THE BRAVEST BOAT
283
Astrid and Sigurd came to a large enclosure, set back from a
walk, with two vine-leaved maple trees (their scarlet tassels, delicate
precursors of their leaves, already visible) growing through the top,
a sheltered cavernous part to one side for a lair, and the whole, save
for the barred front, covered with stout large-meshed wire-con–
sidered sufficient protection for one of the most Satanic beasts left
living on earth.
Two animals inhabited the cage, spotted like deceitful pastel
leopards, and in appearance like decorated, maniacal-looking cats:
their ears were provided with huge tassels and, as if this were in
savage parody of the vine-leaved maples, from the brute's chin tassels
also depended. Their legs were as long as a man's arm, and their
paws, clothed in gray fur out of which shot claws curved like scim–
itars, were as big as a man's clenched fist.
And the two beautiful demonic creatures prowled and paced
endlessly, searching the base of their cage, between whose bars there
was just room to slip a murderous paw-always a hop out of reach
an almost invisible sparrow went pecking away in the dust-search–
ing with eternal voraciousness, yet seeking in desperation also some
way out, passing and repassing each other rhythmically, as though
truly damned and under some compelling enchantment.
And yet as they watched the terrifying Canadian lynx, in which
seemed to be embodied in animal form all the pure ferocity of nature,
as they watched, crunching peanuts themselves now and passing the
bag between them, before the lovers' eyes still sailed that tiny boat,
battling with the seas, at the mercy of a wilder ferocity yet, all those
years before Astrid was born.
Ah, its absolute loneliness amid those wastes, those wildernesses,
of rough rainy seas bereft even of sea birds, between contrary winds,
or
in
the great dead windless swell that comes following a gale; and
then with the wind springing up and blowing the spray across the
sea like rain, like a vision of creation, blowing the little boat as it
climbed the highlands into the skies, from which sizzled cobalt light–
nings, and then sank down into the abyss, but already was climbing
again, while the whole sea crested with foam like lambs' wool went
furling off to leeward, the whole vast moon-driven expanse like the
pastures and valleys and snow-capped ranges of a Sierra Madre in
delirium, in ceaseless motion, rising and falling, and the little boat
