ness is suddenly
broken by a frightful roar: _M-wah-uh! M-waah-uh! M-w-wa-a-a-a-a!_ The
echoes rouse themselves swiftly, and rush away confused and broken, to
and fro across the lake. As they die away among the hills there is a
sound from the canoe as if an animal were walking in shallow water,
_splash, splash, splash, klop!_ then silence again, that is not dead,
but listening.

A half-hour passes; but not for an instant does the listening tension
of the lake relax. Then the loud bellow rings out again, startling us
and the echoes, though we were listening for it. This time the tension
increases an hundredfold; every nerve is strained; every muscle ready.
Hardly have the echoes been lost when from far up the ridges comes a
deep, sudden, ugly roar that penetrates the woods like a rifle-shot.
Again it comes, and nearer! Down in the canoe a paddle blade touches
the water noiselessly from the stern; and over the bow there is the
glint of moonlight on a rifle barrel. The roar is now continuous on
the summit of the last low ridge. Twigs crackle, and branches snap.
There is the thrashing of mighty antlers among the underbrush, the
pounding of heavy hoofs upon the earth; and straight down the great
bull rushes like a tempest, nearer, nearer, till he bursts with
tremendous crash through the last fringe of alders out onto the grassy
point.--And then the heavy boom of a rifle rolling across the startled
lake.

Such is moose calling, in one of its phases--the most exciting, the
most disappointing, the most trying way of hunting this noble game.

The call of the cow moose, which the hunter always uses at first, is a
low, sudden bellow, quite impossible to describe accurately. Before
ever hearing it, I had frequently asked Indians and hunters what it
was like. The answers were rather unsatisfactory. "Like a tree
falling," said one. "Like the sudden swell of a cataract or the rapids
at night," said another. "Like a rifle-shot, or a man shouting
hoarsely," said a third; and so on till like a menagerie at feeding
time was my idea of it.

One night as I sat with my friend at the door of our bark tent, eating
our belated supper in tired silence, while the rush of the salmon
pool near and the sigh of the night wind in the spruces were lulling
us to sleep as we ate, a sound suddenly filled the forest, and was
gone. Strangely enough, we pronounced the word _moose_ together,
though neither of us had ever heard the sound before. 'Like a g