Tales of the Wilderness Part 10

OVER THE RAVINE

I

The ravine was deep and dark.

Its yellow clay slopes, overgrown with red-trunked pines, presented craggy ridges; at the bottom flowed a brook. Above, right and left, grew a pine forest--dark, ancient, covered with lichen and shubbery.

Overhead was a grey, heavy, low-hanging sky.

Man seldom came to this wild and savage spot.

The trees had in the course of time been uprooted by storms of wind and rain, and had fallen just where they stood, strewing the earth, rotting, emitting thick pungent odours of decaying pinewood.

Thistles, chicory, milfoil, and wormwood had flourished there for years undisturbed, and they now covered the ground with th.o.r.n.y bristles. There was a den of bears at the bottom of the ravine; many wolves prowled through the forest.

Over the edge of the steep, yellow slope hung a fallen pine, and for many years its roots were exposed, raised on high in the air. They looked like some petrified octopus stretching up its hideous tentacles to the elements, and were already covered with lichen and juniper.

In the midst of these roots two great grey birds--a male and a female--had built themselves a nest.

They were large and grey, thickly covered by yellowish-grey and cinnamon-coloured feathers. Their wings were short, broad, and strong; their feet, armed with great claws, were covered with black down. Surmounting their short, thick necks were large quadratic heads with yellow, rapaciously curved beaks and round, fierce, heavy looking eyes.

The female was the smaller. Her legs were more slender and handsome, and there was a kind of rough, heavy gracefulness in the curves of her neck. The male was fierce and stiff; his left wing did not fold properly; he had injured it at the time he had fought other males for his mate.

There was steepness on three sides of their nest. Above it was the wide expanse of the sky. Around, about, and beneath it lay bones washed and whitened by the rain. The nest itself was made of stones and mud, and overspread with down.

The female always sat in the nest.

The male hummed to himself on the end of a root that was suspended over the steep, alone, peering far into the distance around and below him with his heavy, pensive eyes; perched with his head sunk deep into his shoulders and his wings hanging heavily down.

II

These two great birds had met here, not far from the ravine, one evening at twilight.

It was spring; the snow was thawing on the slopes, whilst in the forest and valleys it became grey and mellow; the pine-trees exhaled a pungent odour; and the brook at the bottom of the ravine had awakened.

The sun already gave warmth in the daytime. The twilight was verdurous, lingering, and resonant with life. Wolf-packs were astir, and the males fought each other for the females.

This spring, with the sun and the soft breeze, an unwonted heaviness pervaded the male-bird's body. Formerly he used to fly or roost, croak or sit silent, fly swiftly or slowly, because there were causes both around and within him: when hungry he would find a hare, kill, and devour it; when the sun was too hot or the wind too keen, he would shelter from them; when he saw a crouching wolf, he would hastily fly away from it.

Now it was no longer so.

It was not a sense of hunger or self-preservation now that induced him to fly, to roost, cry, or be silent: something outside of him and his feelings now possessed him.

When the twilight came, as though befogged, not knowing why, he rose from the spot on which he had perched all day and flew from glade to glade, from crag to crag, moving his great wings softly and peering hard into the dense, verdurous darkness. In one of the glades he saw birds similar to himself, a female among them. Without knowing why, he threw himself amidst them, feeling an inordinate strength within him and a great hatred for all the other males.

He walked slowly round the female, treading hard on the ground, spreading out his wings, tossing back his head to look askance at the males. One, he who until now had been victor, tried to impede him-- then flew at him with beak prepared to strike, and a long silent, cruel fight began. They flew at each other, beating with their bills, chests, wings, and claws, blindly rumpling and tearing each others'

feathers and body.

His opponent proved the weaker and drew off; then again he threw himself towards the female and walked round her, limping a little now, and trailing his blood-stained left wing along the ground.

Pine-trees surrounded the glade; the earth was bestrewn with dry, withered leaves; the night sky was blue.

The female was indifferent to him and to all; she strode calmly about the glade, pecked at the ground, caught a mouse and quietly swallowed it. She appeared to pay no attention to the males.

It was thus all night long.

But when the night began to pale and over the east lay the greenish- blue outline of dawn, she moved close to him who had conquered the rest, leaned her back against his breast, tipped his injured wing tenderly with her bill--as though she would nurse and dress it; then slowly rising from the ground, she flew towards the ravine.

And he, moving his injured wing painfully but without heeding it, emitting shrill cries of joy, flew after her.

She came down just by the roots of that pine where afterwards they built their nest.

The male perched beside her. He was irresolute and apparently abashed.

The female strutted several times round him, scenting him again.

Then, pressing her breast to the ground, tail uplifted, her eyes half-closed--she waited. The male threw himself towards her, seized her comb with his bill, clapping the ground with his heavy wings; and through his veins there coursed such a wonderful ecstasy, such invigorating joy, that he was dazzled, feeling nothing else save this delicious rapture, croaking hoa.r.s.ely and making the ravine reverberate with a dull echo that ruffled the stillness of the early morn.

The female was submissive.

III

In the winter the pines stood motionless and their trunks were a greyish brown. The snow lay deep, swept into great drifts which reared in a dark pile towards the ravine. The sky was a grey stretch; the days short and almost dim.

At night the tree-boles cracked in the frost and their branches broke. The pale moon shone calmly in the stillness, and seemed to make the frost still harder.

The nights were weirdly horrible with the frost and the phosph.o.r.escent light of the moon; the birds sat tucked in their nest, pressing close together to keep themselves warm. Yet still the frost penetrated their feathers, got into their skin and made their feet, bills, and backs feel cold. The errant light of the moon was also disquieting; it made the whole earth appear to be a great wolfish eye--that was why it shone so terribly!

The birds had no sleep.

They turned painfully in their nest, changing their position; their large green eyes emitted a greenish light. Had they possessed the power of thought, they would certainly have longed for the advent of morning.

While it was still an hour before dawn, as the moon was fading and the first faint glimmer of daylight approaching, they began to feel hungry; in their mouths there was a disagreeable, bitterish taste, and from time to time their craws painfully contracted.

When the grey morning had at last come, the male bird flew off for his prey; he flew slowly, spreading his wings wide and rarely flapping them, vigilantly eying the ground beneath him. He usually hunted for hares. It was sometimes a long while before he found one; then he rose high over the ravine and set out on a distant flight from his nest, far away from the ravine into the vast white expanse of snow.

When there were no hares about, he seized young foxes and magpies, although their flesh was unsavoury. The foxes would defend themselves long and stubbornly, biting viciously, and they had to be attacked cautiously and skilfully. It was necessary to strike the bill at once into the animal's neck near its head, and, immediately clutching its back with the talons, to rise into the air--for there the fox ceased all resistance.

With his prey the bird flew back to his nest by the ravine, and here he and his mate at once devoured it. They ate but once in the day, and so satiated themselves that they could move only with difficulty afterwards, and their crops hung low. They even ate up the snow which had become soaked with blood. The female threw the bones that remained down the side of the steep.

The male perched himself on the end of a root, ruffling his feathers in an effort to make himself more comfortable; and the blood coursed warmly through his veins after his meal.

The female was sitting in the nest.

Towards evening the male, for some unknown reason, began to croak.

"Oo-hoo-hoo-oo!" he cried in guttural tones, as though the sound in his throat came from across the water.

Sometimes as he sat solitary on his height, the wolves would observe him, and one of the famished beasts would begin clambering up the precipitous side of the ravine.