in sight of the lake, I saw her for a moment plainly, standing half hid in the underbrush, looking intently at my old canoe. She saw me at the same instant and bounded away, quartering up the hill in my direction. Near a thicket of evergreen that I had just passed, she sounded her hoarse K-a-a-h, k-a-a-h! and threw up her flag. There was a rush within the thicket; a sharp K-a-a-h! answered hers. Then the second fawn burst out of the cover where she had hidden him, and darted along the ridge after her, jumping like a big red fox from rock to rock, rising like a hawk over the windfalls, hitting her tracks wherever he could, and keeping his little nose hard down to his one needful lesson of following the white flag.
Whit, whit, ch’wee? Whit, whit, whit, ch’weeeeee! over my head went the shrill whistling, the hunting cry of Ismaques. Looking up from my fishing I could see the broad wings sweeping over me, and catch the bright gleam of his eye as he looked down into my canoe, or behind me at the cold place among the rocks, to see if I were catching anything. Then, as he noted the pile of fish,—a blanket of silver on the black rocks, where I was stowing away chub for bear bait,—he would drop lower in amazement to see how I did it. When the trout were not rising, and his keen glance saw no gleam of red and gold in my canoe, he would circle off with a cheery K’weee! the good-luck call of a brother fisherman. For there is no envy nor malice nor any uncharitableness in Ismaques. He lives in harmony with the world, and seems glad when you land a big one, even though he be hungry himself, and the clamor from his nest, where his little ones are crying, be too keen for his heart’s content.
What is there in going a-fishing, I wonder, that seems to change even the leopard’s spots, and that puts a new heart into the man who hies him away to the brook when buds are swelling? There is Keeonekh the otter. Before he turned fisherman he was probably fierce, cruel, bloodthirsty, with a vile smell about him, like all the other weasels. Now he lives at peace with all the world and is clean, gentle, playful as a kitten and faithful as a dog when you make a pet of him. And there is Ismaques the fishhawk. Before he turned fisherman he was probably hated, like every other hawk, for his fierceness and his bandit ways. The shadow of his wings was the signal for hiding to all the timid ones. Jay and crow cried Thief! thief! and kingbird sounded his war cry and rushed out to battle. Now the little birds build their nests among the sticks of his great house, and the shadow of his wings is a sure protection. For owl and hawk and wild-cat have learned long since the wisdom of keeping well away from Ismaques’ dwelling.
Not only the birds, but men also, feel the change in Ismaques’ disposition. I hardly know a hunter who will not go out of his way for a shot at a hawk; but they send a hearty good-luck after this winged fisherman of the same fierce family, even though they see him rising heavily out of the very pool where the big trout live, and where they expect to cast their flies at sundown. Along the southern New England shores his coming—regular as the calendar itself—is hailed with delight by the fishermen. One state, at least, where he is most abundant, protects him by law; and even our Puritan forefathers, who seem to have neither made nor obeyed any game laws, looked upon him with a kindly eye, and made him an exception to the general license for killing. To their credit, be it known, they once “publikly reeprimanded” one Master Eliphalet Bodman, a son of Belial evidently, for violently, with powder and shot, doing away with one fishhawk, and wickedly destroying the nest and eggs of another.
Whether this last were also done violently, with powder and shot, by blowing the nest to pieces with an old gun, or in simple boy-fashion by shinning up the tree, the quaint old town record does not tell. But all this goes to show that our ancestors of the coast were kindly people at heart; that they looked upon this brave, simple fisherman, who built his nest by their doors, much as the German village people look upon the stork that builds upon their chimneys, and regarded his coming as an omen of good luck and plenty to the fisher folk.
Far back in the wilderness, where Ismaques builds his nest and goes a-fishing just as his ancestors did a thousand years ago, one finds the same honest bird, unspoiled alike by plenty or poverty, that excited our boyish imagination and won the friendly regard of our ancestors of the coast. Opposite my camp on the lake, where I tarried long one summer, charmed by the beauty of the place and the good fishing, a pair of fishhawks had built their nest in the top of a great spruce on the mountain side. It was this pair of birds that came daily to circle over my canoe, or over the rocks where I fished for chub, to see how I fared, and to send back a cheery Ch’wee! chip, ch’weeee! “good luck and good fishing,” as they wheeled away. It would take a good deal of argument now to convince me that they did not at last recognize me as a fellow-fisherman, and were not honestly interested in my methods and success.