed apparent from the length of its bill. The king of the humming-birds, as the Creoles call the topaz-throat (Trochilus pella of naturalists), is the almost exclusive frequenter of Marabella Creek, where the overspreading foliage—here and there admitting stray gleams of sunshine—forms a cool and shady, though sombre retreat, peculiarly adapted to his disposition; and I strongly suspect that it was the nest of this species which the spider had favored with a visit. After making a minute inspection of the two bodies, we consigned them to a watery grave; both of us convinced that, whatever the detractors of Madame Merian may urge, that lady was correct in assigning to the bush-spider an ambition which often soars above the insect, and occasionally tempts him to make a meal of some stray feathered denizen of the forest. This conclusion, I may add, was fully confirmed some few weeks after, by my witnessing a still more interesting rencontre between members of the several races. "Eat the eater," is one of Nature's laws; and, after preventing its accomplishment by depriving the spider of his food, strict justice would probably have balked us of ours. Fortunately not—one of the heartiest breakfasts I ever made, and one of the tenderest and most succulent of meat, was that very morning. Well I remember exclaiming, at that time, "Hæc olim meminisse juvabit!"—it was my first dish of stewed monkey and yams.
PROMISE UNFULFILLED.—A TALE OF THE COAST-GUARD.
The Rose had been becalmed for several days in Cowes Harbor, and utterly at a loss how else to cheat the time, I employed myself one afternoon in sauntering up and down the quay, whistling for a breeze, and listlessly watching the slow approach of a row-boat, bringing the mail and a few passengers from Southampton, the packet-cutter to which the boat belonged being as hopelessly immovable, except for such drift as the tide gave her, as the Rose. The slowness of its approach—for I expected a messenger with letters—added to my impatient weariness; and as, according to my reckoning, it would be at least an hour before the boat reached the landing-steps, I returned to the Fountain Inn in the High-street, called for a glass of negus, and as I lazily sipped it, once more turned over the newspapers lying on the table, though with scarcely a hope of coming athwart a line that I had not read half a dozen times before. I was mistaken. There was a "Cornwall Gazette" among them which I had not before seen, and in one corner of it I lit upon this, to me in all respects new and extremely interesting paragraph: "We copy the following statement from a contemporary, solely for the purpose of contradicting it: 'It is said that the leader of the smugglers in the late desperate affray with the coast guard in St. Michael's Bay, was no other than Mr. George Polwhele Hendrick, of Lostwithiel, formerly, as our readers are aware, a lieutenant in the royal navy, and dismissed the king's service by sentence of court-martial at the close of the war.' There is no foundation for this imputation. Mrs. Hendrick, of Lostwithiel, requests us to state that her son, from whom she heard but about ten days since, commands a first-class ship in the merchant navy of the United States."
I was exceedingly astonished. The court-martial I had not heard of, and having never overhauled the Navy List for such a purpose, the absence of the name of G. P. Hendrick had escaped my notice. What could have been his offense? Some hasty, passionate act, no doubt; for of misbehavior before the enemy, or of the commission of deliberate wrong, it was impossible to suspect him. He was, I personally knew, as eager as flame in combat; and his frank, perhaps heedless generosity of temperament, was abundantly apparent to every one acquainted with him. I had known him for a short time only; but the few days of our acquaintance were passed under circumstances which bring out the true nature of a man more prominently and unmistakably than might twenty years of humdrum, every-day life. The varnish of pretension falls quickly off in presence of sudden and extreme peril—peril especially requiring presence of mind and energy to beat it back. It was in such a position that I recognized some of the high qualities of Lieutenant Hendrick. The two sloops of war in which we respectively served, were consorts for awhile on the South African coast, during which time we fell in with a Franco-Italian privateer or pirate—for the distinction between the two is much more technical than real. She was to leeward when we sighted her, and not very distant from the shore, and so quickly did she shoal her water, that pursuit by either of the sloops was out of the question. Being a stout vessel of her class, and full of men, four boats—three of the Scorpion's and one of her consort's—were detached in pursuit. The breeze gradually failed, and we were fast coming up with our friend when he vanished behind a head-land, on rounding which we found he had disappeared up a narrow, winding river, of no great depth of water. We of course followed, and, after about a quarter of an hour's hard pull, found, on suddenly turning a sharp elbow of the stream, that we had caught a Tartar. We had, in fact, come upon a complete nest of privateers—a rendezvous or dépôt they termed it. The vessel was already anchored across the channel, and we were flanked on each shore by a crowd of desperadoes, well provided with small arms, and with two or three pieces of light ordnance among them. The shouts of defiance with which they greeted us as we swept into the deadly trap were instantly followed by a general and murderous discharge of both musketry and artillery; and as the smoke cleared away I saw that the leading pinnace, commanded by Hendrick, had been literally knocked to pieces, and that the little living portion of the crew were splashing about in the river.
There was time but for one look, for if we allowed the rascals time to reload their guns our own fate would inevitably be a similar one. The men understood this, and with a loud cheer swept eagerly on toward the privateer, while the two remaining boats engaged the flanking shore forces, and I was soon involved in about the fiercest mêlée I ever had the honor to assist at. The furious struggle on the deck of the privateer lasted but about five minutes only, at the end of which all that remained of us were thrust over the side. Some tumbled into the boat, others, like myself, were pitched into the river. As soon as I came to the surface, and had time to shake my ears and look about me, I saw Lieutenant Hendrick, who, the instant the pinnace he commanded was destroyed, had, with equal daring and presence of mind, swam toward a boat at the privateer's stern, cut the rope that held her, with the sword he carried between his teeth, and forthwith began picking up his half-drowned boat's crew. This was already accomplished, and he now performed the same service for me and mine. This done, we again sprang at our ugly customer, he at the bow, and I about midships. Hendrick was the first to leap on the enemy's deck; and so fierce and well-sustained was the assault this time, that in less than ten minutes we were undisputed victors so far as the vessel was concerned. The fight on the shore continued obstinate and bloody, and it was not till we had twice discharged the privateer's guns among the desperate rascals that they broke and fled. The dashing, yet cool and skillful bravery evinced by Lieutenant Hendrick in this brief but tumultuous and sanguinary affair was admiringly remarked upon by all who witnessed it, few of whom while gazing at the sinewy, active form, the fine, pale, flashing countenance, and the dark, thunderous eyes of the young officer—if I may use such a term, for in their calmest aspect a latent volcano appeared to slumber in their gleaming depths—could refuse to subscribe to the opinion of a distinguished admiral, who more than once observed that there was no more promising officer in the British naval service than Lieutenant Hendrick.
Well, all this, which has taken me so many words to relate, flashed before me like a scene in a theatre, as I read the paragraph in the Cornish paper. The Scorpion and her consort parted company a few days after this fight, and I had not since then seen or heard of Hendrick till now. I was losing myself in conjecture as to the probable or possible cause of so disgraceful a termination to a career that promised so brilliantly, when the striking of the bar-clock warned me that the mail-boat was by this time arrived. I sallied forth and reached the pier-steps just a minute or so before the boat arrived there. The messenger I expected was in her, and I was turning away with the parcel he handed me, when my attention was arrested by a stout, unwieldy fellow, who stumbled awkwardly out of the boat, and hurriedly came up the steps. The face of the man was pale, thin, hatchet-shaped, and anxious, and the gray, ferrety eyes were restless and perturbed; while the stout round body was that of a yeoman of the bulkiest class, but so awkwardly made up that it did not require any very lengthened scrutiny to perceive that the shrunken carcass appropriate to such a lanky and dismal visage occupied but a small space within the thick casing of padding and extra garments in which it was swathed. His light-brown wig, too, surmounted by a broad-brimmer, had got a little awry, dangerously revealing the scanty locks of iron-gray beneath. It was not difficult to run up these little items to a pretty accurate sum total, and I had little doubt that the hasting and nervous traveler was fleeing either from a constable or a sheriff's officer. It was, however, no affair of mine, and I was soon busy with the letters just brought me.
The most important tidings they contained was that Captain Pickard—the master of a smuggling craft of some celebrity, called Les Trois Frères, in which for the last twelve months or more he had been carrying on a daring and successful trade throughout the whole line of the southern and western coasts—was likely to be found at this particular time near a particular spot in the back of the Wight. This information was from a sure source in the enemy's camp, and it was consequently with great satisfaction that I observed indications of the coming on of a breeze, and in all probability a stiff one. I was not disappointed; and in less than an hour the Rose was stretching her white wings beneath a brisk northwester over to Portsmouth, where I had some slight official business to transact previous to looking after friend Pickard. This was speedily dispatched, and I was stepping into the boat on my return to the cutter, when a panting messenger informed me that the port-admiral desired to see me instantly.