Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet.
Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that the things not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrium as was his cave—also, that small things not alive were more liable than large things to fall down or turn over.
But with every mishap he was learning.
The longer he walked, the better he walked.
He was adjusting himself.
He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between objects and himself.
His was the luck of the beginner.
Born to be a hunter of meat (though he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on his first foray into the world.
It was by sheer blundering that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it.
He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks.
They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder.
They moved.
He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated.
This was a source of enjoyment to him.
He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth.
It struggled and tickled his tongue.
At the same time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger.
His jaws closed together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth.
The taste of it was good.
This was meat, the same as his mother gave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better.
So he ate the ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood.
Then he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush.
He encountered a feathered whirlwind.
He was confused and blinded by the rush of it and the beat of angry wings.
He hid his head between his paws and yelped.
The blows increased.
The mother ptarmigan was in a fury.
Then he became angry.
He rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily.
The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows upon him with her free wing.
It was his first battle.
He was elated.
He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him.
Also, this live thing was meat.
The lust to kill was on him.
He had just destroyed little live things.
He would now destroy a big live thing.
He was too busy and happy to know that he was happy.
He was thrilling and exulting in ways new to him and greater to him than any he had known before.
He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth.
The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush.
When she turned and tried to drag him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the open.
And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall.
The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him.
This was living, though he did not know it.
He was realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made—killing meat and battling to kill it.
He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling.
He still held her by the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other.
He tried to growl threateningly, ferociously.