Wood Magic: A Fable
never very celebrated for their courage, turned tail, and began to
retreat.
They would still have reached the hills in good order, and would have
suffered no great disgrace (for they were but a small party, and not so
numerous as the wood-pigeons), but in the midst of these manoeuvres,
the lieutenant of the pigeons, who had gone home with those who had done
foraging, flew out from the wood with his men, and tried by a flank
movement to cut off the peewits' retreat. At this they were so alarmed
they separated and broke up their ranks, each flying to save himself as
best he might. Nor did they stop till long after the wood-pigeons, being
cautious and under complete control, had ceased to pursue; not till they
had flown back two or three miles into the fastnesses of Kapchack's
hills. Then some of them, collecting again, held a hurried council, and
sent off messengers with the news of this affray.
About the same time, it happened that a missel-thrush arrived at the
court, a son of the favourite missel-thrush, the only bird whom Kapchack
(and the farmer) allowed to build in the orchard. The missel-thrush had
just travelled through part of the country which once belonged to
Kapchack, but which Choo Hoo had over-run the year before, and he
brought Kapchack such a terrible account of the mighty armies that he
saw assembling, that the king was beside himself with terror. Next came
a crow, one of Kauc's warriors, who had been that way, and he said that
two captains of the wood-pigeons, hearing of the peewits' defeat, had
already, and without staying for instructions from Choo Hoo, entered the
country and taken possession of a copse on the slope of the hill from
which the peewits had descended.
"And," said the squirrel, as Bevis, having eaten all the raspberries,
came and sat down on the moss under the oak, "the upshot of it is that
King Kapchack has called a general council of war, which is to be held
almost directly at the owl's castle, in the pollard hard by. For you
must understand that the farmer who lives near Kapchack's palace is so
fierce, he will not let any of the large birds (except the favourite
missel-thrush) enter the orchard, and therefore Kapchack has to hold
these great councils in the copse. What will be the result I cannot
think, and I am not without serious apprehensions myself, for I have
hitherto held undisputed possession of this domain. But Choo Hoo is so
despotic, and has such an immense army at his back, that I am not at all
certain he will respect my neutrality. As for Kapchack, he shivers in
his claws at the very name of the mighty rebel."
"Why does Choo Hoo want King Kapchack's country?" said Bevis. "Why
cannot he stop where he is?"
"There is no reason, dear; but you know that all the birds and animals
would like to be king if they could, and when Choo Hoo found that the
wood-pigeons (for he was nothing but an adventurer at first, without any
title or property except the ancestral ash) were growing so numerous
that the woods would hardly hold them, and were continually being
increased both by their own populousness and by the arrival of fresh
bands, it occurred to him that this enormous horde of people, if they
could only be persuaded to follow him, could easily over-run the entire
country. Hitherto, it was true, they had been easily kept in subjection,
notwithstanding their immense numbers, first, because they had no
leaders among them, nor even any nobles or rich people to govern their
movements and tell them what to do; and next, because they were
barbarians, and totally destitute of art or refinement, knowledge, or
science, neither had they any skill in diplomacy or politics, but were
utterly outside the civilised nations.
"Even their language, as you yourself have heard, is very contracted and
poor, without inflection or expression, being nothing but the repetition
of the same sounds, by which means--that is simply by the number and the
depth of hollowness of the same monosyllables--they convey their wishes
to each other. It is, indeed, wonderful how they can do so, and our
learned men, from this circumstance, have held that the language of the
wood-pigeon is the most difficult to acquire, so much so that it is
scarce possible for one who has not been born among the barbarians to
attain to any facility in the use of these gutturals. This is the reason
why little or no intercourse has ever taken place between us who are
civilised and these hordes; that which has gone on has been entirely
conducted by the aid of interpreters, being those few wood-pigeons who
have come away from the main body, and dwell peaceably in our midst.
"Now, Choo Hoo, as I said, being an adventurer, with no more property
than the ancestral ash, but a pigeon of very extraordinary genius,
considered within himself that if any one could but persuade these
mighty and incredible myriads to follow him he could over-run the entire
country. The very absence of any nobles or rich pigeons among them would
make his sway the more absolute if he once got power, for there would
be none to dispute it, or to put any check upon him. Ignorant and
barbarous as they were, the common pigeons would worship such a captain
as a hero and a demi-god, and would fly to certain destruction in
obedience to his orders.
"He was the more encouraged to the enterprise because it was on record
that in olden times great bodies of pigeons had passed across the
country sweeping everything before them. Nothing could resist their
onward march, and it is owing to these barbarian invasions that so many
of our most precious chronicles have been destroyed, and our early
history, Bevis dear, involved in obscurity. Their dominion--destructive
as it was--had, however, always passed away as rapidly as it arose, on
account of the lack of cohesion in their countless armies. They marched
without a leader, and without order, obeying for a time a common
impulse; when that impulse ceased they retired tumultuously, suffering
grievous losses from the armies which gathered behind and hung upon
their rear. Their bones whitened the fields, and the sun, it is said,
was darkened at noonday by their hastening crowds fleeing in dense
columns, and struck down as they fled by hawks and crows.
"Had they possessed a leader in whom they felt confidence the result
might have been very different; indeed, our wisest historians express no
doubt that civilisation must have been entirely extinguished, and these
lovely fields and delicious woods have been wholly occupied by the
barbarians. Fortunately it was not so. But, as I said, Choo Hoo,
retiring to the top of a lofty fir-tree, and filled with these ideas,
surveyed from thence the masses of his countrymen returning to the woods
to roost as the sun declined, and resolved to lose no time in
endeavouring to win them to his will, and to persuade them to embark
upon the extraordinary enterprise which he had conceived.
"Without delay he proceeded to promulgate his plans, flying from tribe
to tribe, and from flock to flock, ceaselessly proclaiming that the
kingdom was the wood-pigeons' by right, by reason of their numbers, and
because of the wickedness of Kapchack and his court, which wickedness
was notorious, and must end in disaster. As you may imagine, he met with
little or no response--for the most part the pigeons, being of a stolid
nature, went on with their feeding and talking, and took no notice
whatever of his orations. After a while the elder ones, indeed, began to
say to each other that this agitator had better be put down and debarred
from freedom of speech, for such seditious language must ultimately be
reported to Kapchack, who would send his body-guards of hawks among them
and exact a sanguinary vengeance.
"Finding himself in danger, Choo Hoo, not one whit abashed, instead of
fleeing, came before the elders and openly reproached them with
misgovernment, cowardice, and the concealment or loss of certain ancient
prophecies, which foretold the future power of the wood-pigeons, and
which he accused them of holding back out of jealousy, lest they should
lose the miserable petty authority they enjoyed on account of their age.
Now, whether there were really any such prophecies, I cannot tell you,
or whether it was one of Choo Hoo's clever artifices, it is a moot point
among our most learned antiquaries; the owl, who has the best means of
information, told me once that he believed there was some ground for the
assertion.
"At any rate it suited Choo Hoo's purpose very well; for although the
elders and the heads of the tribes forthwith proceeded to subject him to
every species of persecution, and attacked him so violently that he lost
nearly all his feathers, the common pigeons sympathised with him, and
hid him from their pursuit. They were the more led to sympathise with
him because, on account of their ever-increasing numbers, the territory
allotted to them by Kapchack was daily becoming less and less suited to
their wants, and, in short, there were some signs of a famine. They,
therefore, looked with longing eyes at the fertile country, teeming with
wheat and acorns around them, and listened with greedy ears to the
tempting prospect so graphically described by Choo Hoo.
"Above all, the young pigeons attached themselves to his fortunes and
followed him everywhere in continually increasing bands, for he promised
them wives in plenty and trees for their nests without number; for all
the trees in their woods were already occupied by the older families,
who would not, moreover, part with their daughters to young pigeons who
had not a branch to roost on. Some say that the fox, who had long been
deeply discontented at the loss of his ancestors' kingdom and of his own
wealth, which he dissipated so carelessly, did not scruple to advise
Choo Hoo how to proceed. Be that as it may, I should be the last to
accuse any one of disloyalty without evident proof; be that as it may,
the stir and commotion grew so great among the wood-pigeons, that
presently the news of it reached King Kapchack.
"His spies, of whom he has so many (the chief of them is Te-te, the
tomtit, of whom I bid you beware), brought him full intelligence of what
was going on. Kapchack lost no time in calling his principal advisers
around him; they met close by here (where the council is to take place
this afternoon), for he well knew the importance of the news. It was not
only, you see, the immense numbers of the wood-pigeons and the
impossibility of resisting their march, were they once set in motion,
but he had to consider that there was a considerable population of
pigeons in our midst who might turn traitors, and he was by no means
sure of the allegiance of various other tribes, who were only held down
by terror.
"The council fully acknowledged the gravity of the situation, and upon
the advice of the hawk it was resolved that Choo Hoo, as the prime mover
of the trouble, and as the only one capable of bringing matters to a
crisis, should be forthwith despatched. But when the executioners
proceeded to seize him he eluded their clutches with the greatest ease;
for his followers (such was their infatuation) devoted their lives to
his, and threw themselves in the way of Kapchack's emissaries, the
hawks, submitting to be torn in pieces rather than see their beloved
hero lose a feather. Thus baffled, the enraged Kapchack next tried to
get him assassinated, but, as before, his friends watched about him with
such solicitude that no one could enter the wood where he slept at night
without their raising such a disturbance that their evil purpose was
defeated.
"In his rage Kapchack ordered a decimation of the wood-pigeons, which I
myself think was a great mistake; but, as I have told you before, I do