United States or Estonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was not good enough a swimmer to try any tricks such as oversetting the canoe, not when Thorvald was an expert who could easily finish off a fumbling opponent. Shann swam wearily to shore where the wolverines waited, unable yet to make sense of that attack in the lagoon. What had happened to Thorvald?
However, the scheme was worth trying, and he went to work doggedly, wishing he could make the wolverines understand so they would help him. They still prowled about their captive, scrapping at the sand about the shell casing. At least their efforts would keep the half-prisoner occupied and prevent its escape.
Shann scrambled ashore, the wolverines after him, sniffling along at his heels while he overturned likely looking rocks to unroof some odd underwater dwellings. The fish with the rudimentary legs were present and not agile enough even in their native element to avoid well-clawed paws which scooped them neatly out of the river shallows.
"We're eating the ham and eggs all up, and we're right in the middle of a game country at that." "Look here," Tommy suggested, "you go right on cooking ham and warming up those shoestring potatoes, and I'll sneak over the ridge and bring back about fifty pounds of bear." Besides, he went on, "I want to get those hides before the wolverines get them, or any one sneaks them off."
The traps they used were the No. 1, "Rat," for muskrats, ermines, and minks; the No. 2, "Mink," for minks, martens, skunks, and foxes; the No. 3, "Fox," for foxes, minks, martens, fishers, wolves, wolverines, skunks, otters, and beavers; the No. 4, "Beaver," for beavers, otters, wolves, wolverines, and fishers; the No. 5, "Otter," for otters, beavers, wolves, wolverines, and small bears; and the "Bear" trap in two sizes A, large, and B, small, for all kinds of bears and deer.
That made three such marks, three days since Thorvald had marooned him. And he was no nearer the shore now than he had been on that first morning! He sat where he was by the boulder, aware that he should be up, trying to climb to the less accessible nests of the sea birds. The prisoners, man and wolverines, had cleaned out all those they had discovered on beach and cliffs.
The outmost tip of that chain was only a distant smudge lying low on the water. "The largest ... that one with trees." Shann whistled. Since the night of the storm the wolverines were again more amenable to the very light discipline he tried to keep. Perhaps the fury of that elemental burst had tightened the bond between men and animals, both alien to this world.
"Luck, does ye call it, to have your head cracked and your shins smashed by the copper-skins, chawed up by the b'ars, froze to death in the mountains, drowned in the rivers that run into the top of yer shanty when yer sound asleep your feet gnawed off by wolverines, as they call and but whisht! don't talk to me of luck, and all the time ye never gets a sight of a particle of gowld."
The barren heights promised nothing in the way of food, but remembering the harvest the wolverines had taken from under the rocks along the river, he got to his feet and lurched out on the reef which had been their salvation, hunting some pool which might hold an edible captive or two.
At dawn moose and caribou came thither to drink; bears roamed its surrounding slopes; lynxes, foxes, fishers, martens, ermines, and minks lived in its bordering woods. Otters, muskrats, and beavers swam its inrushing creeks; wolverines prowled its rocky glens, and nightly concerts of howling wolves echoed along its shores.
Word Of The Day