Wisdom of the Wilderness/Starnose of the Under Ways
HE was in a darkness that was dense, absolute, palpable. And his eyes were shut tight—though it made no difference, under the circumstances, whether they were shut or open. But if his sense of sight was for the moment off duty, its absence was more than compensated for by the extreme alertness of his other senses. To his supersensitive nostrils the black, peaty soil surrounding him was full of distinct and varying scents. His ears could detect and locate the wriggling of a fat grub, the unctuous withdrawal of a startled earthworm. Above all, his sense of touch—that was so extraordinarily developed that it might have served him for eyes, ears, and nostrils all in one. And so it came about that, there in the blackness of his close and narrow tunnel, deep in the black soil of the swamp, he was not imprisoned, but free and at large as the swift hares gamboling overhead—far freer, indeed, because secure from the menace of prowling and swooping foes.
Starnose was a mole. But he was not an ordinary mole of the dry uplands and well-drained meadows, by any means, or he would not have been running his deep tunnel here in the cool, almost swampy soil within a few yards of the meandering channel of the Lost Water. In shape and color he was not unlike the common mole—with his thick, powerful neck of about the same size as his body, his great, long-clawed, immensely strong, handlike forefeet, and his mellow, velvety, shadowy, gray-brown fur. But his tail was much longer, and thicker at the base, than that of his plebeian cousin of the lawns. And his nose—that was something of a distinction which no other beast in the world, great or small, could boast of. From all round its tip radiated a fringe of feelers, no less than twenty-two innumber, naked, flexible, miraculously sensitive, each one a little nailless, interrogating finger. It entitled him, beyond question, to the unique title of Starnose.
This tireless worker in the dark was driving a new tunnel—partly, no doubt, for the sake of worms, grubs, and pupae which he might find on the way, and partly for purposes known only to himself. At the lever where he was digging, a scant foot below the surface, the mould, though damp, was fairly light and workable, owing to the abundance of fine roots and decayed leafage mixed through it; and his progress was astonishingly rapid.
His method of driving his tunnel was practical and effective. With back arched so as to throw the full force of it into his foreshoulders, with his hind feet wide apart and drawn well up beneath him, he dug mightily into the damp soil straight before his nose with the long, penetrating claws of his exaggerated and powerful forepaws. In great, swift, handfuls (for his forepaws were more like hands than feet), the loosened earth was thrown behind him, passing under his body and out between his roomily straddling hind legs. And as he dug he worked in a circle, enlarging the tunnel head to a diameter of about two and a half inches, at the same time pressing the walls firm and hard with his body, so that they should not cave in upon him. This compacting process further enlarged the tunnel to about three inches, which was the space he felt he needed for quick and free movement. When he had accumulated behind him as much loose earth as he could comfortably handle, he turned round, and with his head and chest and forearms pushed the mass before him along the tunnel to the foot of his last dump hole—an abrupt shaft leading to the upper air. Up this shaft he would thrust his burden, and heave it forth among the grass and weeds, a conspicuous and contemptuous challenge to would-be pursuers. He did not care how many of his enemies might thus be notified of his address, for he knew he could always change it with baffling celerity, blocking up his tunnels behind him as he went.
And now, finding that at his present depth the meadow soil, at this point, was not well stocked with such game—grubs and worms—as he chose to hunt, he slanted his tunnel slightly upward to get among the grass roots near the surface. Almost immediately he was rewarded. He cut into a pipelike canal of a large earthworm just in time to intercept its desperate retreat. It was one of those stout, dark-purplish lobworms that feed in rich soil, and to him the most toothsome of morsels. In spite of the eagerness of his appetite he drew it forth most delicately and gradually from its canal, lest it should break in two and the half of it escape him. Dragging it back into his tunnel he held it with his big, inexorable "hands," and felt it over gleefully with that restless star of fingers which adorned the tip of his nose. Then he tore it into short pieces, bolted it hurriedly, and fell to work again upon his tunneling. But now, having come among the grass roots, he was in a good hunting ground and his work was continually interrupted by feasting. At one moment it would be a huge, fat, white grub as thick as a man's little finger, with a hard, light-copper-colored head; at the next a heavy, liver-colored lobworm. His appetite seemed insatiable; but at last he felt he had enough, for the moment. He stopped tunneling, turned back a few inches, drove a short shaft to the surface as a new exit, and heaved forth a mighty load of débris.
In the outer world it was high morning, and the strong sunlight glowed softly down through the tangled grasses of the water meadow. The eyes of Starnose were but two tiny, black beads almost hidden in fur, but after he had blinked them for a second or two in the sudden light he could see quite effectively—much better, indeed, than his cousin, the common mole of the uplands. Though by far the greater part of his strenuous life was spent in the palpable darkness of his tunnels in the underworld, daylight, none the less, was by no means distasteful to him, and he was not averse to a few minutes of basking in the tempered sun. As he sat stroking his fine fur with those restless fingers of his nose, and scratching himself luxuriously with his capable claws, a big grasshopper, dropping from one of its aimless leaps, fell close beside him, bearing down with it a long blade of grass which it had clutched at in its descent. Starnose seized the unlucky hopper in a flash, tore off its hard inedible legs, and started to eat it. At that instant, however, a faint swish of wings caught his ear and a swift shadow passed over him. At the touch of that shadow—as if it had been solid and released an oiled spring within his mechanism—he dived back into his hole; and the swooping marsh hawk, after a savage but futile clutch at the vanishing tip of his tail, wheeled off with a yelp of disappointment.
It was certainly a narrow shave; and for perhaps a whole half minute Starnose, with his heart thumping, crouched in his refuge. Then, remembering the toothsome prize which he had been forced to abandon, he put forth his head warily to reconnoiter. The hawk was gone; but the dead grasshopper was still there, green and glistening in the sun, and a burly bluebottle had just alighted upon it. Starnose crept forth cautiously to retrieve his prey.
Now at this same moment, as luck would have it, gliding along one of the tiny runways of the meadow mice, came a foraging mole shrew, a pugnacious cousin of the starnose tribe. The mole shrew was distinctly smaller than Starnose, and handicapped with such defective vision that he had to do all his hunting by scent and sound and touch. He smelt the dead grasshopper at once, and came straight for it, heedless of whatever might stand in the way.
Under the circumstances Starnose might have carelessly stood aside, not through lack of courage, but because he had no special love of fighting for its own sake. And he knew that his cousin, though so much smaller and lighter than himself, was much to be respected as an opponent by reason of his blind ferocity and dauntless tenacity. But he was no weakling, to let himself be robbed of his lawful prey. He whipped out of his hole, flung himself upon the prize, and lifted his head just in time to receive the furious spring of his assailant.
Between two such fighters there was no fencing. The mole shrew secured a grip upon the side of the immensely thick and muscular neck of his antagonist, and immediately began to worry and tear like a terrier. But Starnose, flexible as an eel, set his deadly teeth into the side of his assailant's head, a little behind the ear, and worked in deeper and deeper, after the manner of a bulldog. For a few seconds, in that death grapple, the two rolled over and over, thrashing the grass stems. Then the long teeth of Starnose bit in to the brain; and the mole shrew's body, after a convulsive stiffening, went suddenly limp.
But the disturbance in the grass—there being no wind that golden morning—had not escaped the eyes of the foraging marsh hawk. She came winnowing back to learn the cause of it. The sun being behind her, however, her ominous shadow swept over the grass before her, and Starnose, unfailingly vigilant even in the moment of victory, caught sight of it coming. He loosened his hold on his dead adversary and plunged for the hole. At least, he tried to plunge for it. But the plunge was little more than a crawl, for the teeth of the mole shrew, set deep in his neck, had locked themselves fast in death, and all that Starnose could do was to drag the body with him. This however, he succeeded in doing, so effectively that he was in time to back down into the hole, out of reach, just as the hawk swooped and struck.
The clutching talons of the great bird fixed themselves firmly in the protruding hind quarters of the mole shrew, and she attempted to rise with her capture. But to her amazed indignation the prize resisted. Starnose was holding on to the walls of his tunnel with all the strength of his powerful claws, while at the same time struggling desperately to tear himself loose from the grip of those dead teeth in his neck. The contest, however, was but momentary. The strength of Starnose was a small thing against the furious beating of those great wings; and in two or three seconds, unable either to hold on or to free himself from the fatal incubus of his victim, he was dragged forth ignominiously and swept into the air, squirming and dangling at the tip of the dead mole shrew's snout.
Starnose was vaguely conscious of a chill rush of air, of a sudden, dazzling glare of gold and blue, as the victorious hawk flapped off toward the nearest tree top with her prize. Then suddenly, the grip of the dead jaws relaxed and he felt himself falling. Fortunately for him the hawk had not risen to any great height—for the marsh hawk, hunter of meadow mice and such secretive quarry, does not, as a rule, fly high. He felt himself turn over and over in the air, dizzily, and then landed, with a stupefying swish, in a dense bed of wild parsnips. He crashed right through, of course, but the strong stems broke his fall and he was little the worse for the stupendous adventure. For a few moments he lay half stunned. Then, pulling himself together, he fell to digging with all his might, caring only to escape from a glaring outer world which seemed so full of tumultuous and altogether bewildering perils. He made the earth fly in a shower, and in an unbelievably brief space of time he had buried himself till even the tip of his tail was out of sight. But even then he was not content. He dug on frantically, till he was a good foot beneath the surface and perhaps a couple of feet more from the entrance. Then, leaving the passage safely blocked behind him, he enlarged the tunnel to a small chamber, and curled himself up to lick his wounds and recover from his fright.
It was perhaps half an hour before Starnose completely regained his composure and his appetite. His appetite—that was the first consideration. And second to that, a poor second, was his need of tunneling back into his familiar maze of underground passages. Resuming his digging with full vigor, he first ran a new dump shaft to the surface, gathering in several fat grubs in his progress through the grass roots. Then, at about six inches below the surface—a depth at which he could count upon the best foraging—he began to drive his tunnel. His sense of direction was unerring, which was the more inexplicable as there in the thick dark he could have no landmarks to guide him. He headed straight for the point which would, by the shortest distance, join him up with his own under ways.
It happened, however, that in that terrible journey of his through the upper air the swift flight of the hawk had carried him some distance, and across the course of a sluggish meadow brook, a tributary of the Lost Water. Suddenly and unexpectedly his vigorous tunneling brought him to this obstacle. The darkness before him gave way to a glimmer of light. He hesitated, and then burrowed on more cautiously. A screen of matted grass roots confronted him, stabbed through with needles of sharp gold which quivered dazzlingly. Warily he dug through the screen, thrust forth his nose, and found himself looking down upon a shimmering glare of quiet water, about a foot below him.
Glancing upward to see if there were any terrible wings in the air above, Starnose perceived, to his deep satisfaction, that the steep bank was overhung by a mat of pink-blossomed wild roses, humming drowsily with bees. The concealment, from directly overhead, was perfect. Reassured upon this point he crawled forth, intending to swim the bright channel and continue his tunnel upon the other side. The water itself was no obstacle to him, for he could swim and dive like a muskrat. He was just about to plunge in, when under his very nose popped up a black, triangular, furry head with fiercely bright, hard eyes and lips curled back hungrily from long and keen white fangs. With amazing dexterity he doubled back upon himself straight up the slope and dived into his burrow; and the mink, springing after him, was just in time to snap vainly at the vanishing tip of his tail.
The mink was both hungry and bad-tempered, having just missed a fish which he was hunting amid the tangle of water weeds along the muddy bottom of the stream. Angrily he jammed his sharp snout into the mouth of the tunnel, but the passage was much too small for him and Starnose was well out of reach. He himself could dig a burrow when put to it, but he knew that in this art he was no match for the expert little fugitive. Moreover, keen though was his appetite, he was not overanxious to allay it with the rank and stringy flesh of the Underground One. He shook his head with a sniff and a snarl, brushed the earth from his muzzle, and slipped off swiftly and soundlessly to seek more succulent prey.
It was ten or fifteen minutes before Starnose again ventured forth into the perilous daylight. His last adventure had not in the least upset him—for to his way of thinking a miss was as good as a mile. But he was hungry, as usual, and he had found good hunting in the warm light soil just under the roots of the wild rosebushes along the bank. At length his desires once more turned toward the home tunnels. He poked his starry nose out through the hole in the bank, made sure that there were no enemies in sight, slipped down to the water's edge, and glided in as noiselessly as if he had been oiled. He had no mind to make a splash, lest he should advertise his movements to some voracious pike which might be lurking beneath that green patch of water-lily leaves a little further upstream.
Deep below the shining surface he swam, straight and strong through a world of shimmering and pellucid gold, roofed by a close, flat, white sky of diaphanous silver, upon which every fallen rose petal or drowning fly or moth was shown with amazing clearness. As he reached the opposite shore and clambered nimbly up through that flat, silver sky he glanced back, and saw a long, gray shadow, with terrible jaws and staring, round eyes, dart past the spot from which he had just emerged. The great pike beneath the lily pads had caught sight of him, after all—'but too late! Starnose shook himself, and sat basking for a few moments in the comfortable warmth, complacently combing his face with his nimble forepaws. He had an easy contempt for the pike, because it could not leave the water to pursue him.
Some fifty yards away, on the side of the brook from which Starnose had just come, beside a tiny pool in the deeps of the grass stood an immense bird of a pale bluish-gray color, motionless as a stone, on the watch for unwary frogs. Though the rich grasses were about two feet in height, the blue heron towered another clear two feet above them. He was all length—long stiltlike legs, long snakelike neck, long daggerlike bill, and a firm, arrogant crest of long, slim, delicate plumes. All about him spread the warm and sun-steeped sea of the meadow grass—starred thick with blooms of purple vetch and crimson clover and sultry orange lilies—droning sleepily with bees and flies, steaming with summer scents and liquidly musical with the songs of the fluttering, black-and-white bobolinks, like tangled peals of tiny, silver bells. But nothing of this intoxicating beauty did the great heron heed. Rigid and decorative as if he had just stepped down from a Japanese screen, his fierce, unwinking, jewel-bright eyes were intent upon the pool at his feet. His whole statuesque being was concentrated upon the subject of frogs.
But the frogs in that particular pool had taken warning. Not one would show himself so long as that inexorable blue shape of death remained in sight. Nor did a single meadow mouse stir amid the grass roots for yards about the pool; for word of the watching doom had gone abroad. And presently the great heron, grown tired of such poor hunting, lifted his broad wings, sprang lazily into the air, and went flapping away slowly over the grass tops, trailing his long legs stiffly behind him. He headed for the other side of the brook and fresh hunting grounds.
At the first lift of those great, pale wings Starnose had detected this new and appalling peril. By good luck he was sitting on a patch of bare earth, where the overhanging turf had given way some days before. Frantically he began to dig himself in. The soft earth flew from under his desperate paws. The piercing eyes of the heron detected the curious disturbance, and he winged swiftly for the spot.
But Starnose, in his vigilance, had gained a good start. In about as much time as it takes to tell it, he was already buried to his own length. And then, to his terror, he came plump upon an impenetrable obstacle—an old mooring stake driven deep into the soil. In a sweat of panic he swerved off to the left and tunneled madly almost at right angles to the entrance.
And just this it was—a part of his wonderful luck on this eventful day—that turned to his salvation. Dropping swiftly to the entrance of the all too shallow tunnel, the great heron, his head bent sideways, peered into the hole with one implacable eye. Then drawing back his neck till it was like a coiled spring, he darted his murderous bill deep into the hole.
Had it not been for the old mooring stake, which compelled him to change directions, Starnose would have been neatly impaled, plucked forth, hammered to death, and devoured. As it was, the dreadful weapon merely grazed the top of his rump—scoring, indeed, a crimson gash—and struck with a terrifying thud upon the hard wood of the stake. The impact gave the heron a nasty jar. He drew his head back abruptly and shook it hard in his indignant surprise. Then, trying to look as if nothing unusual had happened, he stepped down into the water with lofty deliberation and composed himself to watch for fish. At this moment the big pike came swimming past again, hoping for another chance at the elusive Starnose. He was much too heavy a fish for the heron to manage, of course; but the heron, in his wrath, stabbed down upon him vindictively. There was a moment's struggle which made the quiet water boil. Then the frightened fish tore himself free and darted off, with a great red wound in his silver-gray side, to hide and sulk under the lily pads.
In the meantime Starnose, though smarting from that raw but superficial gash upon his hind quarters, was burrowing away with concentrated zeal. He had once more changed directions, and was heading, as true as if by compass, for the nearest point of the home galleries. He was not even taking time to drive dump shafts at the customary intervals, but was letting the tunnel fill up behind him, as if sure he was going to have no further use for it. He just wanted to get home. Of course he might have traveled much faster above ground; but the too exciting events of the past few hours had convinced him that, for this particular day at least, the upper world of sun and air was not exactly a health resort for a dweller in the under ways. Through all his excitement, however, and all his eagerness for the safe home burrows, his unquenchable appetite remained with him; and, running his tunnel as close to the surface as he could without actually emerging, he picked up plenty of worms and grubs and fat, helpless pupae as he went.
It was past noon, and the strong sunshine, beating straight down through the grass and soaking through the matted roots, was making a close but sweet and earthy-scented warmth in the tunnel, when at last Starnose broke through into one of his familiar passages, well trodden by the feet of his tribe. Not by sight, of course—for the darkness was black as pitch—but by the comfortable smell he knew exactly where he was. Without hesitation he turned to the left and scurried along as fast as he could, for the big, central burrow, or lodge, where his tribe had their headquarters and their nests. The path forked and reforked continually, but he was never for one instant at a loss. Here and there he passed little, short side galleries ending in shallow pockets, which served for the sanitation of the tribe. Here and there a ray of green-and-gold light flashed down upon him as he ran past one of the exit shafts. And then, his heart beating with his haste and his joy he came forth into a roomy, lightless chamber, thick with warmth and musky smells, and filled with the pleasant rustlings and small, contented squealings of his own gregarious tribe.