Very likely they complain incessantly because they are hungry and the supply of demoiselle nymphs is running short. There are plenty of demoiselles, flitting back and forth across the pools on glittering black wings, which they fold closely to their iridescent green bodies when they light. They are such ladylike dragon-flies that it is no wonder that the name “demoiselle,” which French scientists with admirable gallantry have given them, has stuck. With all their ladylike short and modest flights and the saintly way in which they fold their wings when they light on some leaf beside the pool, a folding as of hands in prayer, the demoiselles are dragon-flies, and each prayer may well be for the soul of some midge or other wee insect captured in the short flight.
The true dragon-fly—the one which rests with wings widespread—hunts like a hawk, but the demoiselles seem to take their prey with a gentle grace and charm of manner which ought to make the midge’s last moments his happiest ones. I always suspect them of folding him in a perfumed napkin and eating him with salad dressing and a spoon after they get back to their boudoir, but I cannot prove this any more than I can that it is really a water goblin that grumbles under the flat stone.
Many a time I have turned the stones over suddenly, but I never yet was quick enough to surprise the goblin. I have found him there, mind you, but never in his true shape. Always he has managed to transform himself into something different,—perhaps into a spotted turtle or a grouchy horn-pout. I have even known him to turn into an ugly, many-legged helgramite worm, not having time to make the more reputable transformation. It is hard to catch a grumbling goblin asleep, especially in a pool below the witch-hazels, where the brook magic is strong.
It is easier to see the demoiselle nymphs. They are not very beautiful or seemingly very savory, and if the water goblins do eat them it is no wonder they grumble. You may have seen a hawk-like dragon-fly skimming about over an open pool dip in swallow fashion to the surface. These sudden and repeated dips are not for a bath nor yet for a drink. What you see is a female dragon-fly laying eggs which shall later hatch and become under-water nymphs, the larvæ of the dragon-fly. But the demoiselles, still rightly named, do nothing so brazen as that. Instead, they pick out some nodding water weed, fold their wings a little more tightly to their iridescent bodies and crawl down it into the water. Here, in proper seclusion beneath the surface, they pierce the reed’s stem with keen ovipositor and lay their eggs. Then they saunter forth again and discreetly eat more midges with salad dressing and a spoon.
If you look closely among the water weeds in the transparent water at the pool margin you may see the demoiselle nymphs crawling about, breathing through feathers in their tails, and scooping up food with a big shovel which sticks out under their chins. They show little traces of their coming beauty. It is the awkward age of the demoiselle, and I fancy each is right glad to do up the hair, get into long black skirts with iridescent green bodices, and join the afternoon tea flitters.
What the magic is in the brook, whereby these strange, awkward, crawling creatures, living beneath the water, some day crawl up the stem of a water weed, burst, stretch their wings and fly away the saintly and demure demoiselles of the pool, I do not know—whether it be distilled from the witch-hazel by the summer sun, or whether it slips more mysteriously from beneath the breast-plate of the spore of the polypody growing just above my head in the rock crevice. It must be the same magic whereby the many-legged, crawling helgramite worm, after living that sort of life sometimes for several years, one day crawls ashore, goes to sleep beneath a stone, and in another month wakes up and finds himself a Corydalus cornutus, a three-inch-long bug with extraordinary wings and great horns,—a bug that might well make one of those witches, met face to face on the moon’s disk, shriek and fall off her broomstick. If he can be that thing, changed from a helgramite worm, why can he not be a helgramite worm, changed from the water goblin which you can hear grumbling beneath the flat stone at the entrance to the pool beneath the witch-hazels?
The answer is to be found neither in the rhyme of the poet nor in the reason of the scientific man.
Musing on these things I suddenly sat up from my quiet seat beneath the rock ferns, for more magic yet was being displayed before my eyes. Over on the further side, in the shallow eddy, the pool was troubled a second, then there rose from it a wee sunfish, not more than three inches long, rose from it tail first and began balancing across the pool surface toward me, on his head. His tail quivered in the air, and I could see his freckles growing in the yellow transparency of his skin, yet, though I watched with wide eyes, he was two-thirds the way across the pool toward me before I noticed beneath him the tip of the nose and the wicked little dark eye of a water snake. At sight of him the demoiselles should have shrieked and flown away, but they made no move. I, however, indignant, arose, and seizing broken fragments of rock was about to lacerate him and loose his prey when I quite suddenly thought better of it. Had not I a few days before come down stream to the deep pool above and carried off a string of perch, sunfish, pouts, and an eel? Had not the water snake also a right to his dinner?
I dropped my rock fragments, but there was no longer pleasure in waiting to woo the demure coquetry of the demoiselles. The serpent had entered Eden and the man was driven forth. I lingered only long enough to see the grace and strength of the snake as he glided over the sill of the old dam, now black and sinuous, now giving me a glimpse of the vivid red of the under parts of his body, but always keeping his grip secure on the little sunfish whom he was taking away to luncheon with him.
I climbed out of the glen, glad to go for once, but at the top of the rock where the sunburnt pasture path begins again I was in for another shudder, for here the dragon had entered fairy land. He came, writhing his horrid length along the path, his scales shining in the sun, his great mouth gaping, and up near his abnormally great head two little impotent forelegs wriggling. Who wouldn’t turn and run before such a creature as this? To be sure he was scarce three feet long, and his curiously mottled-brown back was that of the common adder, one of our harmless snakes, though he looks ugly enough to be stuffed with venom. But this great gaping head and the wriggling forelegs; never did flat-head adder have such a front as this!