Part 9

Throughout the morning the like swift tragedy was enacted at one nest after the other. The deadly punt slid murderously, silently, up and down the hidden water-lanes among the bushes, and the man with the knife did his work noiselessly, save for the threshing and splashing of his victims.

In the course of an hour, however, for all the marauder's stealth, the whole herony was in a state of desperate fear. Half a dozen birds had been snared, and the others, flying high overhead and staring down with keen, terrified eyes, had detected the slaughterer in his hiding under the branches. They had seen him, too, resetting his snares upon the edges of the nests. And in spite of the fact that, after doing so, he withdrew to some distance among the bushes--as far as the cords attached to the snares would permit--they dreaded to approach their nests again. But there were their younglings, solemn and hungry, quite uncomprehending of the doom which hung over them, hoarsely and trustingly petitioning to be fed. The parent birds could not long resist those appeals. Love and tenderness triumphed over fear, even over the clear view of mortal peril. One after another the great white birds came back, trembling but devoted, to their nests. One after another, sooner or later, got a foot into that implacable wire noose, was dragged down beneath the bushes, and thrown out weltering in its blood. There was no escaping a trap thus baited with the appeals of the young. And before the lagoon had taken the first of the sunset colour, there was not one adult egret in the whole herony which had not paid the bloody price of its devotion.

At last, when the lagoon lay like a sheet of burnished copper, the man with the punt came out boldly from among the bushes and paddled off toward the outlet with his bleeding trophies. As he vanished, three or four birds, stronger and more tenacious of life than their fellows, came flapping back to their nests, their backs and wings and thighs caked with blood. Swaying as they perched upon the stick platforms, they managed to feed the nestlings once more. Then, dogged in their devotion, they flew off to continue their tasks. They never returned again, but fell in the shallows where they stood trying to fish: and if the Fates of the wilderness elected to be merciful, they were drowned quickly.

All night, through the star-strewn summer dark, the orphaned nestlings kept up their harshly plaintive cries of hunger and loneliness. A pair of owls, hearing these cries, and guessing that all could not be right with the egret colony, came winnowing up noiselessly and took toll of the defenceless nests. After daybreak, the wheeling hawk dropped low to investigate, then struck wherever he found the nestlings fattest and most tempting. Toward noon, under the pitiless downpour of the unclouded sun, the little ones wilted like cut grass, thirst and hunger stilling their pitiful complaints. Long before night there was not a nestling left alive on the whole lagoon.

* * * * *

The Girl, with snowy aigrette in her bright hair, her gloved fingers resting on the Man's arm, stood upon the kerb outside the theatre, waiting for a taxi. A light dogcart came by. The horse, sleek and spirited and spoilt, was in wayward humour, and took it into its head to give its driver trouble. The driver tried to soothe it, but it would not be soothed. It began backing capriciously. The driver cut it smartly with his light whip.

"Oh," cried the Girl, "see how he's beating that poor horse! What a brute!"

"It's hurting the horse about as much," said the Man, "as if you struck it with your fan! Moreover, the horse is behaving very badly, and must be made to mind. It's endangering the whole traffic."

The Girl flushed, bit her lip, and withdrew her hand from the Man's arm. Just then the summoned taxi drew up at the kerb. The Girl stepped in.

"What brutes men are!" she said. "Perhaps they can't help being cruel! They have no intuition, so how can they understand?"

The Man glanced at the aigrette, smiled discreetly, and said nothing.

The Cabin in the Flood

Stepping into the cabin, Long Jackson said: "If that there blame jam don't break inside o' twenty-four hour, the hull valley's goin' to be under water, an' I'll hev to be gittin' ye out o' this in the canoe. I've just been uncoverin' her an' rozenin' her up, an' she's as good as noo. That's a fine piece o' winter bark ye put on to her, Tom."

From his bunk in the dark corner beyond the stove, Brannigan lifted his shaggy face and peered wistfully out into the sunshine with sunken but shining eyes.

"I was afeard there'd be a powerful freshet after this long spell o' thaw atop of all that rain, Long, an' the snow layin' so deep in the woods this winter. I wisht ye'd lug me over an' lay me by the door in the sun fer a bit, Long, ef 'tain't too much trouble. That 'ere sun'll put new life into me bones, in case the jam don't break, an' we hev to git a move on."

After this long speech, Brannigan's head dropped wearily back on the roll of blanket that served him as pillow. He had been desperately ill with pneumonia, so ill that it had been impossible for Long Jackson to go in to the Settlements for a doctor; and now, under Jackson's assiduous nursing, he was just beginning the slow climb back to life.

"Think 'twon't be too cold fer ye by the door?" queried Jackson anxiously.

"No, no!" protested Brannigan. "It's the sun I'm wantin', and the smell o' spring stirrin' in the buds. That's the med'cine fer me now, Long."

Long Jackson grumbled doubtfully, holding to the strange back-country superstition that fresh air is dangerous for sick folk. But he yielded, as he usually did where Brannigan was concerned. He spread blankets on the floor by the door--a little to one side to avoid the draught--then carried his partner's gaunt form over to them, and rolled him up like a baby, with his head well propped on a pile of skins. Then he seated himself on the chopping-log just outside the door, and proceeded to fill his pipe with that moist, black plug tobacco, good alike for smoking and for chewing, which is chiefly favoured by the backwoodsman. Brannigan's face, drinking in the sunshine as a parched lawn drinks rain, freshened and picked up a tinge of colour. His eyes, long weary of the four grey walls of the cabin, roved eagerly the woods that fringed the tiny clearing.

"Anyways," said Long Jackson between puffs, as he sucked the damp tobacco alight, "this here knoll of ourn's the highest bit o' country fer ten miles round, and the cabin's on the highest p'int of it. 'Tain't raly likely the water'll come clean over it, ef the jam don't give inside o' twenty-four hour. But it makes one feel kind o' safe havin' the canoe ready."

"Yes, it's the highest bit o' country fer miles round," murmured Brannigan dreamily, soaking in the sun. "An' I'm thinkin' we ain't the only ones as knows it, Long. Will ye look at them rabbits down yander? Did ever ye see so many o' them together afore?"

Jackson looked, and involuntarily laid his pipe down on the log beside him to look again. The woods far down the slope--it was a slope so gentle as to be hardly perceptible--were swarming with rabbits, hopping and darting this way and that over the snow. For the snow still lingered under the trees, though only a few patches of it, yellowing and shrinking under the ardent sun, remained in the open of the clearing.

After staring for some moments in silence, Jackson took up his pipe again.

"The water must be risin' mighty quick," said he. "Them rabbits are gittin' sociable all of a sudden. They're comin' to pay ye a call, Tom, this bein' yer fust day up."

"We'll be havin' other callers besides rabbits, I'm thinkin'," said Brannigan, the dreaminess in his voice and eyes giving way to a pleased excitement. This was better than his bunk in the dark corner of the cabin. "What's that, now, way down behind them yaller birch trunks?" he added eagerly. "I guess it's a bear, Long."

"It's two bear," corrected Jackson. "So long as it's jest rabbits, all right, but we ain't entertainin' bears this mornin'. Grub's too scarce, an' bears is hungry this time o' year. Gee! There's two more down by the spring. Guess I'd better git the gun."

"Wait a bit, Long," expostulated Brannigan. "They're so afeard o' the water, they'll be harmless as the rabbits. No good shootin' 'em now, when their pelts ain't worth the skinnin'. Let 'em be, an' see what they'll do. They hain't got no place else to go to, to git out o' the water."

"Let 'em climb a tree!" grumbled Jackson. But he sat down again on his log. "Ye're right, anyhow, Tom," he continued, after a moment's consideration. "What's the good o' spilin' good skins by shootin' 'em now? An' if they're not too skeered to death to know they're hungry, they kin eat the rabbits. An', anyhow, the ca'tridges is pretty nigh gone. Come along, Mr. Bear, an' bring yer wife an' all yer relations!"