He had never seen water
before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface.
He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the
embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly.
The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always
accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation he experienced was
like the pang of death. To him it signified death. He had no conscious
knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the
instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the
very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the
unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could
happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared
everything.
He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He
did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established
custom of his he struck out with all his legs and began to swim. The
near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with his back to it, and
the first thing his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, toward which
he immediately began to swim. The stream was a small one, but in the
pool it widened out to a score of feet.
Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him
downstream.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99