Frederick Whishaw - The Romance of the Woods

Slowly the sky, due east, yellows and then reddens; it seems to be shooting up pink cloudlets, and letting them fly over heaven in order to herald the uprising of the King of Morning; for the Sun is coming—there can be no doubt of it! Redder and redder are the clouds that precede him; now the mists that veil his bed are growing golden and radiant, and fly right and left as he pushes his head through them and looks out upon the earth, and smiles in a broad pathway across the lake. As though by magic a thousand song birds instantly fill the air with hymns of praise; even the tall cranes cease their gabbling and gobbling, and look for a moment at the apparition ere they resume the business of the hour. They are splashing about in shallow water, and each step they make throws a shower of bright gems around them. The geese—hungry no doubt after a long journey, and being naturally rather of a practical than of a romantic turn of mind, take but little notice of the Sun-god; he's all right, they think, and is sure to turn up at daybreak every morning, surely one need not interrupt one's breakfast to look up at him? The pace is too good! Look at the ducks—here a pair and there a pair—swimming out into the shining water, dipping their heads as they go and sending diamond-baths over the sheen of their necks and shoulders. They pursue one another, and quack and court, and bathe, and are perfectly and entirely happy and content, as who would not be in their place? A curlew sails by, calling to its mate, who is circling over the lake further to the left. And all the while the busy little company of sandpipers flit and whistle, and alight and run, and are off again on the wing—life is all movement and 'go' for them; they cannot be still.

There is an osprey! He is floating motionless in air, high over the lake. He, too, is thinking of breakfast. Soon he will drop like a bolt from heaven, disappear entirely or partially in the wave, and in a moment reappear with his meal safely held in those business-like talons of his. There he goes—splash! he has missed his mark. A cry of rage, and a circle or two over the water, and he is aloft again—hanging like an impending doom over the bright lake. He will not miss again! But Ivan is touching my arm: I know what he means: he means that I must blot out this picture of peace and life by sending a message of grim death and noisy ruin into the very midst of it. Let me wait awhile, Ivan, and watch. It is so little for you who live amid all this and can see it at any time; but it is so much to me—a dweller in towns, where there is no free, happy nature-life to watch and feast upon, and no daybreak save that of the London cat and the strident, brazen cock. Give me another hour of it, Ivan? No? Well, half an hour? But Ivan says "No;" the geese may depart at any moment, he whispers; shoot while you can! I have no doubt Ivan made a mental addition, "and don't be a sentimental English idiot;" but the former words were all I was permitted to hear. So there is nothing for it: I must shoot; I must, with my own hand, blot out all this beauty, and smudge the picture which Morning has painted for my delight—and all to see a grey goose flutter and die who is now so busy and happy! The game is not worth the candle; but it must be done! One shot as they stand, says pitiless Ivan, and another as they rise—unless I prefer to hazard a cartridge after one of yonder cranes. Crane me no cranes: it is goose or nothing; give me the gun, Ivan!

There! the deed is done, for good or for evil. The goose who stood to receive my shot lived on, and I trust still lives; his feathers are thick and tough, and I hope in mercy that if he is hit at all his plumage has turned aside or suffocated the shot, and that he is not much hurt. He is gone, anyhow, flying strongly. The goose which rose to receive fire will rise no more. He is dead; he will utter never more his sad pilgrim-notes; he will feed no more in these pleasant pastures. Go and pick him up, Ivan, and he shall be cooked and tentatively eaten, and perhaps pronounced very nice, and perhaps condemned as very nasty.

Now turn and see what we have done. The last crane has taken wing—running a few yards and jumping clumsily into the air, rather like a cyclist mounting his machine. He will fly a hundred yards before those long legs of his are comfortably stowed away! What a slow flight it seems, yet it carries him wonderfully far away from us in a short time!

And the ducks? Gone also; circling high in air, taking stock of us. When they have made up their minds that we are bad characters and not to be trusted, they will head for a distant point and disappear. The curlew is far away, so is the osprey; the sandpipers are still in the neighbourhood, they are too inquisitive to go far from us; they must needs watch us and find out all about us first. And away there in the bright distance floats, receding, the triangle of geese—one less than it came, and one, perhaps, in pain and suffering, though Heaven forbid that this should be so.

All this we have done, friend Ivan, with our banging and bloodshed! See what a transformation scene the act of man works, in an instant, upon a lovely landscape? Of life he makes death; of busy, happy places, full of colours and of sounds, and of song and of joy, he makes a barren waste, with himself the sole living creature remaining to look upon the face of it! Let us go home, Ivan, we shall see no more of bird-life this morning; take up your poor grey victim and come along—the place will be the better and the happier for our departure, and perhaps, after a while, all its evicted tenants, save one, may return again to their own.

But Ivan only remarks that I ought to have shot that first goose in the head, and then we should have had two instead of one. Then he scratches his own head, gazes long and intently over the sparkling waters of the lake in the direction where the departed geese are now but a dark smudge in the distant sky, spits on the ground in contempt of muff-shots and lost opportunities, and strides away towards the ponies. As we disappear in the forest I look back and see some ducks returning, and hear the sandpipers whistle us a taunting farewell! Amen! No one wants us here: they are all happier without us.

There are certain days of one's boyhood which have made so deep an impression that they seem to stand out like mountain peaks in the misty plains of the memory, clear and distinct against the sky-line, when all else is dim and hazy and distorted by distance. One of these landmarks in the early life of the writer is a certain day, long years ago—though the recollection of every detail of it is as green as though it all happened but yesterday—when, in company with two or three kindred spirits, he made his first grand expedition after crawfish. It was summer—the summer holidays: holidays long looked forward to as to be among the most delightful that ever boy spent; for they were to be passed in Mourino, the paradise of our youthful imaginations, where the long Russian days were not half long enough for the multitude of delights to be crammed into each, there being "more to do" at Mourino, as we always thought, than anywhere in England, seaside or otherwise. As a matter of fact, the northern haven of our schoolboy desires was the very place for boys home from an English public school, and fond of healthy outdoor pursuits and recreations. There was a river at the bottom of the garden in which fish of many kinds might be lured to their doom; there was shooting, in a mild way; there was riding ad lib. , if galloping about the country on the spiky backs of the little Finn ponies of the place can be dignified by that name; there was boating, of course, and canoeing, at our very doors, as well as the usual English games which the true Briton takes with him however far afield he may roam. No wonder then that Mourino was the place in which we preferred, par excellence , to pass our summer holidays; for, as I say, the days were not long enough to contain all the joys to be crammed into them.