The Way of the Wild

s, clear, moonlit sunset, when day passed, lingering almost imperceptibly, into night, the w

as as clear and sparkling as champagne, and as still as the tomb. If he had been passing ov

and beneath lay England; and across that sea, three hundred miles, as I count it, at the very least, to the lands of melting snow, he was going when late cold weather had caught him and warned him to come back. And alone? No, sirs, not quite. Ahea

traveling in ballast that way. But his eyes shone, and his wing-strokes, with little pauses of

im and his companions, with amber flaming eyes set in a cat-like, oval face. The thrush's heart gave a great jump, and seemed threatening to choke h

alias peewits, which are lapwings, rose, as if blown up by an explosion, to meet them, their thousand wings flickering in the frost-haze like a sho

wn hook, apparently, in or about some gardens, as if they had tumbled out of the sky; and our thrush, in twenty seconds, had slipped into some apple-trees, and thence to some laurel

the blackbird-she was rusty, dark brown, as a matter of actual fact-scream, a piercing and public-spirited scream, when the very big claws of a little, round, spotted-feathered ball with wings, like a parody of a cherub-but men call it a little owl, really-closed upon her and squeezed, or pierced,

tabby' floated among the

cold, dark silence, and the blue-black dome of night arched, an

wers of rain. And, by that token alone, he must have known that he was in England. No other climate is capable of such crazy, unwa

summer. He also prospected a snail or two, and broke through their fortifications by hammering the same upon a stone. And, by some magic process that looked akin to the way in which some men divine

"preened"-i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and retested, cleaned and recleaned, each vital quill. Then, in one single, watery, weak stab of apology for sunshine, on the

hen h

od for him to "peg out a claim" in as any other. He knew better. Something-Heaven alone knows what-within him told him what was coming. H

t northeast, and frost began to grip that garden in an iron fist that threatened to sque

all day and well into the night, and the nort

whose branches were packed with his relations-redwings, thrushes, and

body saw but everybody heard, and the white stoat that everybody saw and nobody heard, and the amorous dog-fox wi

ing rain. In the night, however, the cold had overtaken him, and th

e wild. The keen starlings were already off, swinging away, regiment by regiment, with a fine, bold rush of wings; the blackbirds were dotting the glades; the redwings were sli

st, acorns, and roots during the night. The soil was all torn up for a space of about an acre, probably the only soil for miles-except along streams and by springs-penetrable by beaks until the sun came out; and the thrush feasted r

furious greed, and our thrush concluded that it was about time to "step off." The crowded place might become a quick-lunch resort for some others, not insect-feeders-hawks, for instance-and was unhealthful for that reason. Indeed, he had not more than moved away into the shelter of th

on"-a flat, damp, dwarf-treed, relaxing, gray land, mild, as a rule, and melancholy-a land full of water. But for once it was a cold land, and the thrush realized that the bitter frost had leapt

eemed strange and out of place to behold apples in midwinter like that; but, for some reason, he took only a few pecks, and his devil prompted him down to peck at some soaked bread a

te stru

, and he was down before he knew, but only for a second, because of what he saw. He beheld a boy, with an air-rifle in hand, running

elf frantically chasing that thrush across the orchard, striking wildly always at a thrush that just wasn't there, as the latter part flew, part hopped, with every ounce of strength and agility that clean, hard living had given him, till he

ess, the terrible cess for a momentary lapse from vigilance, which great Nature, in

n, howe

ade him look up, to see a rook, with a leering eye, coming down upon him. He cleverly "side-slipped" in mid-air, and let the rook, braking wildly, go diving by. Perhaps he

less with him and downwards, upon the following wind. The snow! The snow at last! And he was trapped, for it was to keep ahead of the snow that he had journeyed all that way back again. Indeed, you can hardly realize, unless yo

ver-gray, and dull green, first to pepper and salt, then to freckled white, then all over to the spotless white eider-down quilt of the winter returned, as far as the eye-even his binocular orbs-co

ruce-fir and a house at its base, and privet-hedges marking off the rest. But it had a "bird-table," and a swept-clean circle on the grass, and there was sopped bread upon both. And

and-straightway fell upon his beak! And that was Fate's pun

way for a bird's leg, or, rather, so far as could be seen among the feathers, that was how it seemed. But the leg was not broken; he could still move his toes and expand his foot. Otherwise he could do nothing with it. The leg might not have been there, for

a dead wildling-that is, unless the injury is quite slight. There are ex

Fate and all the world-one bird v. the rest. It was appalling odds, and I guess

of that shape was brown-pale brown; and the shape was alive, and had the appearance of eternally looking for something, which it always could not find. So hunts the kestrel fal

ty; but the fact was that so long as he kept still on the dark ground where the snow had been swept away-and earth and grass mingled almost to a black whole against the white-he

e, which ordinarily were her "staff of life"; and she had not killed since dawn. Hence she was a public danger, even

-shut wings not one stroke. Right over him she dived, her wonderful eyes stabbing down, so close that you could see her small, rounded head turning and craning. But no thrush did she see. She "banked," hung, swept round, and came back. Then she hovered, like a bird hung from the sky by an invisible hair; and for our thrush she was ind

yelid even, winked, or gulped too hard, it would have been all up with him. But he didn't and it was not all up; though the kestrel seemed as if she were going to hover there, in that spot, through all eternity. And when at last she condescended to sur

, for if night came and caught him with an empty crop, h

now only as faint splashes of white, as they opened tail and wing to fight; but they could not fight him, and he savagely kept the little clearing

ut the same time every night; but perhaps she was not expecting thrushes in that gloom

t the thrush went to

pped the land. Heaven help any bird who roosted on an empty stomach o

ter dark, and therefore had no time to feed. The thrush just took his head out from under his wing and opened one

dea of frightening the hedge-sparrow away from the magic swept circle on the lawn close by, and its bread, the thrush brushed heavily against that hedge-sparrow, so that-oh, horror!-it fell, or swung over backwards, rather, and hung head downwards, swaying slightly, like a toy acrobat on a wire, before it fell, so rigidly and so

thwest towards the warm, and chortling to each other as they went. Starlings-some of them with extraordinarily bright-yellow dagger-beaks, and some with dull beaks-were before him, squabbling and sparring over the bread on the lawn. A robin dropped a little chain of melancholy silvery notes, and a grea

social starling. And our thrush was standing motionless in the middle of the swept circle on the lawn almost at once. No one saw him go there. Indeed, unless the observer

our for rising, he found the garden given over to song-thrushes, all pale beside him, all slim, all snaky of build-Cont

at was now deep, before he was up, and had also been replenished with bread. Two thrushes sat in the spruce-fir, and one on the top of the summer-house, and every jack of them was

that of the other song-thrush, if our friend had not knocked it out of him by the impact. By all the laws of precedence, of course, any one of those others ought to have sent him, with his one leg, into headlong retreat by merely threatening. But our friend was not

hes and the chaffinches, after that astounding exhibition of his characte

The one that got there snatched up a piece of bread. But he never ate it. Something hit him on the side. It felt like the point of a skewer, but it was our thru

e him on the branch he settled upon, nearly overbalancing, and perilously swaying and wobbling, with wings wildly flapping, and he drove that thrush to another branch, with such a rain of pecks that the feathers flew. Nor was even that enough. He

on sent him crazy. He blundered into the privet-hedge, and unearthed a half-frozen confrère, who fled,

that performance his rivals could have abolished him five times over if they had had the heart to unite. But they seemed to think otherwise, and had not the heart for any

speak-namely, food. Wherefore, either they or he must go. Soon he found that cart-ruts make convenient roads for the birds

hammering like a feathered devil. There was a whirl of brown feathers and finely powdered snow for about ten seconds, at t

ng the drifting snowflakes, over the still, white fields, and our thrush was left to the lawn, and the bread, and the swarming chaffinches, whom he easily kept aloof, and-yes, there was no getting away from it-the one thrush on the summer-house who, you will note, had never moved. But when he looked he found that thrush was not on the summer-ho

ld, he fed. And neither then nor at any other time, except once when the gardener nearly trod upon him before he would move, did he utter a sound. The last glimmer of day showed hi

each of him, and could have slain him-for his injuries made him slow to get under way-if

xactly; but that was the only advantage. It snowed with ghastly, r

s assuredly, or he would never have done it-sweep a space clear on the lawn and spread food for the birds; lived to ruffle his feathers and fly down; and lived to see the thaw which came that afte

hty chorus of thrush song. I don't know why they all chose to burst into song thus as at a given signal, but they did, and the effect upon the cripple and his companion was curious. He had just landed upon the to

d never existed, hopped towards the spruce-fir-atop of which a particularly fine and strong-voiced

ossbow, and he fought. My word, how he fought! But this new antagonist was no half-frozen, half-starved Continental song thrush. He was a Br

y one end!-the Britisher was on the top of the summer-house, literally shouting his song of triumph. And the cripple was on the ground at the foot of the hedge, beneath the spruce-fi

Some think that it was the injuries he received in his last great fight that killed him. I do not. I could fi