THE HOME-SICKNESS OF KEHONKA.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10999, 24 June 1901, Page 4

THE HOME-SICKNESS OF KEHONKA.

By Charms Q. 0. Robeets. The April night, softly chill and full of the sense, of thaw, was closing down over the marshes. Near at hand the waters of the Tanfcramar, resting at full tide, glimmered through the dusk and lapped faintly among the winter»nuned remnants of the sedge. Far off—infinitely far it seemed in that illusive atmosphere, which was clear yefc full of the ghosts of rain-— the last of daylight lay in a thin streak, pale and sharp, along a vast arc of the horizon. Overhead ifc wa* quite dark;, for there was no moon, and the tenuous spring clouds were sufficient to »hut out the stars. They clung in mid-heaven, but kept to their shadowy ranks without descending to obecure the lower air. Spaoe and mystery, mystery and space, lay abroad upon the vagne levels of marsh and tide. Presently, from far along the dark heights of the eky 3 came voices, hollow, musical, confused. Swiftly they journeyed nearer; they grew louder. The sound—not vibrant, yet strangely far-carrying—was a clamorous monotony of honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk, honka, honka, honk, honk. It hinted of wide distance voyaged over on tireless wings, of a tropic winter passed in feeding amid remote, high-watered meadows' of Mexico and Texas, of long flights yet to go, toward the rocky tarns of Labrador and the reed! beds of Ungava. As the sound passed straight overhead the listener on the marsh below imagined, though he could not see, the strongly beating wings, the outstretched necks and heads, the round, unswerving eyes of the wild goose flock in its V-shaped array, winnowing steadily northward through the night. But this particular flock was nob set, as it chanced, upon an all-night journey. The wise old gander winging at the head of the V knew of good feeding grounds near by, which he was ready to revisit. He led the flock straight on, above the many windings of the Tantramar, till its full-flooded sheen far below him narrow* ed and 1 narrowed to a mere brook. Here, in the neighbourhood of the uplands, were a number of shallow, weedy, freshwater lakes, with shores so choked with thickets and fenced apart with, bogs as to afford a security which his years and brood experience had taught him to value. Into one of these lakes, a pale blur amid the thick shadows of the shores, the flock dropped with heavy splashing*. A scream or two of full-throated content, a few flappings J of wings and rufSings of plumage in the I cool, and the voyagers settled into quiet. All night there was silence around tba flock, save for the whispering seepage of the snow patches that stiE lingered among the thickets. With the first creeping pallor of dawn, the geese began to feed, plunging their long black necks deep into i the water and feeling with the sensitive , inner edges of their bills for the swelling root-buds of weed and sedge. When t£e son. was about the edge of the horizon, and* the first rays came sparkling of a chilly pink most luminous and pure, through the lean traceries of the brushwood, the leader raised his head high and screamed a signal. With answering cries and a tempestuous splashing the flock flapped for a few yards along the surface, of the water. Than they rose clear, formed quickly into rack, and in their spacious V went honking northward over the baMlighted, mysterious landscape. But, as it chanced, not all of the flock set out with that morning departure. There was one pair, last year's birds, upon whom had fallen a wearinesw" of travel. Perhaps in the coils of their brains lurked some inherited memory of these safe resting place* and secluded feeding ground* of the Midgic lakes. However tltat may have been, tfcej ehoee to *t»y where they were,

feeling in tier blood no call from th* cold north solitudes. Dipping and bowing, black neck by neck, % give no heed to ths leader , * aisnal, no* , to the noisy going of the flock, Pushing briskly with the black webs of their feet against the discoloured water they swam to the shore and cast about for a place to build their nest.

There was no urgent hurry, so they chose not on that day nor the next. When they chose, as it was a little bushy islet off a point of land, well tangled with .alder *aa oder and a light flotsam of driftwood. The Beet, in the heart of the tangle, was ad apparently haphazard collection of cfeiclu and twigs, well raised above the damp, well lined with, moss and feathers. Here, in amr«* of d*yt, they accumulated a shining charter of six large white eggs. Bot by this time the spring freshet had gone down. The islet wa> an islet no longer, bat a mere adjunct of the point, winch any inquisitive foot might reach dry sho«L : Now jest at this time it happened that a yoang farmer, who had a curious'taste for ail the wild kindred of the wood, and flood, and air, came np from the lower Tantramar with a waggon-load of grist for the Midgic mill. While his buckwheat'and barley were'a-grinding he thought of a current opinion to the effect that the wild geese were given to nesting in the Midgic lakes. "If so," said he to himself, "this is the time they would be about it." Full of interest, a half-hour's tramp through difficult woods brought him to the nearest of the waters. An instinct, an intuition born of his sympathy with the furtive folk, led him to the point, and out along the point to that one islet, with its secret in the heart of the tangle. Vain were the furious hissings, the opposing wings, the wide black bills that threatened and oppunged him. With the eager delight of a boy he pounced upon those six great eggs, and carried them all away. "They wUI soon turn out another clutch," said he to himself* as he left the bereaved pair, and tramped elately bock to the mill. As for the bereaved pair, being of a philosophic spirit, they set themselves to fulfil as soon as possible his prophecy.

On the farm by the Lower Tantramar, in a hogshead half filled with straw and laid on its side in a dark corner of the tool shed, those six eggs were diligently brooded for four weeks and two day*, by a comfortable grey-and*white goose of the common stock.. When they batched, the good grey-and-white mother may have been surprised to fund her goslings of an olivegreen bus, instead of the bright golden yellow which her port experience and that of her fellows had taught her to expect. She may have marvelled, too, at their unwonted slenderness and activity. These trivial details, however, in no way damped the zeal with which she led them to the goose pond, or the fidelity with which she pastured and protected them. But rats, skunks, sundry obscure ailments, and the heavy wheels of the farm waggon, are among the perils which the summer through lie in wait for all children of the feathered kin upon the farm; and so it came about that of the six young ones so successfully . hatched from the wild goose eggs, on ly two lived till the coming of autumn brought them full plumage and power of flight. Before the time of the southward migration came near, the young farmer took these two and clipped from, each fcTise strong primaries of their right wings. "They seem contented enough, and tame as any,*' he said to himself, "but you never can tell what'll happen when the instinct strikes 'em." Both the young wild geese were fine males. Their heads and long, slim necks were black, as were also their tails, great wing feathers, bills, and feet. Under the tail their feathers were of snowiest white, and all the other portions of their bodies a rich greyish brown. Each bore on the side of its face a sharply defined triangular patch of white, mottled-, with faint brown markings that would disappear after the first moult. In one the white cheek patches met under the throat. This was a> large, strongly-built bird, of a placid and domestic temper. He -was satisfied with tht undistinguished grey companions of tte flock. He was content, Joke them, to gutter noisily with his discriminating bill along the shallow edges of the pond, to float and dive and flap in tihe deeper centre, to pasture at random over the wet meadow, biting *off tfore short grasses with quick, sharp, yet gracefully carving, dabs> Goose pond and wet meadow and cattle-trodden barnyard bounded bis aspirations. Wihen his adult voice came to him. all he would say wax honk, honk, contemplatively, and sometimes bonk-a-honk when he flapped hie wings in the exhilarating coolness of the sunrise. fThe other captive was of a more restless temperament, slenderer in build, more eager and alert of eye, less companionable of mood. He was, somehow, never seen in the centre of tie flock —he never seemed a part of it. He fed, *wa.m, rested, preened hameelf, always a little apart. Often, when the others were happily occupied with their familiar needs and satisfactions, he would stand motionless, his compact, glossy Stead high in air, looking to the north as if in expectation, listening as if he awaited longed-for tidings. The triangular white patch on each side of his head was very narrow, and gave (him an expression of wildnes*; yet in reality he was no more wild, or rather no more shy than any others of the flock. None, indeed, had so confident a fearlessness as he. He would take oata out of tie farmer's hand, which none of the rest quite dared to do. Until late in the autumn, the lonely uncomraded bird was always eilent. But when the migrating flocks began to pass overhead, on the long southward trail, and their hollow clamour was heard over the farmstead night and morning, he grew more restless. He would take a short run with outspread wings, and then, feeling their crippled inefficiency, would stretch himself to his full height, and call, a sonorous, far-reaching cry—ke-honk-a, k%honk-a. From this call, so often repeated throughout October and November, the farmer named him Kehonka. The farmer's wife favoured the more domesticated and manageable brother, who could be trusted never to stray. But the farmer .who mused deeply over his furrows, and half-wistfully loved the wild kindred, loved Kehonka, and need to say he would not lose the bird for the price of a steer. "That there bird," he would say, "has got dreams away down in his heart. Like as not, he remembers things his father and mother have seen, up amongst the ice cakes and the northern lights, or down amongst the bayoue and the big southern liliee." But all his sympathy failed to make him repent of having clipped Kehoaka's wing. During tie long winter, when the winds swept fiercely the open marshes of the Tantramar, and the enow piled in high drifts around the barns and wood piles, and the sheds were darkened, and in* the sun at noonday the strawy dungheaps steamed, the rest "of the geese remained listlessly content. But not so Kehonka. Somewhere back of his brain he cherished pre-natal memories of warm pools in the south, where ieafv screen grew rank, and the sweetrooted water-plant* pulled easily from the deep black mod, and his true kindred were screaming to each other at the oncoming of the tropjo dark. When the flock was out in the barnyard, pulling lazily at the trampled litter, and snatching scraps of the cattle's chopped turnips, Kehonka. would stand aloof bjr the water trough, his head listening, longing. As the winter sun sank early error the fir woods back of the farm, his wings would open, and his desirous cry would jp echoing three or four, times across $b« still countrywide—ke-honk-a—ke-honk-a—ke-flonk-«.! Whereat the farmer's wife, turning her buckwheat pancake* over the hot kitchen stove, would mutter impatiently; but the fanner, slipping to toe door of■•-•the cow-stable with the backet of feed in hi* band, would look with deep eye* of sympathy at the unsatisfied bird- 'Tie wants something that we don't grow rotmd here," be would say to himself; end little by little the bird's restlessness came to seem to tim the concrete embodiment of certain dim outreach - ings of his own. He, too, caught himself straining his gaze beyond the march horizon» of Tantramar.

When the winter broke, aod the seeping drifts shrank together, and the brown of the ploughed fields came through the snow in pitches, and the tiopea leading down to the marshland were suddenly load with running water, Kehottfca's restlessness grew w>, eager that he almost forgot to feed. It was time, he thought, for the northward flight to begin. Hβ would *t«&d for hoars, turning first one dark eye, then the other, toward the eoft sky overhead, expectant of the V-ehaped, journeymir flock, and the far-off clamour of voices from the South

crying to him in his own tongue. At last, •when the snow tras about gone from the open fields, one evening at the shutting-in of dark.. th» voices cam*. He .to lingering at the edge of the goose pond, the rest having settled themselves for the night, when he heard the expected sounds. Honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk, honka-honka, honk, honk, they came up against the light April wind, nearer, nearer, nearer. Even hie kesn eye could not detect them against the blackness; but up went his wings, *nd again and again toe screamed to them sonorously. In reponse to his call, their flight swung lower, and the confusion of their bonking seemed as if it were going to descend about him. jßut the wary okt gander, their leader, discerned the, Toofs. man's and suspected treachery. At his sharp signal the flock, rising again, streamed off swiftly toward safer feeding ground*, end left Kehonka to call and call unanswered. Up to this moment all his restlessness had cot led him to think of actually deserting the farmstead and tie alien flock. ' Though not of them be had felt it necessary to be with them. His instinct for other scenes and another fellowship had been too little tangible to move him to the snapping of established ties. But now, all his desires at once took concrete form. It was fiis, it belonged to himself—that strong, free flight, that calling through the sky, that voyaging northward to secret nesting places. In that wild flbck which had for a moment swerved downward to has summons, or in some other flock, was his mate. It was mating season, and not until now had he known it.

i Nature does sometime?, under the pressure of great and concentrated desires, make unexpected effort to meet unforeseen demand's. All -winter long, though it was not the season for such growth, Kehonka's ciioped wing-primaries had been striving to develop. They had now, contrary to all custom, attained to an inch or so of effective flying web. Kehonka-'s heart was near bursting with his desire as the voices of tie unseen flock died away. He spread his wings to their full extent, ran some ten paces along the ground, and then, with all his energies concentrated to the effort, he rose into -the air and flew with swiftbeating wings out into the dark upon the northward trail. His trouble was not the lack of wing surface, but the kick of balance. One wing being'so much less in spread than the. other, he felt a fierce force striving to turn him over at every stroke. It was the struggle to counteract this ten--. dency that wore him out. His first desperate effort carried him half a mile. Then he dropped to earth, in a bed of withered, salt-grass, all awash with the full tide of Tantramar. Resting amid the salt-grass he tasted such an exultation of freedom that his heart, forgot its soreness over the flock which had vanished. Presently, however, he heard again the sound that- so thrilled his every vein. Weird,' hollow, echoing with memories and tidings, it came throbbing up the wind. His own strong cry want, out at once to meet it— ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a, ke-honk-a. The voyagers this time were flying very low. : They came near, nearer, and at last, in a sudden silence of voices, but a- great flapping of wings, they settled down in the i ealt-grass all about him. „. The place was well enough for a night's ! halt-—a shallow, marshy pool which caxtght the overflow of the highest spring tides, and so was not emptied t>y the ebb. After j its first splashing descent into the water, i which glimmered in p&le patches among the ' grass stems, every member of the flock sat for some moments motionless as statues, watchful for unknown menace; and Kehon- | ka, his very soul trembling'with.'desire achieved, sat motionless among them. Then, there being no sign of peril at hand, i there was a time of quiet paddling to and ! fro, a scuttling of practised bills among the grase-roota, and Kehonka found himself easily accepted as< a meanlber of the flock. Happiness kept him restless and on the move long after the others had their bills tucked under their wings. In the earliest grey of dawn, when the flock awoke to feed, Kehonka fed among them as if he had been with, them all the way on their flight from the Mexican plains. But his feeding was always by the side of a young female who had not yet paired. It was interrupted by many little courtesies of touching bill and bowing head, which were i received with plain flavour; for Kehonka was a handsome and well-marked bird. By the time the sky was red along the east and strewn with pale, blown feathers of amber pink towaixl the zenith, his swift i wooing was next door to winning. He had forgotten his captivity and clipped wing. He was thinking of a nest in the wide emptinessof the North.

When the signal cry came, and the flock took flight, Kelionka rose with them. But his preliminary rush along the water was longer than .that of the others, and when the flock formed into flying order he fell in at the end of the longer leg of the V, behind the weakest of the young geese. This would have been a humiliation to him, had he taken thought of it at all; but hin attention was all absorbed in keeping hi» balance. When the flock found its pace, and the cold sunrise air began to whistle past the straight, bullefc-like, rush of their flight, a terror grew upon him. He flew much better than he had flown the night before; but he soon saw that this speed of theirs was beyond him. He would not yield, however, fee would not lag behind. JSvery force of his body and his brain went into that flight,' till his eyes blurred and his heart seemed on the point of bursting. Then, suddenly, with a faint, despairing note, lie lurched aside, shot downward, and fell with a great splash into the channel of the Tantramar. With strong wings, and level, unpausing flight, the flock went on to its north without him.

Dazed by the fall, and exhausted by the intensity of his effort, Kehonka floated, moveless, for many minutes. The flood-tide, however, racing inland, was carrying him still northward; and presently he began to swim in the same direction. In his sick heart glowed still the vision of the neat in the far-off solitudes, and he felt that he would find there waiting for liim the strongwinged mafce who had left him behind. Half an hour later another flock passed honking overhead, and he called to them; but they were high up, and feeding time was past.. They gave no sign in answer. He made no attempt to fly after them. Hour after hour he swam on with the current, working ever north. When the tide turned he went ashore, still following the river, till its course changed toward the east; whereupon he ascended the channel of a small tributary which flowed in on the north bank. Here and there he snatched quick mouthfnls of sprouting grasses, but he was too driven by his desire to pause for food. Sometimes he tried his wings again, covering now some miles at each flight, till by and by, losing the stream because its direction failed him, he Joand himself in a broken upland, country, where progress was slow and tiresome. Soon after sunset, troubled became there was no water near, he again took wing, and over dark woods which fllkd him with apprehension he made his longest flight. When about spent he caught a, small gleaming of water far below him, and alighted in a little woodland glade wherein a brook had overflowed low banks.

The noise of his abrupt descent loudly startled the wet and dreaming woods. It was a matter of interest to ail the furry, furtive ears of the forest for a half mile round. But it was in no way repeated. For perhaps fifteen minutes Kehonka floated, neck erect, head high and watchful, in the middle of the pool, with no movement except the slight... unseen oaring of his black-webbed feet, necessary to keep the current from bearing him into the gloom of the woods. . This gloom, hedging him on every eide, troubled him witn a vague fear. But in the open of the mid-pool, with two or three stars peering faintly through the misted sky above him, he felt comparatively safe. At las*, very far above, he heard again that wild calling of his fel-low*—honk-a-honk, honk-a-honk, hooka, honka, honk, hook—high and dim and ghostly, for them rough woodbinds had no appeal for the journeying flocks. Remnte as the voices were, however, Kehooka answered at once. His keen, sonorous, passionate cry rang strangely on th» night, three tiroes. The flock paid no heed to it whatever; but eped on northward "with tinvarying flight and clamour; and as the wizard noise passed beyond, Kehonka, too weary to take wing, followed eagerly to the northerly shore of the pool, ran ' up the wet bank, and stood straining after it.

His wiugs were half spread as he stood there, quivering with his passion. In his heart wa» the hunger of the quest. In h» ejee waa the vision d vest and mate,

IvrWe the earvicebewy thickets grew by the wide* mb-arcf-ip waters. The night wind blew steadily away from him to the under- » brush clos* by*;' or Wen in hie absorption he would have noticed the approach of a .menacing, musky smell. But every sense was now numb in tb,a presence of his great desire. There was no warning for him. Th* underbrush rustled, ever so softly. Then a small, delicately moving, fine-furred shape, the discourager of quests, darted stealthily forth, and with a bound that was feathery in its blown Jightuess, seeming to be uplifted by t»ie wide-plumed tail that balanced it, descended on Kehonka'« body. There was a thin honk, cut short by keen teeth meeting with a crunch a twist in the glossy slim blackness of Kehonk»'s neck. The struggle lasted scarcely more than two heart beats. The wide wings pounded twice or thrice upon the ground, in fierce convulsion. Then the red fox, with a sidewiae jerk of his head, flung the heavy, trailing carcase into a position for its easy carrying, and trotted off with it into the darkness of the woods.