Part 8

With all his weight and strength behind it, that charge was practically irresistible, if fairly faced. But the bear was too wise to face it fairly. He swung aside, clutched the lowered antler, and held fast, striving to pull his enemy down.

But the bull's strength and impetus were too great, and the bear was himself thrown off his balance. Even then, however, he might probably have recovered himself and once more established the battle upon even terms. But he had not reckoned--he could not have been expected to reckon--upon the unprecedented weapon of that little down-drooping left antler. Not for nothing was the giant bull lop-horned. The dwarfed and distorted antler hung down like a plough-share. And the bear attempted no defence against it. Keen-spiked, it caught him in the belly and ploughed upward. In a paroxysm he fell backwards. The bull, swinging his hindquarters around without yielding his advantage for a second, lunged forward with all his force, and the deadly little plough was driven home to the bear's heart.

Peddler, from his post on top of the rock, shouted and applauded in wild excitement, and showered encomiums, no less profane than heartfelt, upon the victorious bull. For a minute or two the bull paid no attention, being engrossed in goring and trampling his victim in an effort to make it look less like a bear than an ensanguined floor-rug. At last, as if quite satisfied with his triumph, he lifted his gory head and eyed that voluble figure on top of the rock. It looked harmless.

"Gee, but ye kin fight!" said Peddler, glowing with admiration. "An' ye've saved my scalp fer me this night, fer sartain. Guess I'll hev to let ye keep them lop-sided horns o' yourn, after all!"

The bull snorted at him scornfully and turned his head to take another prod at the unresponsive remnants of his foe. Then, paying no further heed to the man on the rock, and craving assuagement to the fiery smart of his wounds, he strode down into the lake and swam straight out, in the glitter of the moon-path, toward the black line of the farther shore.

The Aigrette

The Girl, sitting before her dressing-table, looked at the fair reflection in her great mirror and smiled happily. Those searching lights at either side of the mirror could find no flaw in the tender colouring of her face, in the luminous whiteness of neck and arm and bosom. Her wide-set eyes, like the red bow of her mouth, were kind and gay. The brightness of her high-coiffed hair was surmounted by a tuft of straight egret plumes, as firm, pearl-white, and delicate as a filigree of frost.

The Girl had never looked so lovely. Never before had she worn anything that so became her as that ethereal plume. She knew it; and the glances of her maid, straying from her business with filmy garments and dainty adornments, told her so. She threw a wisp of silken gossamer over her arm and tripped eagerly down to the drawing-room.

The Man came forward to meet her, his eyes paying without stint the tribute she was craving of him.

"There will be no one there to compare with you!" he said softly. "There is no one anywhere to compare with you."

"It is becoming, isn't it?" she answered, glowing at his praise, and nodding her bright head to indicate the ethereal white plume.

"It is indeed," he asserted heartily. "But nothing could heighten your beauty. You did not need it, and I'm rather afraid the bird did." He kissed her finger-tips as he spoke, lest she should think he was being critical.

The Girl pouted a little, being very tenderhearted, and loth to be reminded of unpleasant things.

"I know what you mean," said she quickly, withdrawing her hand in displeasure. "But the poor bird is dead, anyway; and if I didn't buy the thing, some other woman would. And it's horrid of you to speak of it now!"

The Man laughed.

"It can't make you more beautiful, but if it makes you happier, that's quite enough for me," said he. "I'm afraid that a very little pleasure for you is of more consequence in my eyes than a thousand million birds."

And upon this assurance the Girl forgave him.

* * * * *

The wide lagoon lay windless, shining like milky-blue glass under the blaze of the southern sky. It was shallow, its surface broken here and there with patches of tall gold-green reeds. Its shores seemed half afloat, fringed as they were with gnarled, squat bushes growing directly out of the water. This irregular bushy growth, with the green-shadowed water beneath its branches, stretched back for several hundred yards from the open lagoon to a dense wall of jungle, a banked mass of violently green leafage starred with cream-white and crimson bloom.

Not cream-white, but of a coldly pure silver-white, like new snow, some two or three score long-necked, long-legged birds flapped angularly between the milky blue of the water and the intense, vibrant blue of the sky, or stood half-leg deep in the shallows, motionless, watching for their prey. They looked like bits of a Japanese screen brought to life and sown broadcast in this sun-steeped southern wilderness. High overhead, a black speck against the azure, a hawk wheeled slowly in vast spirals, staring down desirously upon the peaceful lagoon. That peace he durst not invade, for he knew and feared the lightning strokes of the long dagger-like beaks of the white egrets.

In the top of one of the gnarled bushes at the edge of the open, right over the water, was built a spacious but rickety-looking nest of dead sticks. It was the most un-nestlike of nests, a mere crazy platform, with no apparent qualifications as a home except the most perfect ventilation. One might reasonably suppose that the first requirement in the nest of a bird should be that it would hold eggs securely. But this unsightly collection of sticks looked as if that was the last thing it could be depended on to do. It was so loose and open that the eggs ought to fall through into the water. It was so flat that any eggs which dodged falling through should surely, according to all known laws of Nature, be blown off by the first vigorous gust. Nevertheless, it was clear that the rude structure had held eggs, and proved not unworthy of its trust, for it was now occupied by four young egrets.

They were grotesque and solemn babies, these nestlings, sitting up quite motionless on their leg-joints and half-feathered rumps, with their long legs thrust straight out before them over the sticks, their long beaks resting contemplatively on their nearly naked breasts, their round, bright, unwinking eyes staring out blankly upon their little world of gold and blue. Scattered here and there over the sweep of fringing bushes were a dozen or so more of these rickety platforms of sticks, each with its solemn group of stilt-legged staring young, motionless as statues interested in nothing upon earth save the quantity of fish or frogs which their untiring parents could supply to their unassuageable appetites.

Above this outermost nest, with the four fledglings in it, hung for a moment, hovering on wide wings, the great white mother egret, with a shining orange fish in her beak. She dropped her long legs, as if feeling for a foothold, and alighted on the edge of the crazy platform so softly that not a stick protested. At her coming four long beaks were lifted into the air, gaping hungrily and squawking with eagerness. All four seemed equally ravenous. But the mother-bird knew well enough which she had fed last, and which was most in need. She jammed the prize, with what seemed scant ceremony, into the beak whose turn it was to get it. The fish was thicker than the youngster's long thin neck, but it was promptly swallowed head first. It went down slowly, with a succession of spasms which looked agonizing, but were, in fact, ecstatic.

Before flying off again to resume her quest of fish, the mother egret remained for a few moments on the edge of the nest, to rest and preen herself. Her snow-pure plumage shone in the sunlight like spun silver. Her neck feathers were prolonged in fine drooping lines far down over her breast. From the centre of her back, between the shoulders, grew a bunch of long, exquisitely delicate plumes, as white and apparently as fragile as the frost-flowers on a window. These were her festal adornment, worn, by herself and her mate alike, only in the nesting season.

Having preened herself well, and shaken her long, snaky neck as if to take the kinks out of it, she spread her shining wings and lifted herself into the air. She rose, however, but a few inches, and then, flapping and squawking wildly, she was dragged down again by some unseen force. Her frantic struggles knocked off a corner of the nest, and swept off one of the awkward nestlings, which fell kicking and sprawling through the leafage and disappeared with a splash. A moment more and the mother, for all her wild fight against the unseen fate, was drawn down after him into the shadowed water. Then a little flat-bottomed boat, or ducking-punt, with a man crouching in the bottom of it, came worming its way through the narrow lane of water between the stems of the bushes. The man seized her by the dangerous beak, jerked her into the punt, put his knee upon her neck, detached the noose of a copper-wire snare from her leg, drew a keen hunting-knife, and deftly sliced the snowy plumes from the flesh of her back.

Then he hurled her out into the open water, that she might not be in his way while he rearranged the snare upon the edge of the nest in order to catch her mate.

Half stunned, and altogether bewildered by her agony, the mother egret flapped blindly upon the top of the water, her snowy plumage crimsoned with her life-blood. After a few moments she succeeded in getting into the air. Flying heavily, and lurching as she went, she flew across the lagoon, blundered in among the bushes, and fell with her legs in the water, her twitching wings entangled in the branches. There, after a few vain struggles, she lay still, dying slowly--very slowly--her beak half open, but her eyes wide and undaunted.

Not long afterwards the male egret, who had been fishing far down the lagoon, and knew nothing of what had happened, came back to the nest with food. He, too, was caught in the fatal snare, dragged down, scalped of his nuptial plumes as the red savage of old scalped his enemies, and thrown away to die at his leisure. The law of that country forbade the shooting of the egrets in the nesting season, when alone they wore the plumes which women crave. The plume-hunter, therefore, felt that he was evading the law successfully if he hacked the prize from the living bird and released it while still alive and able to fly. If the bird died agonizingly afterwards, who was going to swear that he was the slayer?