[Previous page]...mself an
explorer in a totally new world.
Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that
the unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the
things about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the mossberry
plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood
on the edge of an open space among the trees. A squirrel, running
around the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great
fright. He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly
scared. It ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered
back savagely.
This helped the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next
encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way.
Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up
to him, he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a
sharp peck on the end of his nose that made him cower down and
ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought
safety in flight.
But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made
an unconscious classification. There were live things and things not
alive. Also, he must watch out for the live things. The things not
alive remained always in one place; but the live things moved about,
and there was no telling what they might do. The thing to expect of
them was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared.
He traveled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig
that he thought a long way off would the next instant hit him on the
nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface.
Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he
under-stepped and stubbed his feet. Then there were pebbles and stones
that turned under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to
know that the things not alive were not all in the same state of
stable equilibrium as was his cave; also, that small things not
alive were more liable than large things to fall down or turn over.
But with every mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the
better he walked. He was adjusting himself. He was learning to
calculate his own muscular movements, to know his physical
limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between objects
and himself.
His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat
(though he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his
own cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer
blundering that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He
fell into it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine.
The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he
pitched down the rounded descent, smashed through the leafage and
stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground,
fetched up amongst seven ptarmigan chicks.
They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he
perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They
moved. He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated.
This was a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it
up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time
he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed
together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran
in his mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his
mother gave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore
better. So he ate the ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had
devoured the whole brood. Then he licked his chops in quite the same
way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush.
He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by
the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between
his paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother-ptarmigan was
in a fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out
with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled
and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering
blows upon him with her free wing. It was his first battle. He was
elated. He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of
anything. He was fighting, tearing at a living thing that was striking
at him. Also, this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him.
He had just destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big
live thing. He was too busy and happy to know that he was happy. He
was thrilling and exulting in ways new to him and greater to him
than any he had known before.
He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth.
The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried
to drag him back into the bush's shelter, he pulled her away from it
and on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and
striking with her wing, while feathers were flying like a snowfall.
The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting
blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was
living, though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in
the world; he was doing that for which he was made- killing meat and
battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which
life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to
the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her
by the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He
tried to growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose,
which by now, what of previous adventures, was sore. He winced but
held on. She pecked him again and again. From wincing he went to
whimpering. He tried to back away from her, oblivious of the fact that
by his hold on her he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell on
his ill-used nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and,
releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered off across the open
in inglorious retreat.
He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge
of the bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and
panting, his nose still hurting him and causing him to continue his
whimper. But as he lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling
as of something terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors
rushed upon him, and he shrank back instinctively into the shelter
of the bush. As he did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large,
winged body swept ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down
out of the blue, had barely missed him.
While he lay in the bush, recovering from this fright and peering
fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open
space fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss
that she paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But the
cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson to him- the swift
downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body just above
the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the
ptarmigan's squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk's rush upward
into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it.
It was a long time before the cub left his shelter. He had learned
much. Live things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live
things when they were large enough, could give hurt. It was better
to eat small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone
live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless he felt a little prick
of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with that
ptarmigan hen- only the hawk had carried her away. Maybe there were
other ptarmigan hens. He would go and see.
He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen
water before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of
surface. He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear,
into the embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing
quickly. The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had
always accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation he
experienced was like the pang of death. To him it signified death.
He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the
Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the
greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was
the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and
unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he
knew nothing and about which he feared everything.
He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open
mouth. He did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a
long-established custom of his, he struck out with all his legs and
began to swim. The near bank was a yard away; but he had come up
with his back to it, and the first thing his eyes rested upon was
the opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim. The
stream was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of
feet.
Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him
downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of
the pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet water had
become suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top. At
all times he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around,
and again, being smashed against a rock. And with every rock he
struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of yelps, from which
might had been adduced the number of rocks he encountered.
Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy,
he was gently borne to the bank and as gently deposited on a bed of
gravel. He crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had
learned some more about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it
moved. Also, it looked as solid as the earth, but was without any
solidity at all. His conclusion was that things were not always what
they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited
distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth,
in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of
appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he
could put his faith into it.
One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had
recollected that there was such a thing in the world as his mother.
And then there came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than
all the rest of the things in the world. Not only was his body tired
with the adventures it had undergone, but his little brain was equally
tired. In all the days he had lived it had not worked so hard as on
this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to look
for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an
overwhelming rush of loneliness and helplessness.
He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp,
intimidating cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He
saw a weasel leaping swiftly away from him. It was a small thing,
and he had no fear. Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely
small live thing, only several inches long- a young weasel, that, like
himself, had disobediently gone out adventuring. It tried to retreat
before him. He turned it over with his paw. It made a queer, grating
noise. The next moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes.
He heard again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant
received a severe blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp
teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh.
While he yelped and ki-yi'd and scrambled backward, he saw the
mother-weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the
neighboring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt,
but his feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly
whimpered. This mother-weasel was so small and so savage! He was yet
to learn that for size and weight, the weasel was the most
ferocious, vindictive, and te...
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