A NIGHT BEWITCHEDA NIGHT BEWITCHED
A NIGHT BEWITCHED
SILENCE is the rule of the woods at night, of all woods and all proper nights, I think; but like other rules it has startling exceptions. Hidden in the voluminous records of Alexander von Humboldt is a picture of night in a tropical forest which stays in the memory like a bad dream. As I recall the matter, after many years, the scientist was awakened by a horrible uproar,—squeals, grunts of terror, a rumbling snarl which broke into the roar of a charging beast. Then came a violent crashing, as tapirs dashed away with a jaguar at their heels, and instantly the forest became pandemonium. Parrots screeched, monkeys gibbered and barked, a multitude of unnamed birds or beasts added each his scream or howl to the jungle chorus of fear.
To read of such nocturnal alarm was, for a certain small boy, at least, to dream and shiver over it afterward, as one dreamed in a cold sweat of Hugo’s man, inToilers of the Sea, who went down to a gloomy wreck in which lurked a devilfish, and “just then he felt himself seized by one foot.” I did not know, and no truthful person thought to tell me, that the alleged savage jungle is in reality quite peaceful; that its killing is more strictly limited by the need of food than that of a modern packing house, or that women and children go nightly to sleep amid its fancied horrors with a greater sense of security than we enjoy behind bolted doors.
Humboldt’s description is undoubtedly true of some one night, or part of a night; but it gives a wrong impression that such a night is typical of the South American or any other forest. It errs also, and grievously, in the assumption that nocturnal cries are indicative of terror; for terror is an emotion which we carry with us into strange woods at night, and which we are apt to read into any sound we hear, even when the sound voices only anger or warning or animal excitement. Of the tropics I have no personal experience; but I have questioned men who have spent time enough in the jungle to become familiar with it, and they agree that in the early part of the night the forestoften resounds to a thrilling outcry; and that this outcry, if one be not himself frightened by it, has a defiant or exultant ring, as when dogs voice challenge or applause at another dog’s barking. Then, as birds settle to sleep and beasts take up their roaming, the jungle becomes profoundly still, and remains so till the dawn, when full-fed brutes begin to grunt or bark as they seek their coverts, and birds call jubilantly from tree to tree as they welcome a new day.
That is certainly true of our northern forests, where a few wild creatures lift their voices, joyously, it seems to me, in the evening twilight, but where “the dead vast and middle of the night” passes in a silence that is almost painful to human ears. Yet even the silent North will sometimes be disturbed, and echoes that have long slept will rouse up to answer a wild calling from lake or ridge or lonely beaver meadow. Once in a while comes a night (in early autumn, as a rule, and at a time of full moon) when birds and beasts are strangely restless, when you meet them in unexpected places or hear them calling everywhere. No explanation of the phenomenon occurs to me, though I have observed it repeatedly, and have noticed that owls cry warning of it before sundown.
Owls have several distinct calls, by the way, and of all forest sounds their voices are perhapsthe hardest to interpret. A week or a month may pass over your camp while the owls hold a league of silence, not a sound being heard from them by night or day. Then comes a subtle change in the air, a weather change it may be, and suddenly there are hootings, groanings, maniacal yellings in every direction. The uncanny creatures have their rumpus to themselves, one answering another, while other wood folk go their quiet ways through the dusk without a sign that they are touched by the disturbance. But at last comes an evening when something creeps into the owl’s voice that was not there before; no sooner does he begin to hoot than every bird or beast that hears must lift his head to cry answer. At such times even the taciturn bears will break their long silence, and go whooping through the woods in obedience to some weird impulse which the owl was first to feel.
Thus it befell on one occasion, when the owls of a countryside were calling, that a black bear suddenly began to whoop in the woods over against my tenting place; and the curious thing was that he was immediately answered by others, their wild cries sounding with clocklike regularity at about three-minute intervals. Till then I had not seen or heard a bear, though I had searched for them in places where their signs were plentiful;but that is precisely what one should expect, since Mooween is careful to keep out of your way, and is one of the least talkative creatures in the wilderness. When you stumble upon him at an unguarded moment he is apt to loose an explosiveough-woof!as he jumps for cover; or when you frighten a mother bear away from her cubs you may hear her circling at a distance, uttering a sharpwheeee-oo!again and again; but with these natural exceptions Mooween speaks so seldom that many woodsmen have never heard him. Others confuse his rare call with that of the barred owl, a bird that has half a dozen different cries besides his familiarWho-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you?
On this night, however, my taciturn bears became almost vociferous; in the space of an hour I heard more bear talk than one ordinarily hears in an entire season. They were bold, too, surprisingly bold, when I met three of them in a little opening not far from my tent. I had heard these bears coming and, as I hurried to head them off, had made more noise than I liked, not being able to see my footing. Far from being frightened by the disturbance, they seemed to be waiting in the opening to see what I was. The moment I appeared they rose on their hind legs, which stopped me in my tracks. Not quite satisfied,they shambled uneasily to and fro, occasionally sitting up for another look; and one of them, a little fellow, had a funny way of wagging his forepaws rapidly up and down in front of his chest. When they had enough of me, instead of rushing off headlong with crash of brush and bumping of logs, as bears commonly go when they meet a man, they melted into the woods like so many shadows.
The caribou is another silent beast that finds his voice only on rare occasions, in response to some urge that I do not yet understand. I had met scores of the animals in winter, a few also in summer; but, with the exception of one low call from a doe to her fawn, I had never heard a word of caribou talk till one early-autumn night, when a herd broke silence all together. On that night I lay broad awake in my tent, unable to sleep or to find a reason for my sleeplessness. Some subtle excitement was afoot; loons were crying it to the woods, owls crying it back to the lake; so presently I made my way to an old lumber road, thinking I would have a look at a chain of barrens under the moonlight. These barrens (flat, treeless bogs surrounded by dense forest) are lonely places at any time. By night, especially when the moon floods them with pale light, and mists wave over them, and little shrouded larches that stand ontheir edges seem to creep and quiver, they are the epitome of all solitude.
As I crossed the first barren, making no sound on the thick carpet of moss, a band of caribou filed out of the woods as if on a journey. The strange thing to me was, not the excitement of the band or the complete absence of fear, but that these silent brutes were now all talking, as wild geese talk to one another continually in flight. Though they must have seen me plainly, for I was very near, they passed without paying me the slightest attention; all but the big bull, who came at the end of the procession, and who evidently thought it was his business to challenge that motionless figure standing out on the empty bog. He stopped short, came a step toward me, stopped again, and I looked for a rare bit of bluffing. When you stand motionless near a band of caribou in a snowstorm, and they cannot tell what you are because they do not trust their eyes and you are to leeward of their keen noses, the bulls will sometimes rear up on their hind legs, looking enormously threatening as they paw the air with their broad forefeet. In this startling demonstration the woodland caribou differs, I think, from all other members of the deer family. But here the big bull was content to present his antlers, shaking them fiercely in my direction. Getting no answerto his challenge, not even a motion, he followed grunting after his band; and I had the impression that he was glad to go, having saved his face by doing what was expected of him.
I was on my way to the next barren when, from a point of woods on my left, a spikehorn bull came out on the trot, making me freeze in my tracks once more. Whether he mistook me for one of his tribe or was a bit moonstruck, as every other creature seemed to be that night, I could not tell. He ran up as if he had been expecting me, and thrust his nose within a yard of my face, so near that I saw his eyes glow like foxfire in the moonlight; then without a word he brushed past and ran away down the caribou trail.
I had taken only a few steps after the spikehorn left me, and was about to enter the woods to cross to the next barren, when a vixen squalled out loudly, as a cat squalls when you step on her tail. Instantly three or four young foxes, her cubs, undoubtedly, rushed out and scurried all over the trail at my feet. From the woods came a lively outcry, a petulant, bagpipey droning; but it was some time before the cubs paid enough attention to it to dive headlong for cover. And then I heard squalls of a different tenor, one angry, another protesting, as if some youngster were getting nipped for his heedlessness.
Such nights come very rarely, perhaps once in a long season of watching wild animals; and always they affect a man queerly, as if some lunacy were abroad, and he must share it with other natural creatures. I remember vividly one night, many years ago, so different from all others that it seemed to do violence to my experience of the quiet wilderness. The time was September, and the place a wild lake which is still, I am told, the best big-game region in New Brunswick. It was then an unhunted solitude.
During the day I had been ranging the woods, and had noticed that flocking birds were acting strangely, as chickens grow erratic when the barometer is rapidly falling. Yet no storm threatened; the weather, as I remember it, had been for some days unusually brilliant. Late in the afternoon, as I was catching a supper of trout at the inlet of the lake, Kook’skoos the horned owl suddenly started a racket; not his deep hunting call, but an uncannyhoo-hooingup and down the scale, as if he were possessed by some crazy notion. He was answered by others of his kind here or there; and when I stalked the nearest, to find out what was afoot, he upset all my notions of the solemn birds without giving me even a hint of answer to my question. Instead of perching on the top of a stub so as to look like a partof it, as horned owls habitually do, he was hopping up and down a horizontal branch, as if dancing apas seul. Instead of holding perfectly still save for a vibration of the throat when he sent forth his call, as I had often seen him, he would swoop almost to the ground and whirl about in fantastic circles, at the same time uttering a rapid, guttural note, which ended in a wild yell as he sailed back to his perch.
When I reached camp after sundown, the excitement seemed to have spread widely to others. Kupkawis the barred owl was then going about demanding,Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?and breaking out in wild clack-clacking before anybody could answer him.
By that time there was a tingle in the air, such as one feels before an electrical storm. Simmo, my smoky companion, was uneasy. I noticed that his eyes had no rest, that they were searching lake or sky or somber forest continually; but I did not question him, having learned to hold my tongue with an Indian; nor did I know enough about the woods to expect anything unusual. Besides, my thoughts were mostly on moose just then. I had found a pond hidden away among low hills and caribou bogs, its shores pitted with moose tracks, among which the slots of a monster bull appealed to my imagination. I intended tocall him that night, and had carefully spotted the trail I must follow. When I told Simmo, who did not like my nocturnal rambles, he broke silence to advise me soberly.
“Now I goin’ tell you one t’ing: bes’ don’t go,” he said. “An’ if you do go, bes’ look out; be careful. Moose not hunted here, like down settlement way. I hear-um bull two, t’ree time, an’ hemitcheego, very cross. He come quick to-night if you call-um, an’ he don’t ’fraid of not’ing.”
No sooner was twilight come than a wild calling began, and the woods were as near to noisy as I shall ever hear them. Loons were yelling, owls hooting, ducks quacking, and foxes yapping in all directions. At frequent intervals came the plaint of a black bear, a rare cry, and the loneliest you will ever hear in the night. When the moon rose in a marvelously clear sky I crossed the lake and entered the dim trail that led to my moose pond.
I was following the trail cautiously, feeling my way between a cedar swamp and a burnt hillside, when just ahead of me rang out a screech that seemed to split the air. It was an appalling sound in that lonely place; my skin wrinkled under it, like a dog’s skin under the lash. Again it sounded, making me cringe, though I was waiting for it. It was answered from the hill, and I began to suspect the creature that made it when a caterwaulingbegan which made night hideous. The beasts were approaching each other slowly, screeching as they went, when up through the cedar swamp came a snarling, yowling, unseen thing that sped along the ground with the rush of an arrow. The three lynxes flew together in a rowdydow that spoke of tearing one another to ribbons; yet they were not fighting at all, I think, for when I crept near I could hear no sound of struggle, but only a fiendish yelling. When the rumpus seemed almost under my nose it ceased abruptly; there was no lynx in sight, nor any moving shadow to say what had become of them.
At any ordinary time such an outcry seems to stun the wilderness into deeper silence; but now it had an opposite effect, as if it were an alarm for which wild ears had been waiting. In the dark swamp, on the hillside flooded with pale light, even in the air overhead, alert creatures were moving or crying in nameless excitement. As I went on, following the dim trail, the woods on either side seemed alive with rustlings, some of which were surely not imaginary. Wood mice were abroad, scores of them, it seemed, for the moonlight caught the white edges of their scurrying tails; and within a short space I passed four or five porcupines. Every one of the pricklyfellows had climbed to the top of a slender tree, and was perched there, swaying and whining. Birds that sleep by night were peeping or stirring in the shadows. Herons and bitterns, which are always restless when the moon shines, were circling by threes or fours over every lake and bog; while questing individuals winged their way from one group to another, as if seeking or bearing strange news.
Pausing under one of these groups, I would hear the hoarsekruk-krukof a blue heron drawing nearer, nearer. Suddenly from the air above would come a sharp question, a challenge flung at my head, as the great birds discovered me. Whether by night or day, nothing can remain hidden from their bright yellow eyes. I would see a vague motion, as of wings, emerging from the silver radiance or melting away into it, like gleams and shadows in the eddy of a river under the moonlight. The wings would vanish going I knew not whither; but far and wide forest and lake and caribou barren would all be ringing to the heron’s challenge,Quoskh? Quoskh-quoskh?And I understood then why Indians call this bird the night’s question.
Their very attitude made me feel queer“Their very attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning.”
“Their very attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning.”
“Their very attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning.”
I had left the lake behind and was traveling through a stratum of silence, a restful silence which I devoutly hoped might endure, when an uproarof moose—grunts, splashings, the ring of smitten antler blades—sounded not far away in the direction I was heading. As I emerged from the woods upon the barren that bordered my moose pond, two bulls were having an argument in the shallow water near shore. At first they seemed to be fighting, mud and water flying over them as they surged about with locked antlers; but I soon judged them to be youngsters that were trying their strength while waiting for something else to happen. At intervals they would listen intently to a message I could not hear; then they would drop heads, lock antlers once more, and strive mightily to push each other over.
As they backed away from one of these encounters the nearer bull turned and threw his nose into the wind. The other, instead of driving brow prongs into his rival’s flank (as he surely would have done had they been fighting), took a step toward shore, and both stood at tense attention. Their attitude made me feel queer, for they were in touch with a matter of which I had no warning. Something was passing yonder on the hill, something too fine or distant for me to sense, and the moose were following every rumor of it minutely. Suddenly they leaped from the water, laid their antlers back, thrust their great muzzles out ahead of them, and raced away side by side. Theypassed close by my hiding place, heading for the thing to which they had been listening.
A little later I began calling from a point of evergreen that thrust itself into the barren from the southern side. Before me and on either hand stretched the level bog, misty and unreal, ringed about by dark woods. Beyond the bog to the right, whither the bulls had gone, rose low hills with pointed spruces standing over them like sentinels. On my left at a little distance was the pond, its placid face glimmering like silver in the moonlight.
Such was the stage, ideal in the perfection of its setting, on which I expected a shy and solitary actor to appear at my summons. Of the moose-caller’s art I knew very little, having at odd times tried to imitate Simmo, who was an excellent caller, but, like all his secretive tribe, an unwilling teacher. Without any preliminary whining, therefore, such as a careful caller employs on the chance that a bull may be near, I sent the bellow of a cow-moose rolling out of my birch-bark trumpet.
The response was immediate, and more than a little startling. Before the echoes of my call were quiet, there came from beyond the pond on my left a gruffquoh!It was a bull barking his answer. A rattling of antlers on alder stems, then asqush, squshof mud to say that he wascoming. Hardly had he started when, from a hill on the opposite side, a second bull hurled himself down with a hoarse challenge, followed by a terrific smashing of brush. No doubt about it, he was coming, too! When near me he swerved away for the pond or for the other bull, and passed along the farther edge of the bog, where I could hardly see him for the shadows. After him came another, then in a straggling rout three or four more, I think; but they made such commotion in the woods, threshing bushes, grunting, squealing at times, as an old bull will, that it was impossible to keep track of individuals. No sooner did I begin to locate one brute than a nearer or more nerve-shaking rumpus demanded my attention.
Apparently I had blundered into a rare band of traveling moose, and this on the one unlucky night of the year when all wild creatures were strangely excited. For the next half-hour, it seemed (it may have been only a few minutes; I had lost all notion of time), the uneasy brutes went questing over the bog, both bulls and cows. The latter were silent appearing mysteriously here or there; but the bulls seemed to be looking for trouble. At times two or three would go smashing along the fringes of the wood, where they appeared as grotesque shadows; again, a solitary bull would break into the open at a slashing trot, hackles up,bell swinging, and in his throat achock! chock! chock!which sounded in that place and hour rather ferocious. Once a truculent pair dashed out from opposite sides, only to range challenging down the length of the bog to the pond, where they locked antlers for another bullish kind of argument.
Meanwhile I was making myself as small as possible under an upturned root, where I could see a little of what went on, but where a bull might almost step over me before noticing anything to arouse his fear or anger. Not a moose circled to get my wind, as a solitary bull would surely have done; and I think that they had no inkling of a hidden enemy. They appeared freely here or disappeared there; while I lay close to the ground, where no air stirs, and made no lunatic attempt to call them nearer. They were near enough. Three times out of four you can tell what a wild beast will do, especially if he sees you or suspects where you are, and nine times out of ten you can safely count on his timidity; but a big beast that stumbles upon you is always uncertain, and sometimes dangerous. Once a questing brute chanced within a dozen yards of my point; and when a monster bull with antlers like a pair of rocking-chairs ramped past, gritting his teeth and grunting, one glimpse of him wasenough to put the fear of God in any man. I had no rifle, no wish to kill any of these huge beasts; neither did I care to spend the remainder of the chill night recitingmea culpain a tree.
The moose left the bog when their excitement cooled, trailing off in a procession eastward, whence they had come. They traveled noisily, contrary to all my observation; I could trace their course through the woods long after they had vanished from sight. Their gruff calling ceased; their crashing died away in a surge, a rustle, a shiver as of leaves, and they were gone.
And then the blessed silence returned to brood again over the wilderness. The owls, first to begin the tumult, were last to end; but presently they too were quiet, save for an occasional hunting call. On the way back to camp not a cry, not a rustle disturbed the perfect stillness. The moon shone wondrously clear, making magic of the familiar woods; the lake began whispering to its banks; the air trembled at times to that rushing sound of music which is heard only on still nights in dense forest, and which always fills one with wonder, as if hearing at last the old harmony of the spheres. All around the trail or the gliding canoe the great wilderness stood silent, alert, listening.
That is the last as well as the first impressionof a northern forest, the impression of listening. Though silent, it is never dead nor even asleep; it is alive and awake, as a man is most awake when living in his own thoughts. You may range the vast solitude for hours and start no living thing; but you have never a thought that the woods are deserted. No, they are only hiding their wild creatures, which may step forth at any moment. Day or night, summer or winter, the wilderness is always animate. As you move through it on careful feet, awed by its mystery or sublimity, you are every instant in the presence of life, a life so full and deep that silence is its only expression.