page 28

Hungry Winter

By … Jean Boswell

Never in the memory of man had such a winter been known, even in these Southern-Alpine regions, where the icy peaks and misty gorges trap every wind that blows, and the warring elements strive in almost perpetual conflict. Aorangi—“cloud-piercer”—lived mightily up to her name, her snowy crest seldom emerging from the veiling vapours of the winter storms. Tall peaks and lowly foothills alike were deep beneath the blanketing snow, and for miles around the rolling tussock plains surged away in a clotted sea of glistening white. Not a sign of life was visible on its snowy expanse, and old Kahu, the great hawk, swinging wearily aloft on his lonely vigil, swept his hunger-keened eye in vain over the silent wastes.

For weeks now Kahu had known hunger. For weeks his talons had not torn real flesh, and his body was shrunken to skeleton proportions—a gaunt framework of bone and sinew beneath its sombre plumage. Not even a rabbit had fallen to his hungry onslaught, for a cyanide purge, conducted before the snows, had been for both hawks and rabbits tragically successful, and now the furry victims were entombed deep in their snow-shrouded burrows. Ordinarily, lingering winter in these high sheep lands meant a rich harvest for the hawks, for many an early lamb failed to survive the rigorous weather, and even an occasional sheep met premature death in some smothering drift. This year, however, the farmers, apprised of the impending severity of weather conditions, had these many weeks driven the flocks down to the homestead levels. One old ewe, caught in the first icy blizzard, made but one meal for a hundred ravenous harriers, so quickly was her carcass stripped bare to its bones. Old Kahu and his mate had fought and fed with the rest, and then with the rest had followed the flocks down to the homestead runs—from uncertainty of life in the highlands to the almost certainty of death below! And more than two-thirds of the hawks made this rendezvous with death—swift, merciful oblivion at the point of the shepherds' guns.

It was a great season for hawks, exulted the young shepherds, and plenty of leisure to shoot, since they were only marking time, waiting for the lambs. Hawks' beaks meant money—easy money this season—and daily the sportsmen added “scalps” to their belts. And that was why old Kahu was winging a lonely patrol in the mountain country, hovering over the snow-bound acres in a ceaseless and almost hopeless quest for flesh. For Kahu had escaped the fiery death by a miracle—the miracle of love—the love of the wild hawk for his mate— the love of a man for a maid….

“Gosh! Call this sport! Just plain slaughter, thats' what this is!” Young Paul Tredgold, the under-shepherd, slipped the empty cartridge cases from the breech and reloaded his gun.

“That's the fifteenth in a couple of afternoons, and still they come.”

“Make a nice little addition to your wages this month, anyway,” said the older shepherd, as the dog came back with the last victim, “and you have the sport as well.”

“I don't call this sport,” protested Tredgold. “It's just pot-shooting—the way they hang poised on the wind, almost motionless—you can't miss ‘em. There's another—look!—high up: might as well pot him, too, I s'pose.”

“Too long a shot,” said the other, critically. “Don't waste your cartridges.”

“Oh heck! That bit of distance gives him his only sporting chance,” expostulated the younger man, as he raised his gun. “And by the great jumping Jehoshaphat I got him, too! Winged him, anyway. What price that for a shot, Roger?”

Pride was Paul's right. It was a great shot all right, but whether it registered a killing or merely a maiming casualty he and Roger Kane were destined never to know, for it was then that the miracle happened. Down tumbled the helpless victim, a trail of feathers, burnished by the winter sun, floating in its wake like a comet's tail, but before it reached the earth there was a hiatus in its impotent descent. With lightning swiftness from somewhere up in that infinity of space there came another bird—not a powerless descent this, but a purposeful swoop so daring in its design that its objective was achieved almost before the astonished watchers could control their breath. Like a plummet the great hawk dropped till he reached the wounded bird: his talons closed page 29 on the helpless body: his spread pinions winnowed the air fiercely for a second as they adjusted themselves to the extra weight, and then in a flash were in their normal flight rhythm and swinging away with their double burden up to the snowy horizon.

“Great saints! Did yuh twig that?” gasped Tredgold—and turned just in time to strike up the other's gun. “Here! Drop that, Roger! Lord! Surely you wouldn't commit a cold-blooded murder like that, would you?”

The old shepherd shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh well! If you want to throw away a couple of beaks it's all right with me,” he said, indifferently.

“But hang it all, Roger, you couldn't shoot a bird like that! I bet they were mates. I bet that old chap came to the rescue of his mate—or she to his. You could see it, Roger.”

“Rescue be blowed!” retorted Kane, cynically. “Cannibalism— that's what that means! Starved they are, and a hawk isn't a fastidious feeder at any time. Why! haven't you seen ‘em eating their dead kin? Don't we bait ‘em with their own mates? I wouldn't come-all-over sentimental about a hawk, Paul.”

“But—but—. Well, anyway, it was a nifty piece of work—catching it like that—and I believe it was his mate, say what you like, Roger.”

“Mate or no mate, he'll have a meal to-night, that's certain, seeing you've let him off,” returned Kane, amiably, as he turned away.

Tredgold looked after his superior resentfully as the head shepherd moved off. Flinty-hearted old robot! A cast-iron frame with clockwork in-nards! Molten metal in his veins! No imagination! No soul! Of course it was the hawk's mate! Of course that deed of wonderful daring had been for love! Everyone had heard of the love of wild birds for their mates. Jolly sight more faithful than some humans, by Jove! and his eyes softened again as he gazed after the birds that were now only a brown blurr in the distance. For Paul Tredgold was young, and in love, too—two states that account for many weak, threads in the warp and weft of human nature—and away on the swelling breast of the neighbouring field he could see the greenroofed cottage where his pretty greyeyed Ailsa lived—those dove-grey eyes whose tenderness unravelled his heart-strings, to be knit again into any pattern desired by her little brown hands. Soon, the day's work over, the windows of that cottage would glow with beckoning light, and he would fly to them like a homing bird, and the evening would be one of laughter, of music and song. And later still, he and Ailsa would sit before the falling embers of the great log fire, with her dear head against his heart, and they would whisper their dreams and plans—plans for the wonderful future—for their home—their nest….

“It was his mate!” he uttered, defiantly, and slipping the un-used cartridge from his gun, Tredgold stalked indignantly after his friend.

And because a young man's heart was soft with his first love, so that it vibrated in sympathy with any manifestation of tenderness even in raptorial nature, Kahu, the wild hawk, escaped with his mate. Over the desolate tussock wastes, up to the snow-bound uplands he bore her, never pausing in his steady flight till he reached the sanctuary of the nest from which only hunger had hunted them. It was a wide, rather shallow cave beneath overhanging rocks, protected against complete invasion of snow by shrubby bushes, through the branches of which they were able to make ingress and egress when the open end of the cave was blocked. It was no easy matter now, though, to get his wounded mate in, since the snow had banked nearly to the bush-tops, and he had to clear the way by thrashing the laden branches with his already wreary wings. No easy task, either, to drag her through the scrubby entrance, but he did it, and laid her down gently on the litter of bones, sticks and grass in the far corner of the cave, and crouched beside her the long night through in the half-stupor of hunger and exhaustion.

And thus it was that Kahu now pursued a solitary quest—his unending almost hopeless quest for food. Four days now since his return with his injured mate, and not once had his beak knived flesh—the real flesh that would quickly restore life to his starving tissues. Hour by hour his ravenous gaze swept the land that hitherto had given generous living to him and hundreds of his kin, but not a sign of life animated the frozen acres. He flew down below the snow line and skimmed the reedy lips of the lake—the reeds that soon would be pulsating with life, but were now stilled and silent under the winter dormancy. The sun shone brilliantly silvering the wind-levelled tops of the manuka scrub that bristled the head of the lake, and here fortune willed him a miserly legacy. Enticed by the warmth of the sun, up from their twiggy fortress appeared a couple of giant wetas. They crawled to the top of the manuka, their bronze sheaths, kindled by the sun to little bursts of coppery fire, revealing them to the eyes of the watching hawk….

They were poor sustenance, but he tore them savagely, swallowing greedily—yet carried one mutilated insect back to the cave and laid it before his wounded mate. She took the portion and swallowed, but slowly and with an effort. She was badly injured—one wing shattered, a leg broken, one side raked raw by the burning shot, what remained of her feathers dishevelled and matted with blood. She could only lie prone, able merely to raise her head. Old Kahu watched her dispose of the weta, and then was away again on his weary patrol. The next day a lizard fell to his talons—more satisfying flesh this—and again he took a part back to the nest and dropped it at his mate's beak. This time she made no attempt to take the food. He tore it in two and pushed it closer toward her; she moved painfully, took a small piece and swallowed with diffi- page 30 page 31 culty, then dropped her head beside the uneaten portion, unheeding his further efforts to tempt her with the food. He waited some time before devouring the remains.

For two days he was storm-bound, unable to leave the cave for the howling blizzard of sleet and snow that obscured the heights and clouded the gorges with smoky gloom. He crouched by his mate, dozing fitfully, at intervals thrashing away the snow that covered their protecting bushes and peering out through the driving scud, waiting for that armistice of the elements that would allow him to be away once more on his now utterly desperate need. The moment of easement found him again on the wing. He was very weak, his great pinions finding it an effort to sustain for any length even such an emaciated body, and he came often to rest, always settling on some rock or high head-land from which he could launch himself effortlessly on to the air. Hours passed before he sighted food, and then a mouse came to enact its unconscious part in the tragic drama of winter hunger. It crept from under the eaves of a disused shed and sat on the ridge-pole—a small dark blot on the white sheet of the roof. For one moment it was there—alert—vital—a contributing though insignificant unit to the sum total of animate life: the next it was lifeless flesh—an inert gory mass—red meat for a hawk's meal! A meal? A dozen like it could scarcely have satisfied Kahu's starving need, yet part of that mangled mouse he took back to the crippled creature in the cave.

The wounded bird had moved. Driven by thirst, she had struggled nearer the entrance. Her beak had stabbed the snow in several places into little pink wells, and round her head where she lay it had fluffed up, streaked and spotted, like pink candy-floss….

Old Kahu dropped the precious morsel he had brought close to her head. She made no movement, and he pushed it nearer … picked it up and dropped it on to her beak, where its blood stained deeper the snow that pillowed her head. He caught hold of her and tried to pull her backward toward the nest, but the effort was too much for his starved strength, and he remained crouching over her, himself unheeding the food that she had been unable to take. A wet dusk swam into the cave, as the already speeding day fled more swiftly before the storm-hastened night, and still he sat, beaking her crumpled feathers, his head hovering over her stiff body the while his throat quivered spasmodically in the harsh whispers and discordant murmurs that voiced his bewilderment and grief. The hours dropped slowly-withered leaves from the failing tree of Time—and the storm broke again in fury, bringing the night down in a sudden all-enveloping blackness, and still he crouched brooding over his dead mate. The snow, wind-driven, swept in, creeping nearer and nearer till it banked unheeded against his drooping form. Gradually his movements languished and then ceased in one convulsive rigor; his great wings spread as his body relaxed; his head sank to rest on her blood-matted plumage, and Kahu slept with his mate, while outside the wild orchestra of the elements—the blaring bugles of the blizzard, the rolling drums of the thunder, the wailing viols of the wind —played a triumphant threnody over their snowy sepulchre.

And though the sun in its orbit increase its strength and revive all dormant nature: though the seasons in their cycle replenish the empty burrows, and the winter hunger give way to the fat appeasement of spring, still old Kahu will sleep on forever, a sacrifice to love—the deathless love of the wild hawk for his mate.

page break

page break