The Way of the Wild (Sass)/Lotor the Lucky
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ALL evening thick gray mists had drifted low above the island woods before a brisk northeast breeze; but toward midnight the wind had lulled, and now the moon hung high and round in a sky where no shred of cloud floated. The air had been swept dry and clean. Very faint and far, yet singularly clear, seemed the voices of the September night; voices of many different kinds, dropping softly down through the still moonlit spaces.
Mat Norman, his back against the trunk of a laurel oak at the edge of a small meadow of rushes, listened eagerly. The muffled thunder of surf breaking along a barrier beach a half mile away made a sort of background for the voices falling from the upper air and seemed somehow to enhance their distinctness.
Norman recognized many of them—the metallic chirps of ricebirds, the guttural "quok-quok-quok" of night herons or Indian pullets, the mellow calls of plover and curlew, the high-pitched cries of green herons. A long time he listened, marveling at the vast numbers of the migrating birds streaming southward through the night along high invisible air roads, guided by the boom of the surf on the lonely beaches of the coast. Then, suddenly, another sound fixed his attention.
It was no more than the cracking of a twig. Yet Norman, accustomed to nocturnal vigils in the haunts of wild things, knew that it was significant. He hoped for a buck of the sea-island race of deer; but the wayfarer that presently appeared at the opening of the narrow trail through the rushes was a raccoon, a very small raccoon, having only the stump of a tail. In the white moonlight Norman could see plainly, could distinguish nearly every detail.
"Lotor the Lucky," he muttered, smiling; "Lotor the Wily One, the Tailless One. Lotor the Little, roaming a long way from home. Now I wonder"
He broke off suddenly. A small dark shape darted along the path through the rushes straight toward the spot where the little raccoon waited motionless; and above it and behind it another dark shape planed swiftly, soundlessly downward. Scarcely two feet in front of the raccoon, the horned owl dropped upon his victim, and in the same instant Lotor the Lucky leaped forward. A squeal, a growl, a brief violent fluttering of strong wings beating the ground and the grass; then, as silently as he had fallen on his prey, the big owl floated upward, empty-clawed. An instant he hovered ten feet above the spot where the raccoon crouched, growling, on the quivering body of a young marsh rabbit. Next moment the owl was gone.
Mat Norman, invisible against the black trunk of his oak, grinned delightedly.
"Quick work, Lotor the Lucky," he exclaimed under his breath; "quick work and your usual luck. It's a smart coon that can make a horned owl catch his supper for him. . . . Hello! What now?"
Behind and just above the raccoon the impalpable air had suddenly taken form. A ghostly, big-headed shape hung there momentarily, then dropped apparently upon the raccoon's back. Wide, powerful wings buffeted Lotor the Lucky; long, needle-pointed claws ripped and raked his hide; a piercing, strangling scream stabbed his ears. Taken utterly by surprise, the little coon leaped sideways out of the path and into the rushes. When, a moment or two later, his quick wits had taken stock of the situation and he bounced out into the path again to reclaim his booty, the big ow] had already lifted the rabbit fifteen feet into the air.
Mat Norman laughed softly as his imagination pictured the expression of Lotor's whiskered countenance.
"By thunder!" he said to himself. "That's an owl worth knowing. I'll get acquainted with the old pirate and keep tab on him. And to start with, I'll name him Eyes o' Flame, the Harrier of the Night."
He smiled and repeated the imposing title. Norman was a young man then and he had a young man's fancy for resounding names. Moreover, for an instant he had seen two great round orbs which glowed in the moonlight like live coals. The name that he had chosen pleased him.
Three afternoons later, an hour before sunset, Eyes o' Flame sat in a low dense cedar at the edge of a wide sea marsh and looked out over the level green expanse. Unless something especially alluring tempted him, the horned owl would not begin his hunting for two hours or more. But he was wide awake and fully alert; and his big yellow black-centered eyes, glaring fixedly under the two tall feather tufts on top of his head, kept grim and ceaseless watch upon the wild peoples of the lonely salt flats.
The flood tide, pouring in through narrow inlets between the barrier islands and sweeping silently along the deep meandering marsh creeks, brought with it incalculable hordes of shrimp and mullet. Twenty feet in front of the owl's cedar the marsh grass fell away, enclosing a bare space of sandy mud pitted with shallow holes and traversed by crooked, irregular gullies. Already the rising waters had converted this open space into a marsh-bordered pond from two inches to a foot in depth—a small tidal lagoon packed and crammed with life.
The horned owl waited and watched, his luminous eyes scanning the muddy margins where the water lapped amid the close-growing marsh blades. A flock of fifty-two snowy egrets, winging slowly toward their roosting place, dropped down to the teeming shallows, too tempting to be passed by, despite the lateness of the hour. With languid interest the big owl watched them at their fishing—slim, graceful, immaculate, striding swiftly here and there through water that covered their golden feet and four inches of their clean black legs. To right and left the long, straight javelin bills flashed downward, lifted again, jerked spasmodically in the air as the mandibles manipulated the shrimp to loosen the horny head parts, snapped shut once more, poised, aimed, flashed down upon another victim.
To Eyes o' Flame all this was of no importance; but he observed with some quickening of interest that now and then an egret leaped suddenly upward and did a little dance in the water as a passing crab struck with clashing claws at the tall bird's slender legs. Egrets and shrimp were of no consequence in the horned owl's scheme of things, but crabs sometimes played a certain part in his hunting, and this evidence of their abundance was worth noting. More closely than ever, the round yellow orbs searched the marsh-bordered margins of the pool; but minute after minute passed uneventfully, and Eyes o' Flame's gaze strayed hither and yonder, taking in many things, yet finding nothing to stir him to action.
Presently, low above the marsh, swept an army of black-and-white skimmers, flying side by side in a long double rank several hundred yards across its front, their taper wings rhythmically fanning the air, their scissors-like bills gleaming red in the soft light. Eyes o' Flame watched them curiously as they passed. So large an array of skimmers was a rare sight on the marshes, though not so rare on the barrier beach a half mile away, where, in late summer and fall, the scissors-bills might sometimes be seen in hosts of many hundreds as they passed up or down the strand, journeying from one inlet sand bar to another.
The big owl's head was turned to watch the departing skimmer army. He could no longer see the pool or its denizens. Yet suddenly, with such swiftness that a man's eye could not have followed the motion, his head pivoted on his shoulders so that it faced the other way. The yellow eyes glowed with a fiercer light; the tall, hornlike ear tufts rose stiffly erect; the whole burly, rather fluffy body of the owl seemed to tighten and grow tense and hard. It must have been a sound that had warned him; yet this sound, if sound there was, could not have been heard at that distance by the keenest human ear.
The egrets fishing in the pool did not hear it. A clapper rail, walking along the margin close to the encircling wall of marsh grass, continued her walk undisturbed. The big blue crabs, moving about in the shallows, failed to take alarm. But Eyes o' Flame's marvelous ears had made no mistake.
Out of the marsh, precisely at the spot upon which the owl's eyes were fixed, bounded a slim, long, dark brown shape. Its first leap carried it with a splash into water which all but covered its short legs. Its second leap carried it still deeper, to a place where an instant before the claws of a crab had appeared momentarily, striking at something on the surface. Its third leap bore it shoreward again, snarling with anger; for the crab, warned by that first splash, had dodged and darted away in a cloud of muddy water.
Another half second and the mink would have regained the shelter of the tall marsh grass; but in that half second silent wings lowered over him, long claws as sharp as needles and almost as hard as steel clutched his nape and drove deep into his furry throat. With hardly a movement of his pinions, Eyes o' Flame sailed onward and upward. Long before the big owl had reached the ancient live oak which was his favorite feeding station, the lithe brown form trailing from his talons had ceased its struggles.
The old oak stood in the heart of dense junglelike woods and thickets covering a small island in the marshes midway between a much larger island, which was almost a part of the mainland, and a low, narrow barrier isle along the edge of the sea. The small densely wooded island in the midst of the green marsh flats had been Eyes o' Flames headquarters for months. Its almost impenetrable thickets rendered it a safe refuge so far as human enemies were concerned, while on it and all around it the great horned owl found abundance of game.
Almost in its center was a small fresh-water pool in the middle of a wet meadow covered thickly with tall olive-green rushes, growing in dense clumps and standing as high as a man's head; and everywhere through these rushes wound the trails and runways of the short-eared brown marsh rabbits which were Eyes o' Flame's staple prey. The woods and thickets swarmed with field rats; in the belt of reeds and other water growths around the island's rim other rodents abounded; in the wilderness of marsh grass stretching on every side hundreds of clapper rails made their homes. On all these Eyes o' Flame levied tribute, now and again varying his fare by hunting quail or robbing some plantation henroost on the larger inhabited island across the boggy tidal plains. Yet, better than all these, Eyes o' Flame's whimsical palate loved the mink; and often, in the dusk and in the dark, he haunted the shadowy margins of shallow pools and creeks where the minks of the marshes sought the big blue crabs which came in from the inlets and the sea with the flooding tide.
On this September evening the horned owl was in luck. He had caught his mink without hunting for it—caught it in daylight, before the time for his hunting had arrived. This was a stroke of fortune; he need not hunt that night unless he chose to do so, for here was his dinner ready for the eating. Yet as his soft wings bore him noiselessly toward the old oak in the island woods, Eyes o' Flame, despite his passion for mink meat, was conscious of no eager desire for the feast.
Perhaps he had dined more sumptuously than usual the night before. Perhaps the sluggishness of his appetite was due to the fact that sunset was not his accustomed hour for dining, but, on the contrary, the hour at which he prepared to set forth in search of game. At any rate, having reached his dining table—a crotch of the oak where three stout limbs diverged—he did not proceed to rend and devour his prey, but instead stood idly upon the mink's carcass for perhaps a quarter of an hour while the dusk deepened round him.
At last his barred and mottled tawny pinions opened and he planed outward and downward from the oak, swerved in the air and sailed buoyantly up to a bulky nest of sticks, bark and Spanish moss near the top of a pine. In this nest—the deserted home of a pair of red-shouldered hawks—he deposited the body of the mink. Then he spread his velvet wings again and faded into the gloom.
He had been gone perhaps three minutes when a lump on one of the limbs of the live oak moved. For a quarter of an hour that lump had remained utterly motionless, except for an almost imperceptible movement of its sides which proved that the lump breathed; but throughout that quarter of an hour two beady black orbs had watched Eyes o' Flame as he perched in the crotch of the oak—watched him eagerly yet patiently, calmly yet perhaps vindictively.
Lotor the Lucky was very small, but he was very wise. When he was three months old a cottonmouth moccasin had bitten him. He had recovered, but somehow the venom had retarded his growth. Seasoned veteran though he was, rich in woods lore, expert in all the essential arts of forest life, he was a poor thing to look at—a scraggy runt of a raccoon, scarcely more than half his proper size, boasting only a mere remnant of a tail, lacking four toes which steel traps had taken, walking always with a limp because another trap had crushed a hind foot. How he lost his tail is another story and does not matter. It was at the opposite end of his person that his brain was situated; and the important thing about Lotor was his brain.
That brain was busy now. It had been busy from the moment when Lotor's sharp eyes discerned the great horned owl winging silently toward the oak with prey hanging from his talons. In that moment the little raccoon, returning along one of the oak's main limbs after a raid on certain clusters of wild grapes, had frozen into absolute immobility. Thirty feet from him Eyes o' Flame came to rest in the oak; and Lotor, watching through a screen of leaves which hid him from the owl, waited with that vast, patience which was a basic ingredient of his wisdom.
There was stored away in Lotor's brain considerable knowledge of horned owls. When this owl did not begin at once to devour the prey which he had taken, the little raccoon knew that it might be worth his while to keep watch from his ambush; and while he watched, his sharp eyes shot quick glances to right and left, searching the surrounding trees. When, a few minutes later, he spied the deserted hawks' nest in the pine, the discovery served to fortify his patience. He felt fairly confident now that he knew what the ow! would do, and he was not surprised in the slightest when presently Eyes o' Flame flew with his prey to the abandoned nest, which he occasionally used as a storehouse, lingered there a half second, then departed empty-clawed for his night's hunting.
Lotor the Lucky waited a few minutes for safety's sake. On the ground he stood in no fear of horned owls; on the slim trunk of that pine, fifty feet above the ground, the steel-clawed, great-winged hunter of the night would have him at a disadvantage. One of the things that Lotor had learned about these monarchs of the owl tribe was the fact that they varied much in strength and courage. He had been living on the little island in the marshes only about a week, having come there from a much larger island where his tribe abounded; but already he had had one encounter with this horned owl which had given the wily old coon an eloquent hint of the big bird's daring.
Hence, for some three minutes after Eyes o' Flame had disappeared, Lotor remained a mere inanimate knob on the rugged limb of the oak. Then the knob stirred and became again a small stump-tailed raccoon which moved swiftly along the oak limb and down the tree's massive trunk. A quarter of an hour later—for more than once he had paused to listen keenly and look about him—Lotor's eager black eyes peered over the rim of the hawks' nest in the pine.
What he saw there at first pleased, then disappointed him. His prize lay where he expected to find it; but it was not the prize which he had hoped for—a young marsh rabbit. The victim that Eyes o' Flame had left in his storehouse was a creature which Lotor knew well, but upon which he was not accustomed to prey, because, in the first place, he had never succeeded in catching a mink and had learned long ago that it was waste of time to stalk or pursue them. Yet having climbed fifty feet for this supper, he was not disposed to reject it hastily. He took the brown carcass delicately in his jaws, and with another quick, apprehensive glance around him, backed over the rim of the nest.
Lotor the Lucky was halfway down the pine when a strange thing happened. As suddenly as though a rifle bullet had touched his spine, he loosed his hold on the tree and dropped, his body twisting frantically, his feet clawing the air. Into the top of a low, dense, wide-spreading cassena bush at the base of the pine he fell with a crash that shattered the silence of the island woods; and as the stiff, small-leaved twigs of the bush engulfed him and closed over him, a great dim shape, wide-winged and savage-eyed, hammered with mighty pinions at the leafy gates of his refuge and struck long trenchant talons deep into the barricade of twigs.
Lotor the Lucky, somewhat disheveled and rather breathless, felt the needle point of one of those talons lightly scratch his hide. It was a mere pin prick and it did the coon no harm. But it was vivid proof of how narrowly he had escaped, and he sprawled motionless for a minute or two amid the inner branches of the cassena before recovering his equanimity. Then he jumped lightly to the ground and stood for an instant considering, the mink still hanging from his jaws. Above and around him the stiff interlacing twigs and branches formed a barrier which Eyes o' Flame could never penetrate; but Lotor the Lucky, now that he had the solid ground under him again, no longer feared the owl, and for a moment he was on the point of stepping boldly out into the open.
The impulse passed quickly. Always, Lotor had found discretion the better part of valor. It had been his settled rule to avoid fights of all kinds, and he had won through to old age because Nature, as if to make amends for giving him so small a body, had endowed him with cunning beyond the cunning of his kind and senses sharper than those of most raccoons—senses so sharp that somehow his ears had warned him of the big owl's unexpected retum, although those velvet wings had seemed as silent as the wings of a ghost. So Lotor the Lucky, who might better have been named Lotor the Discreet, remained for the present within his cassena fortress and gave his attention to the booty for which he had nearly paid a high price; and presently he discovered to his disgust that he had risked his hide and his neck for nothing.
Had there been water at hand in which he could have washed the mink, he might have eaten at least a part of it; for the raccoon is loath to swallow meat which has not been dabbled and soaked in water with his own paws. But even if he had been able to prepare it in the approved way, Lotor would probably have left most of this carcass to the woods scavengers. As it was, he left nearly all of it. It was meat strange to his palate, tough, stringy and rank; and, accustomed as he was to the choicest delicacies of the woods, the marshes and the creeks, he ate only the soft inner parts, then lost interest altogether. Giving the mangled, furry body a last contemptuous push with his nose, he ambled to the thicket's edge and thrust his sharp-pointed, black-spectacled face out through the leafy barricade.
The moon, now three nights past the full, had not yet risen high enough to send its pallid radiance down into the woods; but Lotor's eyes could see in the dark almost or quite as well as in the light; and, after a few minutes' inspection, he felt fairly confident that the horned owl had gone on about his business. Sharp and clear above the low thunder of the surf on the barrier beach a half mile away, the voices of invisible myriads—ricebirds and warblers, herons and plovers—floated down to Lotor's ears. Again to-night the far-called armies of the migrating birds were passing southward down the long, lonely coast, bound for their winter quarters in the tropics.
In Lotor's brain, as he listened, an idea was born. Those voices dropping down through the darkness were the voices of the fall. The long Low Country summer was over. The cool crisp nights of autumn were at hand. For Lotor and all his kind that lived in the jungly woods along the sea, the coming of the new season was the signal for a change of habit.
From now on, as the nights grew cooler, the whiskered, ring-tailed folk of the island woods would roam more widely and more adventurously. From now on their tracks, almost like the handprints of little men, would be seen in many places where for months no trail of a raccoon had been found. Lotor, listening to those autumnal voices, felt within him the impulse to roam; and gradually this impulse took definite form. The night had just begun. There was ample time for a visit to a certain spot, unvisited for months, but rich with succulent memories.
A half hour later, Eyes o' Flame, the horned owl, motionless on the top of a tall dead cedar at the edge of the marshes, saw a gray hump-backed shape ambling like a tiny bear along an abandoned causeway leading across the marshy flats toward the ocean beach. To the great owl's eyes the night was more transparent than the day. At once he recognized his foe—the little tailless coon that had come to live in his woods, the thief that had raided his storehouse and stolen his milk. Yet Eyes o' Flame did not move. Bold as he was, he was prudent also, and it was not his habit to trifle rashly with raccoons unless there was some compelling reason for doing so or unless conditions gave him an advantage. Some night perhaps he would catch Lotor again high in the air on the slender trunk of a tree, where he could not meet the big owl's lightninglike onset. Then there would be a reckoning. Eyes o' Flame bided his time.
So Lotor the Lucky passed on along the causeway toward the sea, unaware of the grim, hostile orbs that watched him go; and presently he came without mishap or adventure to the back beach of the small barrier isle to which the causeway led. There he paused for a few moments to take stock of his surroundings.
The tide was very high. On both sides of the causeway the waters had spread far and wide across the marshy flats; and the barrier isle itself, the lowest and narrowest on the coast and for most of its length bare of trees, was now nothing more than a low ridge of sand, on one side of which the ocean broke in hissing phosphorescent foam while on the other stretched the flooded marshes.
Lotor did not altogether like the look of things. Yet he had seen tides as high as this, and' even higher, and always after a while the waters had subsided. The little coon had a certain practical understanding of tides—the fruit of long experience. He knew that although they sometimes rose much higher than at other times, there were limits which they never passed. Obviously, this tide had nearly reached its limit and would soon begin to recede. This meant that long before daylight conditions at the spot which he intended to visit would be exactly suited to his purpose. Forgetting his misgivings, he set out at a good pace along the sandy ridge above the surf.
Lotor, for all his wisdom, could not know that a hundred miles offshore a mighty hurricane was raging. He could not know that this far-off storm was driving the waters of the sea against the Low Country coast, pushing them higher and higher, so that, although the flood tide still had two hours more to run, the normal high-water mark had already been passed. There was nothing to warn Lotor of these things, for the clear, almost windless night held no hint of menace; and though he could not help noticing that a heavier surf than usual thundered along the ocean front, he attached no significance to it until the continued rise of the waters forced it upon his attention. By that time he had traveled more than half the length of the barrier island, heading for the small inlet near which he expected to feast on oysters. A dramatic discovery woke him to his peril.
Ahead of him the sandy ridge dipped and flattened. Suddenly Lotor saw that, where once dry sands had stretched between clumps of low dunes, the sea had broken through. Before him surged a seething torrent some fifty yards in width, where great ocean breakers, tossing their white crests as if in triumph, hurled themselves clear across the narrow island and into the quiet waters covering the marshes behind.
Instantly Lotor turned and made off at his best speed along the back trail. Within a half mile he halted, perplexed, even a little frightened. Since he had passed, the ocean had broken through in another place. His retreat was cut off.
It was an hour after this that Lotor came to a disagreeable decision. He would have to swim across the inundated marshes to one of the wooded islands behind the barrier beach. The little coon was a practiced swimmer, but he did not enjoy the prospect of so long a swim as this one would be—a swim of a mile or more across open spaces too brightly illumined by the moon to suit his cautious spirit. Yet there were no terrors in the placid sheltered waters which he must cross comparable with the white tumultuous terror roaring just behind him and threatening each moment to engulf him.
The barrier isle was disintegrating under him. As long as he could he had held his place on a knoll of the sandy ridge, still hoping that after a while the tide would reach its crest and begin to recede. But closer and closer came those rearing white-maned chargers of the surf; louder and louder roared their savage voices; more and more often long tongues of white water shot forward from the onrushing ranks of the breakers and, swishing past his knoll on either side, swept clear over the ridge. It was plain at last that in a little while Lotor's knoll must go; and, wisely, Lotor made up his mind that he would go first.
Sidling down the slope of the knoll away from the ocean, he waded delicately across a submerged carpet of short, jointed, salt grass and dropped suddenly almost out of sight into still water too deep for wading. Then, with only his head and a little of his shoulders showing, he began his long journey across the flooded marshes.
Lotor the Lucky, being much smaller than most raccoons, was also weaker and less enduring. Pitifully small he seemed on the face of those wide waters under the moon. The eyes of a careless or unpracticed man would not have recognized him as a raccoon, for at a little distance in that dim deceptive light he resembled a floating fragment of water-soaked driftwood; but if a man had watched closely he would have perceived that this driftwood fragment was moving not with the tide but against it or across it, and that twice within the space of a few minutes it changed its course.
Presently it changed its direction for a third time. Lotor, far from land now, was not his normal, cool, calculating self. In this test which confronted him, his cunning, upon which he always relied, was of no avail. It was muscle that he needed—strength and endurance for a long unremitting effort which was proving much more severe than he had expected, because he had not taken into account the slow current setting across the inundated marshes. If he yielded to that current it would bear him he knew not whither, and he battled against it desperately, spending his small strength. He gained, but very slowly, and he knew that his goal was still far away.
In his long life Lotor had encountered most of the perils of the woods. The marshes were not strange to him, for he roamed over them often, generally by night, and hundreds of times he had swum the salt creeks which wound everywhere through the level plains of waving grass. But never before had he found himself in such surroundings as those which now encompassed him; never before had he struggled for his life in waters which seemed illimitable, waters which seemed to have covered all the world.
Lotor was afraid—afraid of the gurgling unending waters, of the current which clutched and pulled him, of the shadowy forms which swept over him now and then in the moonlight, of other vague sinister shapes which he could not see or hear but which he somehow knew to be near at hand. And suddenly the fear that gripped him flamed into mad terror.
Close beside him, so close that it seemed almost at his ear, sounded a loud, deep sigh, long-drawn and melancholy, yet sibilant and therefore menacing like the hiss of some huge snake. Startled half out of his wits, Lotor saw a great plated head thrust up out of the water—a hideous, yellow-brown head, many times larger than his own, naked, big-eyed and reptilelike, yet beaked like a bird of prey. Often Lotor, roaming the barrier beaches at night, had found the trails or crawls of sea turtles and occasionally he had unearthed their eggs buried deep in the island sands. Once or twice he had come upon the ponderous sea creatures themselves, laboriously making their way across the beach in the darkness. But in his terror he did not recognize this monstrous head thrust up beside him as the head of a giant turtle which had come in through an inlet with the storm tide to explore the tidal channels winding through the flooded marsh plains.
The huge beaked head remained visible only 'for a moment, but the dread which it inspired did not so swiftly wear away. Lotor was still quivering from the shock of that apparition when, directly ahead of him and not more than fifty feet distant, the water boiled and swirled, writhed like a live thing, then burst into white seething foam.
A black bulk heaved upward from the depths and close beside it another and another—three great beasts of the waters, swimming side by side, rushing straight down upon the little coon.
Panic gave Lotor strength. He turned and swam for his life; yet even with the current under him, he moved at a snail's pace compared with the huge black water beasts racing onward at a speed which might rival that of a fleeing deer. Lotor heard the swish of spray close behind him, felt the water surge under him, gave himself up for lost.
Waves drenched his head and face, foam bubbled round him, his small body spun and bobbed in a whirlpool which all but pulled him under. Then swiftly the water grew calm again so that once more it was placid as a lake, save for small ripples and swirls here and there; and presently Lotor saw, yards away and dimly visible in the pale moonlight, the tall fins and black rounded backs of the three big porpoises racing onward at top speed.
The strength of frenzy, of wild irresistible terror, which for a little while had spurred him to redoubled exertions, passed suddenly out of him. Great weariness came upon him; his limbs grew heavy, his body cold. No longer able to stem the current, he drifted with it, swimming feebly, barely keeping himself afloat. Suddenly, as though hope and strength had been mysteriously born again, he swung around in a half circle, and with some semblance of his former vigor resumed his battle with the current, swimming not directly against it, but diagonally across it. Far away to his left a low, black, irregular wall lay athwart the moonlit waste of waters. Lotor knew that what he saw was a line of trees.
For a few minutes he made good headway. There were wide stretches where the current moved very slowly; but wherever a creek channel wound through the submerged marshes the tide was swifter and stronger; and presently Lotor knew that fate was against him, that just ahead of him lay such a channel. He could see the faster flow of the tide, the swirls and ripples at the surface; and no sooner had he passed from the comparatively shallow water over the marsh into the much deeper water of the creek bed than the current laid hold of him with a grip which he could not resist.
Slowly, ruthlessly, it swept him down. He saw the line of trees slipping past him like giants marching across a moonlit sea. Already he was opposite the last of them, and he knew that those pines lined a little peninsula projecting into the flooded marshes and that the tide was sweeping him past this peninsula's tip. Doggedly, despairingly, he struggled. For every inch that he gained the current carried him sideways a yard. But at last, when his strength was all but gone, he knew that he had won.
The tide had relaxed its grip. He floated now in water that was almost still, and not more than a hundred feet away loomed the black spires of the pines. One last rally of strength and of courage and he was safe. Wearily he struggled on, his limbs like lead—a small, forlorn, gallant figure, making its last brave, pitiful fight for life.
From the top of a tall pine at the end of the peninsula round yellow orbs scanned the still, shimmering waters. Suddenly, as though lit by some inner fire, they glowed like small twin suns. At last, after hours of fruitless hunting, Eyes o' Flame, the horned owl, saw that which he sought—a wet furry thing moving across the water; judging from its size, the protruding head of a swimming marsh rabbit.
A shadowy form floated outward from the pine top, outward and downward in a half circle, noiseless as a ghost. Wide, silent wings darkened over Lotor the Lucky, long claws struck deep into his nape. Fora space of moments those wings churned the air frantically; then the place where they had been was empty. Only a foaming and splashing of the water marked the spot where Lotor and Eyes o' Flame had met once more.
Mat Norman, wielding his paddle lazily, glanced at the moon and decided that it was time to go home. The storm tide had kept him up late. All afternoon and evening he had watched the waters rise higher and higher until the miles of green salt flats in front of his house were completely covered. Knowing that the tide would not reach its crest until near midnight, Norman realized that something unusual was taking place. The hurricane season had not yet passed altogether, but there were no signs of an approaching storm. Norman concluded that a hurricane was moving up the coast well out at sea, too far away to be dangerous, but near enough to cause an abnormally high tide.
The still waters glittering in the moonlight lured him to the landing where he kept his small bateau. For hours he paddled over salt flats which ordinarily stood several feet above high-water mark. He was a mile or more from home, paddling along the edge of a wooded tongue of land where tall pines ranged themselves in a long line, when drowsiness came upon him.
He swung the boat around and retraced his course along the pineland's edge. Just before rounding the point of the peninsula, he saw dimly in the moonlight a big bird perching on a high limb of a pine. From its shape and size he knew it to be a horned owl, probably the same owl which he had encountered a few nights earlier and to which, in accordance with a custom of his, he had given a fanciful name.
He stopped the boat and sat for a while watching. Old Eyes o' Flame, he judged, was on the lookout for marsh rabbits driven from their' accustomed haunts by the rising tide.
Suddenly Norman saw the owl leave his perch, sweep outward in a descending half circle, swing noiselessly down to the water. The big bird did not rise again; from the spot where he had dipped to the surface came a sound of wildly beating wings. This soon ceased; but Norman saw a commotion in the water just at that spot, and instantly, with strong thrusts of his paddle, he drove the boat forward.
He could hear the tops of the marsh blades brushing against the bateau's bottom. The water was not more than four feet deep; but not even the tip of an owl wing was visible when he reached the place—only a churning and swirling of the water as though a struggle were proceeding beneath the surface. Norman hesitated an instant. It might be a small shark that Eyes o' Flame had struck by mistake; it might be an otter or something else that could bite. He took a chance, thrusting in his arm as far as he could reach. Almost at once his fingers closed on both feathers and fur.
Norman had paddled halfway home when Eyes o' Flame, the great horned owl, took his leave. For a while he had lain, apparently more dead than alive, on the forward thwart where Norman had placed him, making queer gurgling noises in his throat, his round eyes dazed and glassy, his head wabbling weakly. Soon, however, he struggled to a sitting posture, the gurgling sounds ceased, his eyes became again alert and defiant.
Norman was wondering whether those wet wings would bear the owl aloft, when suddenly the wings opened, the big horned head was thrust forward menacingly, the strong curved bill snapped twice with a sharp metallic sound. Next moment Eyes o' Flame was gone.
Norman watched him fade into the gloom, then glanced again at the little tailless coon, draggled and tousled, lying in the bottom of the boat, his wet fur flecked with blood where sharp claws had pierced his neck so deeply that Norman had not found it easy to withdraw them. Lotor the Lucky had not moved. He lay as limp and still as when he had first been lifted from the water. Though he still breathed, his eyes were closed. Norman shook his head.
He was sorry. For years he had known the old bobtailed raccoon, and often he had studied the record of Lotor's wanderings, recognizing his trail by the four missing toes and the crushed heel which caused the little coon to limp. Norman knew that he would not find that trail again in the wet paths through the rush-grown meadows or along the margins of the marsh plains. The luck of Lotor the Lucky—luck which was really the reward of wisdom—had failed at last.
At the landing, Norman laid down his paddle and, stepping forward past the coon, took a turn of the bowline around a post. The boat's momentum carried it forward a few feet so that it swung broadside against the bank where myrtle bushes formed thickets here and there and live-oak limbs overhung the water. Norman jerked the rope twice to tighten it on the post, then turned.
He saw a small raccoon with only the stump of a tail climbing from the boat to the bank. The raccoon moved with considerable agility. Limping a little, Lotor the Lucky ambled briskly up the slope and vanished in the shadow of the myrtles.