Wood Magic: A Fable
him all the way home. After tea Bevis went and found the gin, and tried
to set it up under the pig-sty wall, just as the weasel had told him;
but at first he could not quite manage it, being as usual in such a
hurry.
Now there was a snail on the wall, and the snail looked out of his shell
and said: "Sir Bevis, do not be too quick. Believe me, if you are too
quick to-day you are sure to be sorry to-morrow."
"You are a stupid snail," said Bevis. Just then, as the weasel had
hoped, he pinched his fingers with the spring so hard that tears almost
came into his eyes.
"That was your fault," he said to the snail; and snatching the poor
thing off the wall, he flung him ever so far; fortunately the snail fell
on the grass, and was not hurt, but he said to himself that in future,
no matter what he saw going on, he would never interfere, but let people
hurt themselves as much as they liked. But Bevis, though he was so
hasty, was also very persevering, and presently he succeeded in setting
up the trap, and then taking his spade he spread the dust over it and so
hid it as the weasel had told him to. He then went and put his spade
back in the summer-house, and having told Pan that in the morning there
would be a fine big rat for him to worry, went indoors.
Now it is most probable that what the weasel had arranged so well would
all have happened just as he foresaw, and that the trap so cleverly set
up would have caught the rat, had not the bailiff, when he came home
from the fields, chanced to see Bevis doing it. He had to attend to
something else then, but by-and-by, when he had finished, he went and
looked at the place where Bevis had set the gin, and said to himself:
"Well, it is a very good plan to set up the gin, for the rat is always
taking the pigs' food, and even had a gnaw at my luncheon, which was
tied up in my handkerchief, and which I--like a stupid--left on the
ground in my hurry instead of hanging up. But it is a pity Sir Bevis
should have set it here, for there is no grass or cover, and the rat is
certain to see it, and Bevis will be disappointed in the morning, and
will not find the rat. Now I will just move the gin to a place where the
rat always comes, and where it will be hidden by the grass, that is,
just at the mouth of the drain by the cart-house; it will catch the rat
there, and Sir Bevis will be pleased."
So the bailiff, having thought this to himself, as he leant against the
wall, and listened to the pigs snoring, carefully took up the gin and
moved it down to the mouth of the drain by the cart-house, and there set
it up in the grass.
The rat was in the drain, and when he heard the bailiff's heavy
footsteps, and the noise he made fumbling about with the trap, he
laughed, and said to himself: "Fumble away, you old stupid--I know what
you are doing. You are setting up a gin in the same place you have set
it twenty times before. Twenty times you have set the gin up there and
never caught anything, and yet you cannot see, and you cannot
understand, and you never learn anything, and you are the biggest dolt
and idiot that ever walked, or rather, you would be, only I thank heaven
everybody else is just like you! As if I could not hear what you are
doing; as if I did not look very carefully before I come out of my hole,
and before I put my foot down on grass or leaves, and as if I could not
smell your great clumsy fingers: really I feel insulted that you should
treat me as if I was so foolish. However, upon the whole, this is rather
nice and considerate of you. Ha! Ha!" and the rat laughed so loud that
if the bailiff had been sharp he must have heard this unusual chuckling
in the drain. But he heard nothing, but went off down the road very
contented with himself, whistling a bar from "Madame Angot" which he had
learnt from Bevis.
When Bevis went to bed he just peeped out of the window to look at the
moon, but the sky was now overcast, and the clouds were hurrying by, and
the wind rising--which the snail had expected, or he would not have
ventured out along the wall. While Bevis was peeping out he saw the owl
go by over the orchard and up beside the hedge.
The very same evening the young hawk, as has been previously related,
had gone to the glade in the wood, and sat there in ambush waiting for
the thrush. Like Sir Bevis, the hawk was extremely impatient, and the
time as he sat on the ash passed very slowly till at last he observed
with much delight that the sun was declining, and that the shadow of the
dead oak-tree would soon reach across towards him.
The thrush, having sat at the banquet the whole of the afternoon, and
tasted every dainty that the camp of Choo Hoo afforded, surrounded all
the time by crowds of pleasant companions, on the other hand, saw the
shadows lengthening with regret. He knew that it was time for him to
depart and convey the intelligence to King Kapchack that Choo Hoo had
fully agreed to his proposal. Still loth to leave he lingered, and it
was not until dusk that he quitted the camp, accompanied a little way
over the frontier by some of Choo Hoo's chief counsellors, who sought in
every way to do him honour. Then wishing him good-night, with many
invitations to return shortly, they left him to pursue his journey.
Knowing that he ought to have returned to the king before this, the
thrush put forth his best speed, and thought to himself as he flew what
a long account he should have to give his wife and his children (who
were now grown up) of the high and important negotiation with which he
had been entrusted, and of the attentions that had been paid to him by
the emperor. Happy in these anticipations, he passed rapidly over the
fields and the woods, when just as he flew beneath the old dead oak in
the glade down swooped the hawk and bore him to the ground. In an
instant a sharp beak was driven into his head, and then, while yet his
body quivered, the feathers were plucked from his breast and his heart
laid bare. Hungry from his fast, for he had touched nothing that day,
being so occupied with his master's business, the hawk picked the bones,
and then, after the manner of his kind, wishing to clean his beak, flew
up and perched on a large dead bough of the oak just overhead.
The moment he perched, a steel trap which had been set there by the
keeper flew up and caught him, with such force that his limbs were
broken. With a shriek the hawk flapped his wings to fly, but this only
pulled his torn and bleeding legs, and overcome with the agony, he
fainted, and hung head downwards from the bough, suspended by his
sinews. Now this was exactly what Ki Ki had foreseen would happen. There
were a hundred places along the thrush's route where an ambush might
have been placed, as well as in the glade, but Ki Ki had observed that a
trap was set upon the old dead oak, and ordered his servant to strike
the thrush there, so that he might step into it afterwards, thus killing
two birds with one stone.
He desired the death of his servant lest he should tell tales, and let
out the secret mission upon which he had been employed, or lest he
should boast, in the vain glory of youth, of having slain the
ambassador. Cruel as he was, Ki Ki, too, thought of the torture the
young hawk would endure with delight, and said to himself that it was
hardly an adequate punishment for having neglected so golden an
opportunity for assassinating Choo Hoo. From the fate of the thrush and
the youthful hawk, it would indeed appear that it is not always safe to
be employed upon secret business of state. Yet Ki Ki, with all his cruel
cunning, was not wholly successful.
For the owl, as he went his evening rounds, after he had flown over the
orchard where Bevis saw him, went on up the hedge by the meadow, and
skirting the shore of the Long Pond, presently entered the wood and
glided across the glade towards the dead oak-tree, which was one of his
favourite haunts. As he came near he was horrified to hear miserable
groans and moans, and incoherent talking, and directly afterwards saw
the poor hawk hanging head downwards. He had recovered his consciousness
only to feel again the pressure of the steel, and the sharp pain of his
broken limbs, which presently sent him into a delirium.
The owl circling round the tree was so overcome by the spectacle that he
too nearly fainted, and said to himself: "It is clear that my lucky star
rose to-night, for without a doubt the trap was intended for me. I have
perched on that very bough every evening for weeks, and I should have
alighted there to-night had not the hawk been before me. I have escaped
from the most terrible fate which ever befell any one, to which indeed
crucifixion, with an iron nail through the brain, is mercy itself, for
that is over in a minute, but this miserable creature will linger till
the morning."
So saying, he felt so faint that (first looking very carefully to see
that there were no more traps) he perched on a bough a little way above
the hawk. The hawk, in his delirium, was talking of all that he had done
and heard that day, reviling Ki Ki and Choo Hoo, imploring destruction
upon his master's head, and then flapping his wings and so tearing his
sinews and grinding his broken bones together, he shrieked with pain.
Then again he went on talking about the treaty, and the weasel's
treason, and the assassination of the ambassador. The owl, sitting close
by, heard all these things, and after a time came to understand what the
hawk meant; at first he could not believe that his master, the king,
would conclude a treaty without first consulting him, but looking
underneath him he saw the feathers of the thrush scattered on the grass,
and could no longer doubt that what the hawk said was true.
But when he heard the story of Ki Ki's promised treason on the day of
battle, when he heard that the weasel had betrayed the secret of the
spring, which did not freeze in winter, he lifted up his claw and opened
his eyes still wider in amazement and terror. "Wretched creature!" he
said, "what is this you have been saying." But the hawk, quite mad with
agony, did not know him, but mistook him for Ki Ki, and poured out such
terrible denunciations that the owl, shocked beyond measure, flew away.
As he went, after he had gone some distance under the trees, and could
no longer hear the ravings of the tortured hawk, he began to ask himself
what he had better do. At first he thought that he would say nothing,
but take measures to defeat these traitors. But presently it occurred to
him that it was dangerous even to know such things, and he wished that
he had never heard what the hawk had said. He reflected, too, that the
bats had been flying about some time, and might have heard the hawk's
confessions, and although they were not admitted at court, as they
belonged to the lower orders, still under such circumstances they might
obtain an audience. They had always borne him ill-will, they must have
seen him, and it was not unlikely they might say that the owl knew all
about it, and kept it from the king. On the other hand, he thought that
Kapchack's rage would be terrible to face.
Upon the whole, however, the owl came to the conclusion that his safest,
as well as his most honourable course, was to go straight to the king,
late as it was, and communicate all that had thus come to his knowledge.
He set out at once, and upon his way again passed the glade, taking care
not to go too near the dead oak, nor to look towards the suspended hawk.
He saw a night-jar like a ghost wheeling to and fro not far from the
scaffold, and anxious to get from the ill-omened spot, flew yet more
swiftly. Round the wood he went, and along the hedges, so occupied with
his thoughts that he did not notice how the sky was covered with