The Haunters of the Silences: A Book of Animal Life

Roberts Charles G. D., Sir

The Haunters of the Silences: A Book of Animal Life

Prefatory Note

THE present collection of stories dealing with creatures of the wilderness differs from its companion volumes, "The Kindred of the Wild" and "The Watchers of the Trails," in one important particular. It contains certain studies and depictions of a sphere of wild life which presents peculiar difficulties to the observer, viz.: the life of the dwellers in the deep sea. Our investigation of these remote kindreds is at best spasmodic, and conducted always at the extreme of disadvantage; and the knowledge which we may gain from such investigation must always remain in a measure fragmentary. It is not easy for any observer to be intimate with a sawfish; and the most ardent naturalist's acquaintance with an orca, or "killer" whale, must be essentially a distant one, if he would hope to put his observations upon record. Needless to say, my own knowledge of the orca, the shark, the narwhal, or the colossal cuttlefish of the ocean depths, is not of the same kind as my knowledge of the bear, the moose, the eagle, and others of the furtive folk of our New Brunswick wilderness. When I write of these latter I build my stories upon a foundation of personal, intimate, sympathetic observation, the result of a boyhood passed in the backwoods, and of almost yearly visits, ever since my boyhood, to the wild forest regions of my native province. But when I write of the kindreds of the deep sea, I am relying upon the collated results of the observations of others. I have spared no pains to make these stories accord, as far as the facts of natural history are concerned, with the latest scientific information. But I have made no vain attempt at interpretation of the lives of creatures so remote from my personal knowledge; and for such tales as "A Duel in the Deep," "The Terror of the Sea Caves," or "The Prowlers," my utmost hope is that they may prove entertaining, without being open to any charge of misrepresenting facts. On the other hand, in certain of the stories dealing with the results of my own observation and experience, I have dared to hope that I might be contributing something of value to the final disputed question of animal psychology. For such stories, which offer in the form of fiction what my observations have compelled me to regard as fact, I have presented my case already, in the prefaces to "The Watchers of the Trails" and "Red Fox." To those prefaces I would add nothing here; and from the conclusions therein stated I have nothing to retract. I would merely take this occasion to reaffirm with confidence the belief, which I find shared by practically all observers whose lives are passed in the closest relationship with animals, – by such vitally interested observers, for instance, as keepers, trainers, hunters, and trappers, – that the actions of animals are governed not only by instinct, but also, in varying degree, by processes essentially akin to those of human reason.

C. G. D. R.

The Summons of the North

I

IN the mystic gloom and the incalculable cold of the long Arctic night, when Death seemed the only inhabitant of the limitless vasts of ice and snow, the white bear cub was born. Over the desolate expanses swept the awful polar wind, now thick with fine, crystalline snow which volleyed and whirled and bit like points of steel, now glassy clear, so that the great, unwavering Arctic stars could preside unobscured over its destructive fury. When the wind was still, not less awful than the wind had been was the stillness, in which the unspeakable cold wrought secretly its will upon the abandoned world. Sometimes the implacable starlight would pale suddenly, and the lovely, sinister, spectral flames of the aurora, electric blue, and violet, and thin, elusive red, would go dancing in terrible silence across the arch of sky.

But the white cub – contrary to the custom of her kind his mother had borne but the one, instead of two – felt nothing of the cold and the unutterable desolation, saw nothing of the unchanging night, the implacable stars, the heatless and mirthless dancing flames. In a lair between two rocks, under seven or eight feet of snow, he lay snuggled against the warm, furry body of his mother, safe hidden from the world of night and cold. The mother, whose hot breathing kept open a little arched hollow in the sheltering snow, spent practically all her time in sleep, the ample layers of fat which the previous summer had stored upon her ribs supplying food and fuel to her giant frame. The cub, too, slept away most of the long unvarying hours, waking to nurse from time to time, and growing with marvellous rapidity on the inexhaustible nourishment which his mother's milk supplied.

Month followed month, as the night dragged slowly on toward spring and dawn; and still the mother slept, growing thinner day by day; and still the cub slept, and grew, and slept, day by day waxing fatter, and larger, and stronger for the great and terrible battle of life which awaited him beyond the threshold of the snow.

Except for the vast alternations of storm and calm, of starlight and auroral radiance, there was nothing to happen in that empty and frozen world. Such life as dared the cold and dark in those regions kept along the edges of the sea, where the great waters kept air-holes open through the incumbent ice. Thither frequented the walrus and the seals, and there hunted stealthily the savage old he-bears, who were too restless to yield themselves to the long winter sleep. But the wise mother had wandered far into the inland solitudes before retiring for her winter of sleep and motherhood. Over the place of that safe sleep and secret motherhood no live thing passed, all winter long, – save once or twice a small white fox, who sniffed cautiously at a faint, menacing scent which stole up through the hard snow, and once or twice the wide, soundless wings of a great white Arctic owl, winnowing southward to find the vanished ptarmigan.

Late and lagging came the beginnings of the dawn, – and then, much later, when dawn had grown into the long day, the beginnings of the Arctic spring. Something called to the heart of the old she-bear, and she heard in the deep of her lair. Bursting through the softening and decaying snow, she led her sturdy cub forth into the white outer solitudes, and turned her steps eastward toward the seashore. She was gaunt, loose-pelted, and unspeakably hungry; but she went slowly, while the cub learned the new and interesting business of using his legs.

Along the shore the massive ice was still unbroken for miles out; but where the currents and tides and storms had begun to vanquish it, and the steel blue waves were eating into it hour by hour beneath the growing sunlight, there the life of the north was gathering. Sea-birds clamoured, and mated, and dived, and flew in circles, or settled in flickering gray and white masses on every jutting promontory of black rock. Along the blue-white ice-edge seals basked and barked, their soft eyes keeping incessant watch against the perils that always lurked about them. Huge bulks of walrus wallowed heavily in the waves, or lifted their tusked heads menacingly to stare over the ice.

Amid this teeming life, which the returning sun had brought back to the ice-fields, the old she-bear, with her cub close at her heels, moved craftily. She lurked behind piled-up ice-cakes, crept from shelter to shelter, and moved as noiselessly as a wraith of snow on the hair-tufted pads of her great feet. Sometimes her tireless hunting was promptly rewarded, particularly when some inexperienced seal had been foolish enough to lie basking close beside an ice-cake large enough to give cover to the cunning hunter. Sometimes her sudden rush would take unawares a full-fed gannet half-dozing on a rocky ledge. Sometimes a lightning plunge and sweep of her armed paw would land a gleaming fish upon the ice, a pleasant variation to the diet of red-blooded seal-meat. And presently, as the long sunlight gathered warmth, and the brief, swift heat of the Arctic summer approached, rushing down upon the ice as if it knew how short must be its reign, the melting of the snow on sheltered slopes and southward-facing hollows uncovered a wealth of mosses, and lichens, and sprouting roots, most grateful to the bears' flesh-wearied palates.

But not always was foraging a matter so simple. The mother bear had two great appetites to supply, her own, and that of the vigorous youngster beside her, who kept draining unremittingly at her sources of vitality and strength. Sometimes the seals were unusually alert and shy, the birds vituperative and restless, and the fish obstinate in their preference for the waters far offshore. At such times, if there were no greening hollows near by, where she might make a bloodless banquet, the old bear would call to her aid those great powers of swimming which made her almost as much at home in the water as the seal itself. Marking some seals at rest by the edge of some far-jutting, naked ice-field, where there was no possibility of her creeping upon them unobserved, she would slip into the water in the seclusion of some little cove, and swim straight seaward, swimming so low that only the tip of her muzzle was to be seen. This moving speck upon the waters was not conspicuous even to the keenest and most suspicious eyes. It might pass for a fragment of ice with seaweed frozen into it, or for a bit of floating moss, save for the fact that it moved steadily through the dancing of the waves, paying no heed to tide or wind. As the seals were not expecting danger from the direction of the sea, they were not inclined to scrutinize a thing so insignificant as that steadily moving speck among the waves. Arriving within well calculated distance of the unsuspecting baskers on the ice-field, the old bear would fill her lungs, sink beneath the surface, and swim forward with all speed. At the very edge of the ice she would rise up, lunge forward, and strike down with her savage paw the nearest seal, before any of them had time to realize the direction from which death had burst upon them.

The old bear's triumph, however, was not always so complete. On one day in particular she was confronted by an experience which almost left her cub without a mother. The cub, watching solicitously from behind a jagged hummock of ice, received a lesson which never faded from his mind. He learned that in the wilds one must never let himself become so absorbed in any occupation as to forget to keep a watchful eye for what may be coming up behind one's back.

It was on one of the lean days, when all game was wide awake and the lichen-beds far away. On the jagged ice off the mouth of an inlet lay two walrus calves sunning their round, glistening sides while their mothers wallowed and snorted in the water beside them. The old bear eyed the calves hungrily for a minute or two. Then, ostentatiously turning her back upon the scene, she slouched off inland among the hummocks and rocks, the cub lurching along contentedly beside her.

Once hidden from the view of the walruses, she quickened her pace till the cub had to struggle to keep with her, swung around the head of the inlet, and crept stealthily down the other side toward the spot where the calves were lying. The wind blew softly from them, her padded feet made no sound, and she kept herself completely out of sight. Peering warily from behind a tilted ice-cake, she saw that one of the cows had crawled out of the water and lain down beside its calf for a noonday doze. Then she drew her head back, and continued her careful stalking by nose and ear alone.

At last she found herself within rushing distance. Not thirty yards away she could hear the loud breathing of the drowsy cow on the ice, the splashing of the one in the water. Turning upon the cub, she made him understand that he was to stay where he was till she was ready for him. Then gathering all the force of her muscles till she was like a great bow bent, she shot forth from her place of hiding and rushed upon the sleepers.

As the white shape of doom came down upon them without warning, the cow and one calf awoke in intuitive panic and with astonishing and instantaneous agility rolled off into the water. But the other calf was not in time. One sprawling struggle it made toward safety, and gave utterance to one hoarse bleat of despair, as if it knew that fate had overtaken it. Then a heavy stroke broke its neck; and as its clumsy legs spread out limp and unstrung upon the ice the bear clutched it and started to drag it back from the water's edge.

At this moment she was aware of a huge lumbering bulk crawling up upon the ice behind her. She took it for granted it was the dead calf's mother, and paid no heed. Walrus cows she despised as antagonists, though as game she held them in high consideration. She would attend to this one in a moment; and then her larder would be amply stocked for days.

An instant later, however, if she had deigned to look back, she would have seen a gigantic gray and brown, warty-skinned bulk, surmounted by a hideous face and grim, perpendicular tusks, rearing itself on huge flippers just behind her. The cub, peering from his hiding-place, saw the peril but did not comprehend it. The next moment the bulk fell forward, crushing the bear's hind-quarters to the ice, while those long tusks, which, fortunately for her, had failed to strike directly, tore a great red gash across her right shoulder.

With a grunting squeal of rage and pain the bear writhed herself free of the dripping mass of her assailant, and turned upon him madly. Blow after blow she struck with that terrible fore paw of hers, armed with claws like steel chisels. But the hide of the giant walrus was like many thicknesses of seasoned leather for toughness; and though she drew blood in streams at every tearing stroke, she inflicted no disabling wound. His little, deep eyes red with fury, the bull rearing himself on his flippers and lunging forward with awkward but irresistible force, like a toppling mountain, seeking to crush his enemy and at the same time catch her under the terrific downward thrust of his tusks. As he fought he bellowed hoarsely, and panted with great windy, wheezy breaths, while the walrus cows swam slowly up and down by the edge of the ice, watching the struggle with their small, impassive eyes.

The old bear was lame and aching from that first crushing assault, and her hind-quarters felt almost useless. Nevertheless she was much too active for her clumsy adversary to succeed in catching her again at a disadvantage. As she yielded ground before his blundering charges she led him farther and farther across the ice, farther and farther from the element wherein he was at home and invincible. Had she been herself unhurt she would eventually have vanquished his ill-directed valour, wearing him out and at last reaching his throat. But now she found herself wearing out, with loss of blood and the anguish of her bruised hind-quarters. As soon as she realized that her strength was failing, and that presently she might fail to avoid one of her enemy's great sprawling rushes, she was seized with fear. What would become of the cub if she were killed? She wheeled swiftly, ran to where the cub stood waiting and whimpering, nosed him solicitously, and led him away through the blue and sparkling hummocks.

After this misadventure the mother bear did no more hunting for a week or two, but kept inland among the sunny valleys, and nursed her wounds, and fed on the young roots and tender herbage which sprouted hurriedly wherever the snow left bare a patch of earth. On such clean and blood-cooling diet her hurts speedily healed. Then with renewed vigour and a whetted craving for red flesh-food, she went back to her keen hunting of the seals. But the walruses she haughtily ignored.

The Arctic summer, meanwhile, with its perpetual sun, poured down upon the world in swift, delicious heat; and the desolate world began to laugh, with vivid greenery about the bubbling sources of the springs, and sudden fringes of bloom, yellow and pink, along the edges of the perpetual ice, and the painted fluttering of butterflies in every southward-sloping hollow where there was earth enough to hold the roots of flowers. The little winged adventurers would sometimes flit abroad over the snow, questing perilously beyond the narrow confines of their home. These rash wanderers, as a rule, would fall chilled, and die on the snow before they could get back; and the cub, attracted by the flecks of gay colour on the expanse of gray-white barrenness, would run gleefully to snap them up and eat them.

Throughout the summer the cub and his mother kept very much to themselves, seldom consorting with the other bears which roamed the rocks and floes or came to the sunny valleys to feed on the ephemeral herbage. The cub, meanwhile, having all the nourishment and care that was usually divided between two, was growing swiftly in stature and in the lore of the north. With his mother's example before him he learned to hunt seals, to creep up on the dozing sea-birds, to scoop the unwary fish from the sea, to waylay the stupid hare or the wary fox. But he was peculiarly averse to swimming, and never entered the water except under the compulsion of his mother's firm paw. The wise old bear, knowing how much his success in the battle of life must depend on his mastery of the water, would push him in from time to time, and keep him there in spite of every whimpering protest. In this way he learned his needed lessons. But his preference was all for land hunting, and it was obvious that only the extreme of hunger would ever lead him to follow the seals in their own element. As a matter of fact, since that memorable day when his mother had been beaten by the great walrus, the cub had grown to regard the sea as the peculiar domain of the walruses, and he felt a certain diffidence about trespassing.

When the summer was beginning to fade away as hurriedly as it had come, the cub was suddenly left alone in his grim world. It happened in this way. On a certain hungry day, when his mother's hunting had been unsuccessful, the wind brought over a ridge of rock a pungent and ravishing smell of fresh blood. As cautiously as a cat the old bear crept around the ridge, the cub creeping at her heels. The sight that met them was one they had never seen before. Close at the water's edge three men were busy skinning and cutting up a couple of seals. The cub stopped short. A natural, inborn caution warned him that man was a dangerous animal. But the old bear, to whom man was as unknown as to her cub, had her intuitions obscured at that moment by her too eager appetite. Moreover, she was in a bad temper, and felt that the strangers were intruders upon her own hunting-ground. They were insignificant-looking intruders, too, any one of whom she felt that she could settle at a single stroke of her paw. A green gleam came into her eyes, as with narrow, snaky head thrust forward and jaws half-parted savagely, she stalked down upon the group, expecting to see it scatter at her approach and leave her in undisputed possession of the prey.

As she drew near the men stopped work, stood up, and stared at her. For a moment they did nothing. Then, seeing that she meant business, two of them stepped aside and picked up what looked to her like two long sticks, which glinted in the sun. One man took a stride forward and pointed the stick at her in a way which seemed like a challenge. With a grunt of anger she charged straight at him.

From the point of the stick burst a flash and a roar, with a little puff of blue smoke that drifted off like a ghost over the waves. It might have been the ghost of the old bear herself, fading reluctantly back into the grim and desolate earth from which she had sprung; for at the instant of its appearing she plunged forward upon her nose and lay motionless, with a bullet through her brain.

It was a perfect shot; but the man who had made it took it as a matter of course. In a few moments the limp and warm body was being treated like that of the seal, for the pelt was a fine one and fresh bear-meat was a delicacy not to be despised by Arctic travellers. But the cub was not a witness of this red work of the shambles. When he saw his mother fall he shrank back in overwhelming terror behind the rocks, then turned and ran with all his might till he could run no longer. Finding himself in a little sheltered valley where he and his mother had often fed together on the sweet herbage, he crouched down under a rock and lay shivering for hours, afraid even to whimper.

At first the white cub suffered torments of loneliness and vague fear; but presently the more insistent torments of hunger gave him forgetfulness of his loss, and in hunting for his meals he gradually got himself adjusted to the new conditions. Naturally keen-witted and adaptable, he prospered, and when the approach of the long Arctic night began to throw its shadows over the ice and rocks his ribs were well covered with fat. When the herbage in the little valleys was all frozen to stone and sealed away under the first hard-driven snow, he yielded to a drowsiness which had been creeping into his nerves. With this drowsiness came a stirring of vague memory, and he turned his steps farther inland, far beyond the roar of waves and grinding floes, till he reached a place of tumbled rock, and cleft ravine, and imperishable ice. This was the place where he had been born; and here, in the very same sheltered crevice, he curled himself up for his winter's sleep. He was no more than fairly asleep, when the snow fell thick with the first of the unbroken night, and covered him away securely.

II

Through the months of dark, and storm, and ghostly, dancing lights, and immeasurable cold, the cub slept unstirring, and grew in his sleep. But when he woke, at the very first hint of awaking spring, he was wide awake all at once, and fiercely hungry. Fiercely he burst out from the sheltering snow, and shook himself, and hurried through the mystic glimmer of dawn to the seashore, where he hoped to find the seals.

He was trusting partly to memory, partly to instinct; but he did not know that this year he was a little ahead of the season. The ice inshore was still unbroken, and the journey to open water was leagues longer than he had anticipated. His cunning sharpened by his appetite, he stalked and killed an unwary seal beside its blow-hole, and lay there among the tumbled hummocks for some days, alternately eating and sleeping. Then, his strength and craft and self-reliance increasing hourly, he pressed forward league upon league, under the ethereal, bubble-tinted, lonely Arctic morning, seeking the open sea.

When, at last, he heard the waves breaking along the blue ice brink, and the clamour of the sea-fowl, and the barking of the seals, he felt that he had come home again. He forgot the solid land, here upon what seemed as solid as any land. He forgot the little inland valleys, where presently the snow would be melting and the tender grasses beginning to sprout. Here was good hunting, and easy; and here he stayed, making his lair among the up-tilted ice-floes, till the yellow and blue glory of full day was pouring over the waste.

It happened that year that no storms came to shatter and eat away the ice-fields along their outer edges. Only the tides and the slow assault of the sun did their work; and presently a vast area of unbroken ice parted from the land and went drifting southward in the grip of the polar current.

For days the young bear was quite unaware of this accident. The ice-field was too vast and too solid for its motion to convey any warning. The sea-birds, of course, knew all about it; and in a few days they disappeared, requiring solid ground for their nesting business. As for the seals, if they knew they didn't care, holding the ice safer for their domestic arrangements than the perilous and hostile shore. The young bear found good hunting. No storms came to vex him. And the warmth of summer fairly rushed to meet him. For several weeks he was altogether content.

Meanwhile the sun and the sea were making inroads upon the strength of the ice-field. One day when the bear was prowling along its edges, a mass of perhaps a quarter-acre in area broke off, lurching on the long swell. Astonished and a little alarmed, the bear hurried across, swam the narrow but rapidly widening strait, and clambered out upon the main field. The incident in some way stirred up a latent instinct, and he became uneasy. Setting his pace northward and landward, he stalked straight ahead for hours, – and where he expected a familiar ridge of rocks he came upon open sea. Much disturbed, he kept on his vain search for land, forgetting to eat, and soon had circumnavigated his voyaging domain. There was no land anywhere to swim to. There was nothing to be done but accept the situation with such composure as he could command. The seals were still with him, and he was not compelled to go hungry.