登陆注册
4135500000015

第15章 KOSKOMENOSTHE OUTCAST(1)

Koskomenos the kingfisher is a kind of outcast among the birds. I think they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or only uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like a bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quivering wings, rattling softly, before his hole in the bank. But the robber lost his nerve at the instant when he should have dropped his claws to strike. He swerved aside and shot upward in a great slant to a dead spruce top, where he stood watching intently till the dark beak of a brooding kingfisher reached out of the hole to receive the fish that her mate had brought her. Whereupon Koskomenos swept away to his watchtower above the minnow pool, and the hawk set his wings toward the outlet, where a brood of young sheldrakes were taking their first lessons in the open water.

No wonder the birds look askance at Kingfisher. His head is ridiculously large; his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that a duck would be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow whole; his tongue so small that he has no voice, but only a harsh klr-rr-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. He builds no nest, but rather a den in the bank, in which he lives most filthily half the day; yet the other half he is a clean, beautiful creature, with never a suggestion of earth, but only of the blue heavens above and the color- steeped water below, in his bright garments. Water will not wet him, though he plunge a dozen times out of sight beneath the surface. His clatter is harsh, noisy, diabolical; yet his plunge into the stream, with its flash of color, its silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten water, is the most musical thing in the wilderness.

As a fisherman he has no equal. His fishy, expressionless eye is yet thekeenest that sweeps the water, and his swoop puts even the fish-hawk to shame for its certainty and its lightning quickness.

Besides all these contradictions, he is solitary, unknown, inapproachable. He has no youth, no play, no joy except to eat; he associates with nobody, not even with his own kind; and when he catches a fish, and beats its head against a limb till it is dead, and sits with head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a clattering chuckle deep down in his throat, he affects you as a parrot does that swears diabolically under his breath as he scratches his head, and that you would gladly shy a stone at, if the owner's back were turned for a sufficient moment.

It is this unknown, this uncanny mixture of bird and reptile that has made the kingfisher an object of superstition among all savage peoples. The legends about him are legion; his crested head is prized by savages above all others as a charm or fetish; and even among civilized peoples his dried body may still sometimes be seen hanging to a pole, in the hope that his bill will point out the quarter from which the next wind will blow.

But Koskomenos has another side, though the world as yet has found out little about it. One day in the wilderness I cheered him quite involuntarily. It was late afternoon; the fishing was over, and I sat in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see what would happen next. Across the stream was a clay bank, near the top of which a hole as wide as a tea- cup showed where a pair of kingfishers had dug their long tunnel. "There is nothing for them to stand on there; how did they begin that hole?" I wondered lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood, with an open door like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two new problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every turn on the woodland byways.

A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long lithe form of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore paws against the bank, twisting his head from side to side and sniffing nervously. "Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till underthe dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the threshold. A long hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours out of a kingfisher's den, a keen look all around to be sure the old birds were not returning, and he vanished like a shadow.

"There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my glasses focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took the longing for young kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged headlong down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a rattling alarm that brought another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink dived, but it was useless to attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes above followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the surface, twenty feet away, both birds were over him and dropped like plummets on his head. So they drove him down stream and out of sight.

同类推荐
  • 摩诃般若波罗蜜大明咒经

    摩诃般若波罗蜜大明咒经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 送吴彦融赴举

    送吴彦融赴举

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 宿曜仪轨

    宿曜仪轨

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • Gargantua and Pantagruel

    Gargantua and Pantagruel

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 乙酉岁舍弟扶侍归兴

    乙酉岁舍弟扶侍归兴

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 重生九零掌上宝

    重生九零掌上宝

    上辈子临到大婚被小伙伴撬墙角,未婚夫抛弃,父母责怪,重来一世回到四岁那年,暴脾气的老爸疼妻宠女,刻薄的老妈温柔贤淑,没有无止境的吵架也责怪,只有疼爱,哥哥也还是熊孩子的年纪,一没空间二没金手指,三不记得发大财的彩票,只想安安份份的维持住幸福温馨的小家——只是,好像有哪里不对,等到暮以静发觉时,她们家已经买了大房子,住进大城市了。
  • 洛克王国空间之钥

    洛克王国空间之钥

    一个黑影闯入异次元时空,对时空之钥展开攻击……“轰!”时空之钥被击败,分裂成两把钥匙,一把掌管时间,叫时间之钥;另一把掌管空间,叫空间之钥。两把钥匙陨落与两个不同的世界,其中空间之钥陨落于洛克王国从此,时空混乱,陨落于洛克王国的空间之钥最终被一个神秘的黑影夺走……
  • 究竟大悲经

    究竟大悲经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 战天狂神

    战天狂神

    传说中的神兽异象重现人间,让濒临末世的人间再度掀起一阵血雨腥风,各宗门大派在人间开始疯狂吸纳门徒,啸天与兄弟宝明,得遇传说中的凰族后人和九五天龙族叛徒,因此发生一系列纠葛。未能及时觉醒血脉的啸天,机缘巧合下得到惊世传承,并因为一连串造化改变,恐怖的升级速度,让他为世间所不容,但是应龙转世的他,注定了他的宿命,觉醒归来的他,得到兄弟的支持,神秘宗族的帮助,携带至宝美眷,强势归来,让天地都因此而臣服在他脚下!
  • 木之泣

    木之泣

    一段又一段关于这世间爱欲,贪念,疑惑,痴意的故事拼凑出他迷离破碎的人生。
  • 霸道王妃:公主不好惹

    霸道王妃:公主不好惹

    血染皇宫,她亲眼看见自己的亲人被人折磨至死。一朝重生,一向矜持的大公主竟然主动请旨赐婚当朝最残暴的王爷?谁说女子就不能干涉朝政?她偏偏要破了这规矩让所有人看个清楚。挖她心,割她肉。凤凰浴火,涅槃重生。所有伤害过她的人,她都要让她们百倍奉还。
  • 姝途同贵

    姝途同贵

    姜姝儿有着京都人人羡慕的尊贵身份,不仅皇帝宠,皇后爱,姜家更是她坚定的后盾。作为拳打贵族诸侯,脚踢豪族纨绔的她,却在姜家覆灭后,无力反抗仇人,只能与之同归于尽。重生后,她依旧是那个打遍京都的小霸王,不一样的是却碰上了一块傲娇且自大的硬骨头。
  • 御夫有稻:绝世娘子懒为妃

    御夫有稻:绝世娘子懒为妃

    【全文完】一朝穿越成农家小萝莉,她以为只需要卖个萌再装点嫩就好!谁知,她不光得谨守奇葩家规,还得养活大爷似的一家老小。她一不小心起了点小主意,开了家古代连锁超市,富了一亩三分之地;然后一不小心养只白虎,救个江湖侠客,却被迫拜师成为江湖一派踪迹诡异的继承者;再一不小心发现个随身空间,未免资源浪费,低调的建立了神秘的百灵山庄。她无意江湖纷争、无意朝堂纷乱,更无意江山社稷帝王后妃。却不知那是家族唯一的使命!更无奈惹得当朝皇子对她威逼利诱,武林盟主与她把酒言欢,贴身护卫视她重过性命,魔教教头屡次救她于危难!搞笑的是那个从小“斗”着她长大的哑哥儿竟说是她指腹为婚的未婚夫婿?等等!哑哥儿!你说啥?
  • 学佛参禅悟人生:受用一生的佛家精品故事全集

    学佛参禅悟人生:受用一生的佛家精品故事全集

    本书辑录了佛家精品故事500余则,通过这些故事,大致可以了解佛家的基本思想及修行方法,可以了解佛教在中国传承的大致脉络,可以了解将佛理运用于生活实践的基本方法,当然,更重要的是,通过这些故事,能击碎头脑中许多牢不可破的观念障碍,获得一种全新的观察世界、观察人生、观察生活的视野,提炼一种更积极的处世态度,因而做人更有格调,做事境界更高。
  • 沉思录

    沉思录

    《沉思录》,古罗马唯一一位哲学家皇帝马可·奥勒留·安东尼所著,是一本写给自己的书,内容大部分是他在鞍马劳顿中写成的。它来自作者对身羁宫廷的自己和自己所处混乱世界的感受,追求一种冷静而达观的生活。这本书是斯多葛学派的一个里程碑。