THE LOST LEG
Near the hole where Maya had set herself up for the summer lived a family of bark-boring beetles. Fridolin, the father, was an earnest, industrious man who wanted many children and took immense pains to bring up a large family. He had done very well: he had fifty energetic sons to fill him with pride and high hopes. Each had dug his own meandering little tunnel in the bark of the pine-tree and all were getting on and were comfortably settled.
"My wife," Fridolin said to Maya, after they had known each other some time, "has arranged things so that none of my sons interferes with the others. They are not even acquainted; each goes his own way."
Maya knew that human beings were none too fond of Fridolin and his people, though she herself liked him and liked his opinions and had found no reason to avoid him. In the morning before the sun arose and the woods were still asleep, she would hear his fine tapping and boring. It sounded like a delicate trickling, or as if the tree were breathing in its sleep. Later she would see the thin brown dust that he had emptied out of his corridor.
Once he came at an early hour, as he often did, to wish her good-morning and ask if she had slept well.
"Not flying to-day?" he inquired.
"No, it"s too windy."
It was windy. The wind rushed and roared and flung the branches into a mad tumult. The leaves looked ready to fly away. After each great gust the sky would brighten, and in the pale light the trees seemed balder. The pine in which Maya and Fridolin lived shrieked with the voices of the wind as in a fury of anger and excitement.
Fridolin sighed.
"I worked all night," he told Maya, "all night. But what can you do? You"ve got to do _some_thing to get _some_where. And I"m not altogether satisfied with this pine; I should have tackled a fir-tree." He wiped his brow and smiled in self-pity.
"How are your children?" asked Maya pleasantly.
"Thank you," said Fridolin, "thank you for your interest.
But"--he hesitated--"but I don"t supervise the way I used to.
Still, I have reason to believe they are all doing well."
As he sat there, a little brown man with slightly curtailed wing-sheaths and a breastplate that looked like a head too large for its body, Maya thought he was almost comical; but she knew he was a dangerous beetle who could do immense harm to the mighty trees of the forest, and if his tribe attacked a tree in numbers then the green needles were doomed, the tree would turn sear and die. It was utterly without defenses against the little marauders who destroyed the bark and the sap-wood. And the sap-wood is necessary to the life of a tree because it carries the sap up to the very tips of the branches. There were stories of how whole forests had fallen victims to the race of boring-beetles. Maya looked at Fridolin reflectively; she was awed into solemnity at the thought of the great power these little creatures possessed and of how important they could become.
Fridolin sighed and said in a worried tone:
"Ah, life would be beautiful if there were no woodp.e.c.k.e.rs."
Maya nodded.
"Yes, indeed, you"re right. The woodp.e.c.k.e.r gobbles up every insect he sees."
"If it were only that," observed Fridolin, "if it were only that he got the careless people who fool around on the outside, on the bark, I"d say, "Very well, a woodp.e.c.k.e.r must live too." But it seems all wrong that the bird should follow us right into our corridors into the remotest corners of our homes."
"But he can"t. He"s too big, isn"t he?"
Fridolin looked at Maya with an air of grave importance, lifting his brows and shaking his head two or three times. It seemed to please him that he knew something she didn"t know.
"Too big? What difference does his size make? No, my dear, it"s not his size we are afraid of; it"s his tongue."
Maya made big eyes.
Fridolin told her about the woodp.e.c.k.e.r"s tongue: that it was long and thin, and round as a worm, and barbed and sticky.
"He can stretch his tongue out ten times my length," cried the bark-beetle, flourishing his arm. "You think: "now--now he has reached the limit, he can"t make it the tiniest bit longer." But no, he goes on stretching and stretching it. He pokes it deep into all the cracks and crevices of the bark, on the chance that he"ll find somebody sitting there. He even pushes it into our pa.s.sageways--actually, into our corridors and chambers. Things stick to it, and that"s the way he pulls us out of our homes."
"I am not a coward," said Maya, "I don"t think I am, but what you say makes me creepy."
"Oh, _you"re_ all right," said Fridolin, a little envious, "you with your sting are safe. A person"ll think twice before he"ll let you sting his tongue. Anybody"ll tell you that. But how about us bark-beetles? How do you think we feel? A cousin of mine got caught. We had just had a little quarrel on account of my wife. I remember every detail perfectly. My cousin was paying us a visit and hadn"t yet got used to our ways or our arrangements. All of a sudden we heard a woodp.e.c.k.e.r scratching and boring--one of the smaller species. It must have begun right at our building because as a rule we hear him beforehand and have time to run to shelter before he reaches us.
"Suddenly I heard my poor cousin scream in the dark: "Fridolin, I"m sticking!" Then all I heard was a short desperate scuffle, followed by complete silence, and in a few moments the woodp.e.c.k.e.r was hammering at the house next door. My poor cousin! Her name was Agatha."
"Feel how my heart is beating," said Maya, in a whisper.
"You oughtn"t to have told it so quickly. My goodness, the things that do happen!" And the little bee thought of her own adventures in the past and the accidents that might still happen to her.
A laugh from Fridolin interrupted her reflections. She looked up in surprise.
"See who"s coming," he cried, "coming up the tree. Here"s the fellow for you! I tell you, he"s a--but you"ll see."
Maya followed the direction of his gaze and saw a remarkable animal slowly climbing up the trunk. She wouldn"t have believed such a creature was possible if she had not seen it with her own eyes.
"Hadn"t we better hide?" she asked, alarm getting the better of astonishment.
"Absurd," replied the bark-beetle, "just sit still and be polite to the gentleman. He is very learned, really, very scholarly, and what is more, kind and modest and, like most persons of his type, rather funny. See what he"s doing now!"
"Probably thinking," observed Maya, who couldn"t get over her astonishment.
"He"s struggling against the wind," said Fridolin, and laughed.
"I hope his legs don"t get entangled."
"Are those long threads really his legs?" asked Maya, opening her eyes wide. "I"ve never seen the like."
Meanwhile the newcomer had drawn near, and Maya got a better view of him. He looked as though he were swinging in the air, his rotund little body hung so high on his monstrously long legs, which groped for a footing on all sides like a movable scaffolding of threads. He stepped along cautiously, feeling his way; the little brown sphere of his body rose and sank, rose and sank. His legs were so very long and thin that one alone would certainly not have been enough to support his body. He needed all at once, unquestionably. As they were jointed in the middle, they rose high in the air above him.
Maya clapped her hands together.
"Well!" she cried. "Did you ever? Would you have dreamed that such delicate legs, legs as fine as a hair, could be so nimble and useful--that one could really use them--and they"d know what to do? Fridolin, I think it"s wonderful, simply wonderful."
"Ah, bah," said the bark-beetle. "Don"t take things so seriously. Just laugh when you see something funny; that"s all."
"But I don"t feel like laughing. Often we laugh at something and later find out it was just because we haven"t understood."
By this time the stranger had joined them and was looking down at Maya from the height of his pointed triangles of legs.
"Good-morning," he said, "a real wind-storm--a pretty strong draught, don"t you think, or--no? You are of a different opinion?" He clung to the tree as hard as he could.
Fridolin turned to hide his laughing, but little Maya replied politely that she quite agreed with him and that was why she had not gone out flying. Then she introduced herself. The stranger squinted down at her through his legs.
"Maya, of the nation of bees," he repeated. "Delighted, really.
I have heard a good deal about bees.-- I myself belong to the general family of spiders, species daddy-long-legs, and my name is Hannibal."
The word spider has an evil sound in the ears of all smaller insects, and Maya could not quite conceal her fright, especially as she was reminded of her agony in Thekla"s web. Hannibal seemed to take no notice, so Maya decided, "Well if need be I"ll fly away, and he can whistle for me; he has no wings and his web is somewhere else."
"I am thinking," said Hannibal, "thinking very hard.-- If you will permit me, I will come a little closer. That big branch there makes a good shield against the wind."