Page:Under the Sun.djvu/262

238 brutes flung themselves upon the soldiers, and tore every man of the detachment to pieces.

This is literally an instance of that “Berserker rage,” that fearless, unarmed rage of which the Scandinavian chroniclers tell us in terms of awesome admiration, so long as the heroes were the fair-bearded men who followed their Erics and Olafs to the sea. Now, for myself, I do not grudge the same admiration to the wolf when it acts as bravely as those old heroes of the Sagas, especially since the Norsemen themselves, to express the intensity of their valor and the surpassing ferocity of their attack, had to go to the wolf for a simile. But, after all, no pleading can avail the wolf, for the whole history of man — black or white, brown, red or yellow — convicts these animals of persistent and ineradicable wickedness — rising, often, it is true, to a considerable dignity in the proportions and manner of their crime, but as a rule taking rank only as misdemeanants of the lowest type.

Children looking at wolves always greet them as how-wows., and in their pretty sympathy offer the wild hunter of the forest morsels of bun. Such cates, however, are not to the wolf’s taste; he would far rather have the children themselves. But he knows that that is out of the question, so he blinks his eyes wearily, and with a sharp expression of discontent at his lot resumes his restless motion up and down the cage.

Only very young children, however, mistake the wolf for a dog, for there is that in its ugly eyes, set so close together and so sinister in their expression, that tells the elder ones that the creature before them is no dog, or, at any rate, not an honest specimen. Besides, nursery