Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/177



URING the night fierce unearthly voices had screamed or roared in the darkness. With the coming of morning, other and More numerous voices were added to those of the hunting beasts.

From the sunlit tops of tall cypresses near at hand a hundred wild turkey cocks sent out a rolling incessant clamor of defiant and amorous calls. Another great flock took up the challenge, another flock, and another, until the whole swamp for miles around rang and echoed with the noise. Fifty feet above the cypress summits sailed an army of giant white cranes, raining down repeated volleys of clear, resonant, whooping cries. Wilder by far, the deep reverberant dragon music of huge alligators shook the air, while, like a sharper echo of these tremendous love bellowings, the hunting cry of a wolf pack trailing a deer through high pine woods a mile away rose and fell in sinister cadence as the fitful breeze freshened and lulled. Twice the hoarse coughing roar of a bear rolled from the depths of the cypress fastness; once from a greater distance came the long