Wilderness Ways — Hukweem the Night Voice, Part 2

Once, on a little lake in September, I used to watch for hours to get a sight of the process.

Twelve or fifteen loons were gathered there, holding high carnival.

They called down every migrating loon that passed that way; their numbers increased daily.

Twilight was the favorite time for arriving.

In the stillness I would hear Hukweem far away, so high that he was only a voice.

Presently I would see him whirling over the lake in a great circle.

--"Come down, O come down," cry all the loons.

"I'm afraid, _ooo-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoooo-eee_, I'm afraid," says Hukweem, who is perhaps a little loon, all the way from Labrador on his first migration, and has never come down from a height before.

"Come on, O come _oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-hon_.

It won't hurt you; we did it; come on," cry all the loons.

Then Hukweem would slide lower with each circle, whirling round and round the lake in a great spiral, yelling all the time, and all the loons answering.

When low enough, he would set his wings and plunge like a catapult at the very midst of the assembly, which scattered wildly, yelling like schoolboys--"Look out!

he'll break his neck;

he'll hit you; he'll break your back if he hits you."

--So they splashed away in a desperate fright, each one looking back over his shoulder to see Hukweem come down, which he would do at a terrific pace, striking the water with a mighty splash, and shooting half across the lake in a smother of white, before he could get his legs under him and turn around.

Then all the loons would gather round him, cackling, shrieking, laughing, with such a din as the little loon never heard in his life before; and he would go off in the midst of them, telling them, no doubt, what a mighty thing it was to come down from so high and not break his neck.

A little later in the fall I saw those same loons do an astonishing thing.

For several evenings they had been keeping up an unusual racket in a quiet bay, out of sight of my camp.

I asked Simmo what he thought they were doing.

--"O, I don' know, playin' game, I guess, jus' like one boy.

Hukweem do dat sometime, wen he not hungry," said Simmo, going on with his bean-cooking.

That excited my curiosity; but when I reached the bay it was too dark to see what they were playing.

One evening, when I was fishing at the inlet, the racket was different from any I had heard before.

There would be an interval of perfect silence, broken suddenly by wild yelling; then the ordinary loon talk for a few minutes, and another silence, broken by a shriller outcry.

That meant that something unusual was going on, so I left the trout, to find out about it.

When I pushed my canoe through the fringe of water-grass on the point nearest the loons, they were scattered in a long line, twelve or fifteen of them, extending from the head of the bay to a point nearly opposite me.

At the other end of the line two loons were swimming about, doing something which I could not make out.

Suddenly the loon talk ceased.

There may have been a signal given, which I did not hear.

Anyway, the two loons faced about at the same moment and came tearing down the line, using wings and feet to help in the race.

The upper loons swung in behind them as they passed, so as to watch the finish better; but not a sound was heard till they passed my end of the line in a close, hard race, one scarcely a yard ahead of the other, when such a yelling began as I never heard before.

All the loons gathered about the two swimmers; there was much cackling and crying, which grew gradually quieter; then they began to string out in another long line, and two more racers took their places at one end of it.

By that time it was almost dark, and I broke up the race trying to get nearer in my canoe so as to watch things better.

Twice since then I have heard from summer campers of their having seen loons racing across a lake.

I

have no doubt it is a frequent pastime with the birds when the summer cares for the young are ended, and autumn days are mellow, and fish are plenty, and there are long hours just for fun together, before Hukweem moves southward for the hard solitary winter life on the seacoast.

Of all the loons that cried out to me in the night, or shared the summer lakes with me, only one ever gave me the opportunity of watching at close quarters.

It was on a very wild lake, so wild that no one had ever visited it before in summer, and a mother loon felt safe in leaving the open shore, where she generally nests, and placing her eggs on a bog at the head of a narrow bay.

I found them there a day or two after my arrival.

I used to go at all hours of the day, hoping the mother would get used to me and my canoe, so that I could watch her later, teaching her little ones; but her wildness was unconquerable.

Whenever I came in sight of the nest-bog, with only the loon's neck and head visible, standing up very straight and still in the grass, I would see her slip from the nest, steal away through the green cover to a deep place, and glide under water without leaving a ripple.

Then, looking sharp over the side into the clear water, I would get a glimpse of her, just a gray streak with a string of silver bubbles, passing deep and swift under my canoe.

So she went through the opening, and appeared far out in the lake, where she would swim back and forth, as if fishing, until I went away.

As I never disturbed her nest, and always paddled away soon, she thought undoubtedly that she had fooled me, and that I knew nothing about her or her nest.

Then I tried another plan.

I lay down in my canoe, and had Simmo paddle me up to the nest.

While the loon was out on the lake, hidden by the grassy shore, I went and sat on a bog, with a friendly alder bending over me, within twenty feet of the nest, which was in plain sight.

Then Simmo paddled away, and Hukweem came back without the slightest suspicion.

As I had supposed, from the shape of the nest, she did not sit on her two eggs; she sat on the bog instead, and gathered them close to her side with her wing.

That was all the brooding they had, or needed; for within a week there were two bright little loons to watch instead of the eggs.

After the first success I used to go alone and, while the mother bird was out on the lake, would pull my canoe up in the grass, a hundred yards or so below the nest.

From here I entered the alders and made my way to the bog, where I could watch Hukweem at my leisure.

After a long wait she would steal into the bay very shyly, and after much fear and circumspection glide up to the canoe.

It took a great deal of looking and listening to convince her that it was harmless, and that I was not hiding near in the grass.

Once convinced, however, she would come direct to the nest; and I had the satisfaction at last of watching a loon at close quarters.

She would sit there for hours--never sleeping apparently, for her eye was always bright--preening herself, turning her head slowly, so as to watch on all sides, snapping now and then at an obtrusive fly, all in utter unconsciousness that I was just behind her, watching every movement.

Then, when I had enough, I would steal away along a caribou path, and push off quietly in my canoe without looking back.

She saw me, of course, when I entered the canoe, but not once did she leave the nest.

When I reached the open lake, a little searching with my glass always showed me her head there in the grass, still turned in my direction apprehensively.

I had hoped to see her let the little ones out of their hard shell, and see them first take the water; but that was too much to expect.

One day I heard them whistling in the eggs; the next day, when I came, there was nothing to be seen on the nest-bog.

I feared that something had heard their whistling and put an untimely end to the young Hukweems while mother bird was away.

But when she came back, after a more fearful survey than usual of the old bark canoe, two downy little fellows came bobbing to meet her out of the grass, where she had hidden them and told them to stay till she came back.

It was a rare treat to watch them at their first feeding, the little ones all eagerness, bobbing about in the delight of eating and the wonder of the new great world, the mother all tenderness and watchfulness.

Hukweem had never looked to me so noble before.

This great wild mother bird, moving ceaselessly with marvelous grace about her little ones, watching their play with exquisite fondness, and watching the great dangerous world for their sakes, now chiding them gently, now drawing near to touch them with her strong bill, or to rub their little cheeks with hers, or just to croon over them in an ecstasy of that wonderful mother love which makes the summer wilderness beautiful,--in ten minutes she upset all my theories, and won me altogether, spite of what I had heard and seen of her destructiveness on the fishing grounds.

After all, why should she not fish as well as I?

And then began the first lessons in swimming and hiding and diving, which I had waited so long to see.

Later I saw her bring little fish, which she had slightly wounded, turn them loose in shallow water, and with a sharp cluck bring the young loons out of their hiding, to set them chasing and diving wildly for their own dinners.

But before that happened there was almost a tragedy.

One day, while the mother was gone fishing, the little ones came out of their hiding among the grasses, and ventured out some distance into the bay.

It was their first journey alone into the world; they were full of the wonder and importance of it.

Suddenly, as I watched, they began to dart about wildly, moving with astonishing rapidity for such little fellows, and whistling loudly.

From the bank above, a swift ripple had cut out into the water between them and the only bit of bog with which they were familiar.

Just behind the ripple were the sharp nose and the beady eyes of Musquash, who is always in some mischief of this kind.

In one of his prowlings he had discovered the little brood;

now he was manœuvering craftily to keep the frightened youngsters moving till they should be tired out, while he himself crept carefully between them and the shore.

Musquash knows well that when a young loon, or a shelldrake, or a black duck, is caught in the open like that, he always tries to get back where his mother hid him when she went away.

That is what the poor little fellows were trying to do now, only to be driven back and kept moving wildly by the muskrat, who lifted himself now and then from the water, and wiggled his ugly jaws in anticipation of the feast.

He had missed the eggs in his search; but young loon would be better, and more of it.

--"There you are!"

he snapped viciously, lunging at the nearest loon, which flashed under water and barely escaped.

I had started up to interfere, for I had grown fond of the little wild things whose growth I had watched from the beginning, when a great splashing began on my left, and I saw the old mother bird coming like a fury.

She was half swimming, half flying, tearing over the water at a great pace, a foamy white wake behind her.

--"Now, you little villain, take your medicine.

It's coming; it's coming," I cried excitedly, and dodged back to watch.

But Musquash, intent on his evil doing (he has no need whatever to turn flesh-eater), kept on viciously after the exhausted little ones, paying no heed to his rear.

Twenty yards away the mother bird, to my great astonishment, flashed out of sight under water.

What could it mean!

But there was little time to wonder.

Suddenly a catapult seemed to strike the muskrat from beneath and lift him clear from the water.

With a tremendous rush and sputter Hukweem came out beneath him, her great pointed bill driven through to his spine.

Little need of my help now.

With another straight hard drive, this time at eye and brain, she flung him aside disdainfully and rushed to her shivering little ones, questioning, chiding, praising them, all in the same breath, fluttering and cackling low in an hysteric wave of tenderness.

Then she swam twice around the dead muskrat and led her brood away from the place.

Perhaps it was to one of those same little ones that I owe a service for which I am more than grateful.

It was in September, when I was at a lake ten miles away--the same lake into which a score of frolicking young loons gathered before moving south, and swam a race or two for my benefit.

I was lost one day, hopelessly lost, in trying to make my way from a wild little lake where I had been fishing, to the large lake where my camp was.

It was late afternoon.

To avoid the long hard tramp down a river, up which I had come in the early morning, I attempted to cut across through unbroken forest without a compass.

Traveling through a northern forest in summer is desperately hard work.

The moss is ankle deep, the underbrush thick; fallen logs lie across each other in hopeless confusion, through and under and over which one must make his laborious way, stung and pestered by hordes of black flies and mosquitoes.

So that, unless you have a strong instinct of direction, it is almost impossible to hold your course without a compass, or a bright sun, to guide you.

I had not gone half the distance before I was astray.

The sun was long obscured, and a drizzling rain set in, without any direction whatever in it by the time it reached the underbrush where I was.

I had begun to make a little shelter, intending to put in a cheerless night there, when I heard a cry, and looking up caught a glimpse of Hukweem speeding high over the tree-tops.

Far down on my right came a faint answering cry, and I hastened in its direction, making an Indian compass of broken twigs as I went along.

Hukweem was a young loon, and was long in coming down.

The crying ahead grew louder.

Stirred up from their day rest by his arrival, the other loons began their sport earlier than usual.

The crying soon became almost continuous, and I followed it straight to the lake.

Once there, it was a simple matter to find the river and my old canoe waiting patiently under the alders in the gathering twilight.

Soon I was afloat again, with a sense of unspeakable relief that only one can appreciate who has been lost and now hears the ripples sing under him, knowing that the cheerless woods lie behind, and that the camp-fire beckons beyond yonder point.

The loons were hallooing far away, and I went over--this time in pure gratitude--to see them again.

But my guide was modest and vanished post-haste into the mist the moment my canoe appeared.

Since then, whenever I hear Hukweem in the night, or hear others speak of his unearthly laughter, I think of that cry over the tree-tops, and the thrilling answer far away.

And the sound has a ring to it, in my ears, that it never had before.

Hukweem the Night Voice found me astray in the woods, and brought me safe to a snug camp.

--That is a service which one does not forget in the wilderness.

GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES.

Cheplahgan, _chep-lâh´-gan_, the bald eagle.

Chigwoòltz, _chig-wooltz´_, the bullfrog.

Clóte Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians.

Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc. Hukweem, _huk-weem´_, the great northern diver, or loon.

Ismaques, _iss-mâ-ques´_, the fish-hawk.

Kagax, _kăg´-ăx_, the weasel.

Killooleet, _kil´-loo-leet_, the white-throated sparrow.

Kookooskoos, _koo-koo-skoos´_, the great horned owl.

Lhoks, _locks_, the panther.

Malsun, _măl´-sun_, the wolf.

Meeko, _meek´-ō_, the red squirrel.

Megaleep, _meg´-â-leep_, the caribou.

Milicete, _mil´-ĭ-cete_, the name of an Indian tribe;

written also Malicete.

Moktaques, _mok-tâ´-ques_, the hare.

Mooween, _moo-ween´_, the black bear.

Nemox, _nĕm´-ox_, the fisher.

Pekquam, _pek-wăm´_, the fisher.

Seksagadagee, _sek´-sâ-gā-dâ´-gee_, the grouse.

Tookhees, _tôk´-hees_, the wood mouse.

Upweekis, _up-week´-iss_, the Canada lynx.

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