Part 10 (1/2)

OVER THE RAVINE

I

The ravine was deep and dark.

Its yellow clay slopes, overgrown with red-trunked pines, presented craggy ridges; at the bottom flowed a brook. Above, right and left, grew a pine forest--dark, ancient, covered with lichen and shubbery.

Overhead was a grey, heavy, low-hanging sky.

Man seldom came to this wild and savage spot.

The trees had in the course of time been uprooted by storms of wind and rain, and had fallen just where they stood, strewing the earth, rotting, emitting thick pungent odours of decaying pinewood.

Thistles, chicory, milfoil, and wormwood had flourished there for years undisturbed, and they now covered the ground with th.o.r.n.y bristles. There was a den of bears at the bottom of the ravine; many wolves prowled through the forest.

Over the edge of the steep, yellow slope hung a fallen pine, and for many years its roots were exposed, raised on high in the air. They looked like some petrified octopus stretching up its hideous tentacles to the elements, and were already covered with lichen and juniper.

In the midst of these roots two great grey birds--a male and a female--had built themselves a nest.

They were large and grey, thickly covered by yellowish-grey and cinnamon-coloured feathers. Their wings were short, broad, and strong; their feet, armed with great claws, were covered with black down. Surmounting their short, thick necks were large quadratic heads with yellow, rapaciously curved beaks and round, fierce, heavy looking eyes.

The female was the smaller. Her legs were more slender and handsome, and there was a kind of rough, heavy gracefulness in the curves of her neck. The male was fierce and stiff; his left wing did not fold properly; he had injured it at the time he had fought other males for his mate.

There was steepness on three sides of their nest. Above it was the wide expanse of the sky. Around, about, and beneath it lay bones washed and whitened by the rain. The nest itself was made of stones and mud, and overspread with down.

The female always sat in the nest.

The male hummed to himself on the end of a root that was suspended over the steep, alone, peering far into the distance around and below him with his heavy, pensive eyes; perched with his head sunk deep into his shoulders and his wings hanging heavily down.

II

These two great birds had met here, not far from the ravine, one evening at twilight.

It was spring; the snow was thawing on the slopes, whilst in the forest and valleys it became grey and mellow; the pine-trees exhaled a pungent odour; and the brook at the bottom of the ravine had awakened.

The sun already gave warmth in the daytime. The twilight was verdurous, lingering, and resonant with life. Wolf-packs were astir, and the males fought each other for the females.

This spring, with the sun and the soft breeze, an unwonted heaviness pervaded the male-bird's body. Formerly he used to fly or roost, croak or sit silent, fly swiftly or slowly, because there were causes both around and within him: when hungry he would find a hare, kill, and devour it; when the sun was too hot or the wind too keen, he would shelter from them; when he saw a crouching wolf, he would hastily fly away from it.

Now it was no longer so.

It was not a sense of hunger or self-preservation now that induced him to fly, to roost, cry, or be silent: something outside of him and his feelings now possessed him.

When the twilight came, as though befogged, not knowing why, he rose from the spot on which he had perched all day and flew from glade to glade, from crag to crag, moving his great wings softly and peering hard into the dense, verdurous darkness. In one of the glades he saw birds similar to himself, a female among them. Without knowing why, he threw himself amidst them, feeling an inordinate strength within him and a great hatred for all the other males.

He walked slowly round the female, treading hard on the ground, spreading out his wings, tossing back his head to look askance at the males. One, he who until now had been victor, tried to impede him-- then flew at him with beak prepared to strike, and a long silent, cruel fight began. They flew at each other, beating with their bills, chests, wings, and claws, blindly rumpling and tearing each others'

feathers and body.

His opponent proved the weaker and drew off; then again he threw himself towards the female and walked round her, limping a little now, and trailing his blood-stained left wing along the ground.