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Looking around, he found himself at the skirt of a chain of high hills, which seemed to stretch from side to side over the island, while their tops, in alpine succession, rose in a thousand grotesque and pinnacled forms. The ptarmigan and capercailzie were screaming from those upper regions; and the nimble roes, with their fawns, bounding through the green defiles below.
When Katherine heard the long, laughing chuckle of the ptarmigan, or saw the trailing flights of geese headed northward, she could have shouted and sung from sheer lighthearted joy at the coming of spring. But, however high her spirits rose as the weather grew better and finer, there was always the cold dread in her heart because of what the summer must bring.
Upon his hunting expeditions with the others, Charlie had not been allowed to carry a high-power rifle. It was a sore blow to his pride that his armament had consisted of a light, twenty-gauge shotgun, whose possibilities for slaughter were limited to rabbits, spruce-hens, and ptarmigan. Farther and farther into the timber he went, avoiding the outreaching skidways and the sound of axes.
And the whale tried to follow, but was cast up on the shore as a white and sun-bleached bone of a whale. There were two little boys and they had no father and no mother, and they went out every day hunting ptarmigan, and they had never any weapons save a bow. And when they had been out hunting ptarmigan, the men of that place were always very eager to take their catch.
"You are welcome to the rifle," said his father; "but I doubt whether you'll find wolves on the ice so early in the day." Mr. Hoyer took the rifle from its case, examined it carefully, and handed it to Ralph. Albert, who was a less experienced hunter than Ralph, preferred a fowling-piece to the rifle; especially as he had no expectation of shooting anything but ptarmigan.
When we see leaf-eating insects green, and bark-feeders mottled-grey; the alpine ptarmigan white in winter, the red-grouse the colour of heather, and the black-grouse that of peaty earth, we must believe that these tints are of service to these birds and insects in preserving them from danger.
Ducks, geese, and plover no longer enliven the marshes with their wild cries; but white grouse, or ptarmigan, fly about in immense flocks, and arctic hares make many tracks in the deep snow. Still, these are quiet creatures, and they scarcely break the deep dead silence of the forests in winter.
She had nearly one hundred ptarmigan, enough to last till the captain came home, and would not leave us again alone. Later: The captain returned from Nome, having made the trip of eighty-five miles and back by dog-team in four days and nights, a very quick trip indeed.
Three pannikins of tea reposed on the green branches, their refreshing contents sending up little clouds of steam, while the ptarmigan, now split up, skewered, and roasted, were being heartily devoured by our three hungry friends. The pleasures that fall to the lot of man are transient. Doubtless they are numerous and oft recurring; still they are transient, and so supper came to an end.
Although the birds had all gone south except such hardy fowl as the ptarmigan, that seemed to spend most of their time buried in the snow there was still mammalian life in plenty in the forest. The little furred creatures still plied, nervous and scurrying as ever, their occupations; and the caribou still wandered now and then through their valley as they moved from ridge to ridge.
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