The Last Wolf by Michael Morpurgo
It was often remarked in my hearing – and I confess that I too had noticed it and was puzzled by it – that Charlie seemed to possess an unnatural power, the power to sense the approach of a storm before we did, before even the Captain himself. But some on board, those most vociferous in their suspicions of Charlie, went further than this. They put it about that in heralding a storm with his dreadful howling it must be Charlie himself who brought the storm down upon us, that he was a curse to the ship and so a threat to all who sailed in her. This rumour ran around the ship like wildfire, and served only to increase their enmity towards us, increasing my sense of rejection and isolation. Worse though was yet to come.
We had safely run the English blockade, delivered our cargo of wool to Bordeaux, and had been but a day at sea bound for America, when Charlie set up such an ominous howling from the bow of the ship that we knew a storm must be in the air, and that we must very soon be in the midst of it. The Captain had us take in the mainsail at once. We battened down and prepared ourselves as best we could for what was to come. We would have to run before the storm and endure it, the Captain said. There was nothing else to be done.
For five days without ceasing we were tossed about the ocean by seas more mountainous than I had ever thought possible. Great green waves bore down upon us, forty, fifty foot in height, waves so powerful that I was sure they must overwhelm us and swallow us entirely. I prayed as I had never prayed before, but still the storm raged on mercilessly and roared about us in its fury. Despite all my most fervent prayers, God, it seemed, had abandoned us utterly.
One man was lost overboard, and yet another, Rory Niven it was, from Dundee, was knocked senseless below decks by the violence of the storm. He died later in his poor wife’s arms. Time and again the ship came close to foundering, and more than once I resigned myself to my inevitable and imminent death. Yet throughout this prolonged nightmare Captain McKinnon remained a fine example to us all of courage and composure. He sought always to keep our spirits high, and kept us ever to our tasks, assuring us that the Pelican was a sound ship, that not this storm nor any other could sink her, that God in his mercy would surely protect us.
So in the end it proved. But when at long last the storm had passed us by and the skies had cleared, the blame for the storm itself and for all that had happened fell at once upon Charlie and upon me.
We were all on deck together, having just buried poor Rory at sea, when, outraged at the suffering and tragedy they had had to endure, passengers and crew alike came to the Captain in a state of high and mutinous indignation. They demanded that the Captain either turn forthwith back to France where Charlie and I must be set ashore, or else they would have no choice but to put us both out in a longboat and cast us adrift on the open ocean, the very thought of which terrified me greatly. The Captain listened in silence to all they had to say. Then in a grave voice, his eyes ablaze with anger, he spoke his mind.
‘Shame on you, I say,’ he began. ‘Shame on all of you. I had until now thought better of you, but I see I was much mistaken. Have we escaped the cruelty of the Redcoats only to inflict the very same cruelty on one another? Wolf or no wolf, Charlie is as much God’s creature as any of us and has done none of us harm. I have vowed to bring both him and you safe to America and this, God willing, I shall accomplish. I have sailed these seas all my life and have sailed through many such savage storms.
It is not Charlie who brings these storms upon us. Such talk is born of nothing but ignorant superstition and wanton foolishness. It is the winds and the tides, I tell you. It is the elements themselves that conspire with one another to stir the waves into such a fury. No indeed. I shall not do as you bid me. It is I who am Captain of this ship and I shall not return to France, no matter how you threaten me. And if you dare to abandon them in the longboat, then you must cast me adrift also, for I would rather perish with them than live in the company of such unworthy people.’
Not one of them dared raise a voice against him. Stung by the fury of his passion, they stole away shamefaced. After that, whether storm-tossed or becalmed, I never again heard whisperings against Charlie, no, nor none against me either. With the passing of time my companions seemed to forget the matter entirely and warmed to us once more. The children played with Charlie as they had before, and took to howling with him too, so that it sounded sometimes as if we had not one wolf on board the Pelican but an entire pack.
We talked amongst each other constantly now of our great hopes for our new life in America. Many of my fellow fugitives had been driven by the Redcoats from their sheep farms in Scotland and would be seeking new lands in America where they might once again graze their sheep and live out their lives in peace and tranquillity. After much consideration, and on the good Captain’s advice, I decided that I too might follow this course. There was, Captain McKinnon assured me, land enough and plenty for everyone, ‘a great and wonderful unexplored wilderness’ he called it. So I determined I would settle somewhere deep in this great wilderness of America and make a farm of my own. Thus, I thought, Charlie and I could continue to live together unnoticed and far from the inquisitive gaze of man.
So after many long and arduous weeks at sea Captain McKinnon brought us safe across the ocean, as he had always promised us he would. We were united in our respect and affection for him, and in our gratitude to him. I shall not forget the morning I first sighted land, the moment I saw the coast of my new country distant on the horizon. I was, as fortune would have it, on watch, high in the crow’s-nest, so that it was I who saw her first.
‘Land!’ I cried. ‘On the port bow! America! America!’ I recall that moment as amongst the happiest of my entire life. As I climbed down the rigging to the deck below I heard a fiddle strike up a reel. All day long, as the shore came ever nearer, we danced and sang for sheer joy, and Charlie set up such a howling that we scarce heard the music, a howling to herald not a storm this time, but our triumphant arrival in America.
But our joy was soon to be tempered with sadness, for very shortly after we dropped anchor, Captain McKinnon and I came to the parting of our ways. I heeded his advice to all of us that we should not delay, but leave the ship at once, for, he said, there were Redcoats in America too and they were ever watchful. ‘Be always on your guard,’ he told us, ‘and never forget that it is the cursed Redcoats who hold sway here in America as they do in Scotland. For the most part they keep to the towns, and though they are few in number and the land is vast, yet must you be ever wary. Avoid them, and you will surely find the freedom you seek. May God go with you.’
As we parted that day on the deck of the Pelican he thrust his musket into my hand, and told me to go north into the forests, for there the wilderness was the least frequented. ‘You will have need of this to survive, Robbie,’ he said, ‘for it is a wild country you go to and full of many dangers.’
Thus, bidding sad farewells to the Captain and my fellow fugitives, Charlie and I set out on our journey north, making our way by stages into the forests of Vermont where the trees were now ablaze with such a richness of autumn colours as I had never before seen in all my life. Each day we travelled took us ever deeper into this beautiful wilderness. The further we went the fewer people we encountered on the way, and the happier I became. But all the while I kept Charlie clipped and well disguised, for I was forever anxious that he might be recognized for what he was. Wolves, I reasoned, were likely to be as feared and as loathed here in America as they had been in Scotland, and would therefore be killed on sight.
We lived as we had before in the Highlands, off the land. But here in this new country of plenty, the forests were filled with game of all kinds, with deer and wild pig, with wild turkeys and rabbits, rabbits that were twice, perhaps three times, the size of those I had trapped in Scotland. The rivers and streams also teemed with wondrous strange fish. A man skilled in the arts of hunting and trapping and fishing, as I was, could feed himself forever in such a place. America, as Captain McKinnon had told me was indeed
Yet it was a dangerous paradise also, for there were, I soon discovered, bears aplenty in these forests. My first encounter with one such beast proved very nearly to be my last. One evening as Charlie and I sat eating beside my campfire, a great black bear came wandering out of the forest and into the light of our fire, thinking, I supposed, to share in our feast. My musket was neither near to hand nor loaded. Foolishly, and unlike Charlie who sensibly abandoned me at once and fled, I stood my ground and shouted at the intruder, gesticulating wildly, thinking to frighten him off with my bravado. I did not know then what I know now, that to stand between a hungry bear and his food is most unwise.
Roaring savagely, the bear came running at me, rearing up to strike me. He would most surely have killed me, and eaten me too, had I not at the very last moment seen the error of my ways and taken to my heels. I later reproached Charlie for his cowardly desertion of me, in reply to which he looked up at me with great disdain in his eyes, reproaching me in return for my stupidity.
Living like a wild man of the woods, hunting and trapping as I went, I was daily seeking out a valley where we might settle and stay, where the land would be good and fertile for farming, where the water was plentiful. But such a place was harder to find than I had imagined. The autumn leaves were falling all about me, and I could already feel the cold of approaching winter in the wind. I knew that time was short, that I had to settle somewhere before winter set in. My search was therefore becoming ever more urgent, ever more desperate.
But I was troubled too by something else. There was, I had begun to perceive, a change in Charlie, in his behaviour, indeed in his whole demeanour. He was now a full grown and adult wolf, and although gentle and kind with me as he had always been, and still a good companion to me, there was, I noted, a look in his eye that had not been there before, a restless faraway look that disturbed me deeply. When we camped at night in the forest, he no longer curled up close beside me, as had always been his custom, but preferred rather to go off on his own and lie down some distance from me. Sometimes he would not sleep at all, but instead would stand and howl at the moon – why, I knew not.
When I awoke in the mornings I would often find him gone. To my great relief he would always return, and when he did, he would greet me most lovingly, as a long-lost friend. For a while at least I was reassured by this show of affection. Yet I knew in my heart that a distance had grown between us, a distance as between father and son, when a son is full-grown and himself becomes a man, when he no longer has any need for a father.
I made camp one evening in a sheltered valley hidden deep in the forest, close to a gently flowing burn where the water was sweet and the fish lay waiting to be caught in the shallows, where I saw both deer and moose come down to drink at dusk. Here, I resolved, was as good a place to settle and farm as I would ever find. Here we would stay. I had found our home at last, and only just in time.
The first snows of winter were falling as I completed the small log cabin which I hoped would suffice to shelter us from the winter storms. Against the cabin I had piled up wood for the fire, enough I believed to keep the fire burning until the spring. With Captain McKinnon’s musket I shot my first bear, a troublesome, scavenging creature who visited the cabin all too often, and quite uninvited. I made good use of his skin to keep me warm on cold winter nights. As for food, I would be able to hunt and trap and fish all we needed.
The winter in Vermont proved bitter cold, with snowstorms that raged about the cabin for days on end, more savage than any I had known in the Highlands. But thankfully the cabin stood firm and was not blown down, though I felt at times it might be. Inside I kept myself warm under my bearskin, and well fed. I had all I needed to survive and should therefore have been quite contented in the sanctuary of my cabin. Yet I was not.
From the very first Charlie would not sleep with me inside the cabin, indeed he rarely ventured inside at all, not even to eat. He would spend his days chasing everything that moved, though catching very little except chipmunks, to which it seemed he had taken a particular liking. Night after night I would lie alone by the fire and listen to his howling outside, hear it echoing through the forest. It was some time before I understood that these were not echoes I was hearing but the answering call of wolves. Only then did it enter my mind that Charlie might one day leave me entirely and go back to his own kind. I tried all I could to banish this possibility from my mind, for the thought of it saddened me deeply. Yet despite my best efforts, this same thought came always back to haunt me, so much so that I lived now in daily dread of losing him.
Although Charlie would go off and leave me, sometimes for days and nights on end, so that I thought never to see him again, yet always he came back to me, and remained my companion throughout all of that first long hard winter. But when he did return, he would not settle. Rather he would stand outside gazing into the forest, his eyes filled with yearning.
I noticed too that he would not now eat what I offered him, and I surmised therefore that he must be hunting for himself. I prayed that he would not leave me entirely but feared now that he would, that the longing in his heart was fast becoming too strong to resist. His loyalty to me, and his instinct to be with his own, were at war inside him, and I knew which of the two must triumph in the end.
One evening in the springtime Charlie came to sit close by me outside the cabin. It was as if he was trying to tell me something, but he could not bring himself to look at me. We were silent together for some time. The chipmunks were at play in the meadow below us, and yet, strangely, he showed no inclination to chase them. I knew then the moment I had dreaded for so long had come at last.
‘Go on, Charlie,’ said I, with a heavy heart. ‘You are free now, as I am. You go wherever you wish. Go where you belong, where you’ll be happy. Go.’ I pushed him to his feet, then thrust him away from me so that he should be sure of my meaning. Charlie stood and looked back at me for a few moments, and then went away without looking back. I had lost the best friend and companion I ever had in this world and was saddened as never before in my life. Yet I knew that this was how it must be, that fate had brought us here for this parting.
Though I looked for him every day after this, yet I saw Charlie only twice more. The next spring I was clearing the forest, and had made a fire, piling it high with branches and brushwood and roots. I had stopped to rest awhile, to stand back from the great heat, when through the shimmering haze I saw Charlie standing beside the burn. I walked towards him, calling him to me, but as I approached he stood his ground and watched me warily. A certain look in his eye told me that he did not wish me to come nearer.
I stopped where I was. ‘Hello, Charlie,’ I said, although so overcome by this time I was barely able to speak. I was pleased to see that he looked fine and strong, and happy in himself, his coat long and wolfish once more. His eyes held mine for a few fleeting moments before he turned and loped away into the shadows of the forest where at last he disappeared from my view.
I did not think to see him again, but one morning later that same year, as the first of the summer’s leaves began to lose their green, Charlie came back to me. This time he was not alone. I can mind I was sitting on the bank of the burn intent upon my fishing when something told me I should look up. Scarcely a dozen paces from me on the far side of the burn stood two grown wolves and with them four young pups, all as still as statues and gazing back at me.
That the biggest of them was indeed Charlie there could be no doubt, for leaving his family behind him he came padding through the stream to be with me again. As he came up to me I yearned to reach out and stroke him, but held myself back, thinking it not fit to do so, for I knew Charlie was now a wild wolf entirely and would not want the smell of man upon him. He sniffed at the trout lying on the bank beside me, and gave me then a look of such deep affection that even when I think on it now, all these years later, it brings the tears to my eyes. All too soon he turned away and was gone, taking hi
Within ten years I had carved my farm out of the forest, and my own sheep grazed in the meadows. I had by now built for myself a handsome house of stone and called the place Burnside. To my great joy I was not to sit alone at my fireside for long, for soon after the house was built I met and married my dear wife Fiona, the only daughter of my nearest neighbour some ten miles away in Woodstock. I brought her home to be with me here at Burnside Farm, where she lived and worked by my side and was my chiefest source of joy and delight for nigh on twenty long and happy years. Together we raised our dear son, Alan – though most tragically we lost two more bairns at birth – before she herself fell ill and died. We buried her in the meadow just below the house, the first field I cleared from the forest after I came to this wondrous valley. That is where I too wish to lie when my turn comes, so that, side by side, we can listen forever to the running of the burn, and the wind in the maple trees, and the howling of the wolves.
* * *
This story I bequeath also to my dear son, Alan, and his descendants, so that they may know and the world will know that the last wolf was not the last wolf.
Resting in Peace
AS SOON AS I was fully recovered from the effects of my pneumonia, I flew off to America, to Boston, to meet my new-found cousin, Marianne.
But I did not go alone.
I asked Miya to come with me because we were in this together, because she and her computer had discovered my roots for me, her roots too. I wanted her with me. It turned out that Marianne and I were both grandparents, and both recent converts to the wonders of computer technology. We found we had much in common.