June 5, 1915. 
LAND AND SKATER. 
TALES OF THE UNTAMED 
MARGOT. 
Adapted from the French of Louis Pergaud by Douglas English. 
C KOONING one sing-song plaint from morn to eve, 
like some old beldame, drivelling in her dotage; 
crammed, morn to eve, with glutting, noisome 
offal; forgetful of the savage dignity with which 
at first she had repelled her gaolers; Margot, her 
every natural impulse curbed and stifled, had ceased to care. 
Gone were the leafy corridors of green; gone the slow- 
billowing sea of forest verdure; gone the broad-bosomed 
kindly oaks, on which her youth had wantoned. 
The snare, the gun, the birdlime, the decoy — all had 
been aimed at her in vain; and this — this was the end. 
The first short troubled flutter from the nest had brought 
to Margot her new life. 
She was full-fledged. Her parents had forsaken her. 
No longer might she expect their hourly service — seeds, in- 
sects, grubs, thrust down her gaping throat. 
She had not turned a feather at the parting. She had 
not felt the unnerving difBdence which young things, fronted 
with life's problems, dumbly suffer. 
Some instinct told her life was very good. 
Before her lay the forest, raiubow-tinted; a brimming 
store of warmth, and light, and revelry — a treasury inex- 
haustible. 
Borne on the happy tide of circumstance, she drifted, in 
light-hearted ease, towards a sunny sea. 
FuU ecstasy of life was hers, full ecstasy of careless 
mirth, shared with her chattering kin. 
This sisterhood, this union in a common life and know-' 
ledge, was the keynote of her being. 
By this, the life of her community, she judged the other 
winged folk of the thickets, their likeness to, and difference 
from, herself. 
The ties of kinship disciplined her life, but no such bond 
as links the migrant hordes to fly, to plunder, or to fight, as 
one; no such community of lot as fires the crows to help 
their kin in battling with the hawks. 
The mainspring of such interest is the need of it — to 
fight a common danger. 
Nor hawk, nor buzzard dreamt of eating Margot — risky 
to chase and hard to kill, and bitter flesh at that. The 
•mailer fry were juicier, the finches, whose one weapon was 
their flight, the squabby, nestling game-birds. 
Margot had fed herself at once — for little came amiss 
to her. She gulped down seeds or berries, worms or insects. 
She ate whole nests of fledglings, driving the tiny mother off, 
or even killing her with one fierce peck. 
Her shot-silk plumage, ebony faced with white, her 
narrowing tail that almost overbalanced her, were counted 
cheap as ornament; her bitter leathery flesh was not worth 
eating; all that she really had to fear (though this she had 
to learn) was the chance fancy of some prowling gunner, who 
fired, of wantonness, to keep his eye in. 
The glut of food made jealousy unthinkable. Margot's 
call-note resounded every hour, a chattering gurgle, tuneful, 
almost tender, which summoned all her kinsfolk to a feast: 
acorns gigantic on the broad-backed oak which sentinelled 
the clearing ; or sugary berries on the rowan-tree, close to the 
four-way crossing of the rides. All crammed their fill, first 
come, first served, and clacked like men whose tongues are 
loosed by liquor. 
Jacquot the Jay came sometimes, a handsome bird, 
though heavy, puce-vested, cinnamon-coated, with azure 
pipings on his wings. He was a gallant trencherman and 
crammed his gizzard manfully. 
Each eveuing, after thirst was quenched (a social rite 
at coppice spring, or at the boundary pool) and after short, 
capricious bursts of flight had stretched their wings and left 
them widely sundered, rang clear the summons of their 
chieftainess, the Mother Margot, oldest of them all. And 
all winged straight towards her elm or oak, whose urgent 
claims as roosting-place were judged by her wise prescience 
of wind, or moon, or rain. ' 
Their greetings were soft sizzles of endearment. From 
branch to branih they tripped and jerked and fluttered, each 
in her turn evicted from her perch, each in her turn the 
mischievous aggressor. The tree itself seemed animate. Its 
boughs and leaves, continually astir, rejoiced in harbouring 
the sprightly chatter, the bubbling mirth of comradeship 
rauewed. 
15* 
Then, as the sun sank red beliind the trees, and day- 
light waned, and night's mysterious gloom brought warning 
of night's dangers, the voices, one by one, died down. 
A few disjointed peevish notes dropped lightly branch 
to branch — the last good wishes for the night, the last appeals 
for quietude. And then came silence. 
The joy of summer sunshine ! Long days of feasting 
and of chattering : days spent in palaces of green, whose 
galleries stretched endless : days spent in clearings bathed 
in gold, beneath an azure canopy : days spent with flippant, 
saucy merles; with loutish jays; with cynic crows; with pert 
or cringing mavises. 
She learnt the trees whose branches were the steadiest; 
the sheltered dips and hollows; the fresh, cool springs; the 
friends, the foes, the rivals of her world. 
Slowly, insensibly she learnt the mystery of the forest. 
The passing of the jays concerned her first. 
Morn after morn a silent host of them traversed the 
forest south-bound. At set appointed hour they checked, 
and dropped as one on wizened leafless oak, as though this 
were a predetermined halt. They rested, then pursued their 
course. 
The first day Margot followed them, but as they reached 
the forest boundaries, and fined away in smoky streamers 
south, lost heart and sought her trees again. 
Eight days their passage lasted, and eight days Margot, 
curious, fascinated, escorted their interminable columns. 
Where were they bound for? Did some all-powerful fo3 
pursue ? Some m.onstrous gluttonous bird of prey ? Did the 
same fear obsess the silent ring-doves, or the grey hordes of 
starling folk who swung and curled in spirals to the zenith, 
then, like a cloud-burst, dropped on stubble-field or freshly 
upturned tilth ? 
She stared at their battalion movements wondering. 
Nor did she scorn small trivial happenings. She hungered 
always for the strange, the new. She hugged the sin of 
magpie folk, insatiate curiosity. 
Squirrel had utterly dumbfounded her. Squirrel 
flashed wingless twig to twig; spun like a crazy top from 
bough to bough; looped branches, rippled down the trunk, 
and suddenly flung skywards, like an arrow. Squirrel had 
seen the hare and smelt the dog. As Squirrel reached the 
topmo.st twig, boomed (the first time) on Margot's ears the 
thunder of the gun. 
Margot took little heed of it. Her curious eyes were 
fastened on the Man. She watched without misgiving, and 
unsuspicious of their fateful meaning, the twist which slung 
the smoking tube behind his turning shoulders, the stoop to 
lift the slaughtered hare, the busying of liis hands about the 
body. 
The smell of powder jangled on- her senses, and almost 
brought distrust with it. Still she kept s-tation on her 
branch, not troubling to conceal herself, while blackbirds fled 
with shrilling screams, and crows winged quickly out of range 
with angry squawks of warning. 
Margot had yet to learn that Man meant Danger. 
The hare, that dangled limp between his hands, per- 
plexed yet hardly frightened her. The lesson was but dimly 
comprehended. She could not yet conceive herself the hare. 
She was a creature of the skies, far, far beyond Man's 
grasp. Her sence of circumstance was like the squirrel's. 
Squirrel pelts up his tree at Man's approach, whisks 
round the trunk at some convenient fork, and, with his body 
hidden, thrusts his nose out. He is too high for Man to 
harm. He waits for threatening gesture, stares spell-bound 
at the slow uplifting weapon. 
The passing of the south-bound jays was warning of the 
fall. There was still food abundant; the same fresh springs 
gushed water: but, with September, came the rains, and, 
after these, chill, lengthening nights, which draped the trees 
in mourning. 
Daily the throng of birds decreased. The sunless, 
moisture-laden air condensed in clinging mist, a woolly mist 
that wrapped about the trees in mournful swathes of silence. 
The foliage was no longer weather-proof; it chinked and 
crannied as the yellowing leaves peeled one by one from tlieii 
frost-shrivelled stalks. The treacherous rain-drops found i 
way between them, and dripped and splashed in spattering 
shutes and falls, dulling the plumage, soddening the winss. 
