A DELUSIVE REFUGE
The night after that terrible chase the hare made his way back to the farm; but there he met only fresh troubles. First he was driven from Johanna’s Garden by a man cutting the hedge, and compelled to slink away in a blaze of sunshine, which was torture to him; next, when sitting in the clover he was pestered by a yearling, that kept rubbing him with her nose. Despite the buffeting he gave her, she annoyed him so much that in the end he had no choice but to get up and steal away to the cabbage-pile. A week later he was driven from this retreat by old Betty, who came and cut the very cabbage that sheltered him. Thereupon he returned to the seat on the hedge, and continued to use it until one morning he found a weasel curled up there. Then he forsook it for good.
That night, when considering where he should pass the coming day, his thoughts, as always in time of worry, turned to the hill, and at the approach of dawn, instead of heading for the farm, he set his face for Chapel Carn Brea. He was quite elated at the prospect of returning to the familiar upland; he even made up his mind where to sit; yet all came to nothing, for when he was a mile on the way another retreat won his favour and turned him from his purpose.
As he skirted the large pool on the Land’s End moor his ever alert eyes fell on the tiny island in its midst; immediately there flashed on his mind an idea of the immunity from molestation such a retreat would afford. There, with the water around him, he felt that he would be safer than anywhere else; that neither fox nor cat, polecat nor weasel, would disturb him, nor man intrude; in short, that the islet offered the sanctuary he had often longed for and hitherto sought in vain. But there was one disadvantage, and a most serious one—the apparent impossibility of reaching the island without swimming. He knew from his experience at the mill-pool that no amount of shaking could dry a wet coat sufficiently to make sitting in it endurable for a whole day; and because of this he was on the point of abandoning the project and continuing his way, when, on second thoughts, prompted by the low state of the water, he decided to try whether he could reach the island by wading.
After looking round to see that he was not observed, he entered the pool and made straight for a rock where he meant to land before attempting to gain his goal, which lay just beyond it. But the water was soon so deep that at every step he dreaded finding himself out of his depth. Nevertheless, he was able to keep touch of the bottom until within some ten yards of the rock: there suddenly he had to rear on his hind legs to prevent his shoulders from being submerged. Most hares in this situation would have wheeled round and made for shore; but the jack was not so easily thwarted. A difficult situation called forth his resource: before you could count three, so quick was he to act, he was advancing on his hind legs over the rough bed, and he actually succeeded in gaining the rock without wetting more than a few inches of his coat. He stood a moment on the rock to shake the water from his chest and belly, then examined the strait between him and the island. It was far too deep to bottom, apparently far too wide to cross by a standing leap. But he meant to try. The worst that could befall him was a good drenching and the consequent abandonment of his plan. Twice he gathered himself to spring; as often he drew back; he was not satisfied with the hold of his front feet. A third time he gathered his strong hind limbs well under him, got a firm grip of the rock with his fore pads, launched himself with all the force he was capable of, and landed high and dry with a few inches to spare. After surveying his refuge, he leapt to the spot he had selected for his seat, and squatting close to the ground with his ears pressed close on his back, was indistinguishable from his surroundings.
The sudden disappearance of the animal which an instant before had been so very conspicuous was little short of magical; even when the sun rose it was difficult to pick him out, so happily did his colouring blend with the russet of the fern and the gold and grey of the lichens. One thing alone betrayed him, his eyes: they were wide open, maintaining their unbroken watch. For months they had kept vigil on cornfield, pasturage, and the enclosing hedges; now they scanned a waste of sullen mere and barren moor without sign of life save a wheatear flitting from stack to stack of the turf that dotted the heathery ground.
A harmless intruder was this frail bird; equally harmless the seagulls which came almost daily to drink and bathe and preen their plumage. At times the islet was ringed with their elegant forms: they might have been taken for the bodyguard of the hare, if there had been anything to suggest danger.
Dawn after dawn the hare stole back to his island retreat, where after awhile he began to throw aside his ordinary precautions and to relax his vigilance, passing the day in careless content. One noon he even grew so reckless as to abandon his usual wakeful position and rest on his side, with head and ears erect, his hind legs stretched out to their full length, and the white underfur exposed in a way that would have betrayed him to any prying eyes. The following day, soothed by the hot sun and the ripple against the bank, he actually fell so soundly asleep as to be insensible to his surroundings.
Alas, he was soon to be rudely apprised of the insecurity of his refuge, which was in fact an ancient holt of the otters that visited the pool. The awakening came on the nineteenth day in this wise. He was just back in the form casting his restless eyes about him as usual, when he saw something rise to the surface of the mere and almost instantly sink from view. The grey light and a mist prevented him from seeing clearly; yet he knew that it was an otter. At once he became alarmed for his safety, because he felt almost sure that the intruder would seek the island to couch on.
He was on the point of obeying his instinct to steal away whilst there was yet time, but irresolution held him back. He half rose; he resettled himself; he wavered again, and finally decided to await the issue. There he sat, watching and hoping that the creature would seek harbourage in the reeds beyond the spot where he had seen it. Minutes passed without a sign, he thought that his hopes were realised; he had almost ceased to scan the pool, when to his dismay the otter rose with a snort within a few yards, and lay motionless with his black bead-like eyes fixed on the island. It was a trying moment for the hare; had he moved ever so slightly the otter must have seen him, but he remained as rigid as the rock beside him; even his nostrils were at rest.
Presently, shaking the water out of her ears, the otter dived, only, however, to reappear with an eel in her mouth and land where the only creek on the islet had often invited her. Scarcely more than her length from the hare she lay down at full length with her head towards the water, and, holding the prey firmly between her fore paws, proceeded to devour it. Her wet coat gleamed when the sun rose across the level waste marking moor and pool with the shadows of the turf-stacks, yet the otter took no notice of the unfriendly rays; she was too much engrossed with her prey. Once she looked up, but no noise had attracted her; the slicing and champing of the flesh by her sharp white teeth was the only sound of that hushed hour. When she had eaten part of the fish, she dropped the remainder, advanced a few inches into the water and washed her muzzle with her great splayed foot, interrupting her ablutions to listen momentarily to the faint echo raised by a train of pack-mules. Then she returned to the islet and rolled on the fern. Now this way, now that, the long sleek creature turned and twisted, approaching dangerously near the little knoll against which the hare was pressed so close as to look scarcely more than half his size. At last, having dried her coat, she sought a clump of osmunda some five lengths from the hare, coiled herself up, and fell asleep.
Now again there was an opportunity for the hare to steal away: surely he would take advantage of it. But no; rather than run the risk of awakening the otter and being pursued, he decided to wait till twilight should call his enemy away and leave the way clear for him to effect his escape. So he sat watching the flank of the otter rise and fall, his gaze never shifting, even when a cormorant rose close to the island and looked at him with its green eyes before resuming its fishing.
Meanwhile the otter lay unconscious of the presence of the bird; but towards sundown the scream of a gull, and again soon after, the croak of a raven caused her suddenly to stir and scan the moor in order to satisfy herself that there was no cause for alarm. A glance telling her that all was well, she immediately lowered her head and dropped off again. The raven that had alighted close to the pool remained till near roosting time, and then flew away in the direction of the cliffs.
The bird was still in sight when an altogether unlooked-for intruder arrived. An old man with a dog at his heels came on the moor driving two donkeys to fetch turf; whilst he was loading the panniers from one of the stacks the terrier trotted to the pool to drink. There he hit the scent left by the otter at dawn. In an instant he was all excitement; being as intelligent as he was keen-nosed, he concluded that the otter must be lying on the island, and his one thought was to get at it. He entered the water and struck out as fast as he could swim. The otter, startled out of her sleep by a shout from the man, was at once on the alert, and when the dog drew near she slipped into the water; but the dog had seen her. Then a strange thing happened; the cormorant chancing to rise in the line of pursuit, the terrier took up the chase of the bird as if ignorant of the change of quarry. His master of course recalled him; he swam to shore; and immediately he landed, the otter, who was watching from the reeds, returned to the island, reaching it in one long dive. She landed at the creek as before, and crouching through the fern stole towards her lair.
She had taken but a step or two when she suddenly stopped, and turning her mask examined the ground to her left. She had caught the scent of the hare; she knew he was close by, and she was doing her utmost to descry him. She looked here, she looked there, and at last, as she was about to advance, she made him out. On the instant she sank slowly to the ground; she feared that quick movement on her part would put the prey to flight before she was free to pursue, for her shy nature restrained her from exposing herself to view of man and dog. So there she stayed, eyeing the timid prey which met her gaze with a frightened stare. Presently the man left with his donkeys. Now surely the otter would try and secure the prize. But no, she was in no hurry; the sun would soon be down, then she would secure him.
In that tense interval the hare again rehearsed, as he had done half a score times since he had been face to face with his enemy, the steps of his escape. The first leap he reckoned would land him on the far side of the islet, the next on the rock, a third in the water, on recollection of the depth of which he endured the agonies of a nightmare as in imagination he saw the ferocious brute overtaking him while he floundered; but the feeling passed, leaving him as undaunted as ever and determined to make a supreme effort to escape.
By this the sun approached the level of the moor; the gulls had left; the cormorant, which had stood and dried its wings on the rock, flew low over the lurid surface of the pool, looking black as the raven against the crimson disc: the actors in the impending tragedy were left absolutely alone. Soon, less than half the great orb remained above the horizon; in a few minutes, which seemed as many hours to the hare, it had sunk to the merest arc; then it disappeared.
This was the instant that the hare awaited; the otter knew it, and the hare saw that she knew it; the sudden gathering of her limbs proclaimed it. With a tremendous bound he was off, with the otter in hot pursuit. It was a close chase; for though the hare gained the rock a good ten feet ahead of the otter and increased his lead to fully fifteen at his next spring, the water, as he had foreseen, impeded his further progress so much that he seemed to be at the mercy of his swiftly advancing enemy. What floundering, what splashing by the hare! What ploughing of the water by the otter in her desperate haste! Foot by foot she gained till at last her nose all but touched his hind legs. It looked as if she must seize him; so she would have done but for a timely rock which gave the hare the foothold he needed. The spring he made from it was one of the longest of his life; it landed him well on to the shallows; two more leaps and he was on the heather, over which he sped like the wind. How good the herbage felt under his feet! Further pursuit was vain; yet the otter, maddened at the loss of the prey she had accounted hers, held on at her best speed to the corner of the pool before checking her steps to watch the hare. He stood awhile and returned her gaze. Then he shook his coat and resumed his way over the darkening moor.
BACK ON CARN BREA
On leaving the moor the hare headed as if to return to Tregonebris, but in the dip below the stone-circle he suddenly changed his course and made straight for Brea. He had that instant formed the resolve to forage on the farm there and to harbour afterwards on his native hill. His panic pace, even more the staring eyes turned ever behind him, bespoke his nervous condition; but the farther he went the more composed he grew, and he was almost his normal self by the time he reached his destination.
There he roamed in search of food from pasture to pasture, wondering to see the change that had come over them since his early leveret days. Then the corn and the grass rose high above his head; he recalled how he had stood on his hind legs and looked over the array of ears; now there was not herbage enough to cover his pads. But despite the nakedness of the enclosures he experienced no sense of strangeness: the bushes on the hedges, the gates, the gaps and the linhay in the field beyond the old mine-heaps were the same as ever. He remembered them all, even the hole in the wall of the three-cornered enclosure; and through this, in the small hours, he squeezed his way to the turnip-field that runs like a narrow promontory into the waste. The sight of the turnips gladdened his eyes, for he had gleaned little on the closely browsed grass-land and was very hungry.
He at once pared the rind from one of the roots and began feasting on the succulent pulp. The stars shone bright, the fleecy clouds moved slowly, and the light wind scarcely breathed a sigh on the open waste where some curlews were whistling. The hare took no notice of their calls, but at the startled cry of a plover he at once sprang to the top of the wall, to learn, if he could, what had disturbed it. He scanned the face of the moor carefully without seeing any sign of a marauder, so at length returned to the half-eaten root and consumed it without further interruption.
The night was nearly gone before he withdrew, not following the way he had come, but leaping the wall and crossing the corner of the moor to the partly-upturned field. Here a plough in the furrow caught his eye and caused him to swerve from his path. Yet suspicious as he was of the plough he passed close to a bucket of mushrooms in the Five Acres, where he stood on a mound to gaze at the silent homestead and at Carn Brea before he set off for the hill. Then, as though the fading stars warned him of the need to hurry, he went at so brisk a pace that the noise of his pads on the bridle-track sounded quite distinct in the stillness of the dawn. At the foot of the long slope he quickly laid his maze; he threaded his way up and up past the Pilgrim’s Spring almost to the chantry, and chose a seat amongst the bracken within a few yards of the spot where he was born.
Five months had passed since he sat there, but he felt quite at home. As the light grew, the outlook commanded a well-remembered prospect, albeit the vegetation had greatly changed. His young eyes had beheld it fresh and green; now all was sere and tinted with the colours of decay. Yet the herbage thus blended so wondrously with the russet of his coat that he was not to be distinguished from his surroundings. He seemed a part of the rich mantle which draped the giant shoulders of the hill down to the very verge of the farm, where all was grey and sombre save the bright gold of the sycamore by the dairy window.
Presently the farmer crossed the yard to the shed for the oxen and drove them along the lane to the half-ploughed field, followed by the watchful gulls, which came flying in from the cliffs in such numbers that the long furrow in the wake of the plough was soon white with their forms.
The hare was an interested spectator of all this movement; indeed everything that moved claimed his notice; not a leaf of the sycamore fell but it caught his eye. Stirred by association, old memories, too, came flocking back; once more he was a tiny leveret listening to the whispered monition of his mother, “Sit still, dears, till I come back”; once more he was sitting beside his little sister hearkening to the voices of the night that always died away before the footfall of their mother broke the silence of the dawn and set their hearts aflutter with delight. Then, though he strove to repress all sinister recollections, he rehearsed the visit of the vixen; a glint of the pool on the distant moor called up the horrors of the previous day.
But the most trifling incident diverted his attention; soon he was occupied in watching a red admiral which had settled on a bramble leaf and kept opening and shutting its gorgeous wings, as if for his distraction.
So hour after hour passed in the warm light that bathed the hill and touched with a velvety softness even the old chantry and the granite boulders, till at length the sun sank behind the sea, leaving plain and upland to the mystery of night and the glories of the full moon.
That day was the harbinger of a lovely St Martin’s summer, during which the hare greatly enjoyed sitting on the hill and wandering over the lowland. It would have been a perfect time but for the abundance of the gossamers; they floated from every blade and spray and clung to his legs and chest, even to his face, causing him much annoyance. He was very nice as to his person; he could not rest unless his coat was free of everything that adhered to it, and it was a tedious business getting rid of the gossamer threads; indeed, it took him so long that he had to return earlier than usual so as to finish the grooming before daybreak, lest the movement of his pads and tongue, which served as brushes and sponge, should betray him to his enemies.
The welcome after-summer lasted a full fortnight, and was abruptly terminated by sea-fogs, that came rolling in from the Atlantic and enveloped the land as with a dense pall. Much as the hare had disliked the gossamer webs he disliked the fog still more, not only because it shut out the view and the light of the sun and the moon, but—what was much more serious—because it afforded cover to the foxes, who moved about as fearlessly by day as by night.
These prowlers became a positive trouble; scarcely a day passed but at least one went by; amongst them a big grey fox, whom he had never seen before, but of whom he was to see more than he liked in the terrible winter that followed. Yet close as these marauders approached the seats, they never discovered the hare.
In fact, the time of chief danger was the night. He was abroad then, but it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, so that once he almost ran into the farm cat in the mushroom field; two nights later he brushed close past a badger that was stretching itself against the upright of a cromlech. However, no harm ensued; for the hare leapt aside and was lost to sight in the fog as effectually as if he had been covered with a mass of cotton wool.
He got glimpses of other animals in his wanderings, though so vaguely that he failed to identify them. Moreover in the strange conditions the hare himself sometimes proved a terror to creatures he stumbled on, causing a hedgehog to curl up in affright on the Five Acres, and scaring a heron out of its senses on the moor beyond. The fog was as impervious to scent as to sight, and he was on his victims before they heard him, for the fog deadened all sound, of footfall, of bird cry, even of the great foghorn on the Longships, which sounded like a penny trumpet.
But of all the ills attendant on those ceaseless mists, the one which caused the hare most discomfort was the moisture that collected on the herbage and dripped on his back as he sat in the form. Two days he endured the misery; then he left the comfortable seat for the shelter of the fallen masonry of the chantry, and sat cheek by jowl with an enormous toad who resented his company till he got to understand and like him.
On the fourth day, however, that the hare saw the great bank of fog come moving landwards from the sea, to the joy of man and beast an easterly wind set in which banished the fog and dried the sodden herbage, rendering the form habitable again. It was a keen, biting wind, but the hare felt no inconvenience. One sign of the cold snap was the red shawl in which the farmer’s wife rode to market; another, quite as unmistakable, was the advent of the woodcock, whom the hare found sitting near the seat two days later. The stranger was unlike any bird he had seen; it had rich brown plumage beautifully pencilled, a very long bill, and soft black eyes which looked fearlessly into his. The hare, unobservant though he usually was of such matters, could not help seeing that it was very jaded and weary; and weary it might well be, for it had but just accomplished its long flight from Heligoland.
Two days before it had harboured in its native forest by the Baltic, awaiting the fall of night to begin its journey to the unfrozen West. When the moon showed above the ghostly steppe, the bird had risen over the snow-laden pine-tops and, mounting to a great height in company with a score others, set out for the hospitable land beyond the seas. The wind was favourable; bight, lagoon, and island marked the way, till the glimmer given out by a lighthouse—a glimmer that grew brighter and brighter—told that their mid-journey resting-place had been reached. They hid till night; then they rose again and resumed their flight beneath the starry vault.
No sound of earth reached the high region where they moved; their own faint wing-beats alone broke the silence through which hour after hour the wedge-shaped line pressed on till the vast silvery ocean that had lain outspread beneath them gave place to a sombre plain relieved only by the glow-worm light emitted by town and city far below.
Soon as remembered haunts were reached the little flock began to break up: now one, now two, and after a long interval, four birds forsook the line; others followed, so that when a second ocean showed on either side the narrowing land, only three remained. But the little remnant still sped on, nearer and nearer to their destination at the end of the promontory. Two dropped into Golden Valley, and the remaining woodcock reached Carn Brea alone. Little wonder, then, that he was very tired; yet so soon did he recover from his fatigue that when dusk fell he rose without an effort, and, skimming the slope, passed over Brea Farm and the now empty turnip-field to the boggy feeding-ground beyond.
Daybreak found hare and woodcock back in their places on the hill; and for three days they kept company there, or rather till the afternoon of the third day, when the wind veered back to the old quarter, beating with such violence on the face of Carn Brea that the hare could not endure it, and stole to sheltered quarters on the southern flank of the hill. There, with his back to a furze-bush, he sat watching the withered grasses of the foothills swept by the hurricane and the low wrack driven past close overhead. The wind fell at sundown, but rose again later and blew with such vehemence that the hare, who was foraging at Boscawen-Un, could scarcely make headway against it. Once he was actually brought to a standstill, and when crossing Brahan Moor on his way back it was all he could do to keep his feet. By the time he got to the form he was so wearied out by the incessant buffeting that whilst listening to the shriek and sob of the wind he fell asleep, and—a thing he rarely did—dreamt.
In his dream he saw as if with his eyes, so vivid was the presentment, a wood devastated by storm; at its foot—for the trees covered a long declivity—a curving strand and a raging sea in which living things struggled to reach the shore. Night changed suddenly to day: as suddenly the scene changed from falling trees and breaking waves to wind-swept foothills, up which, nose to ground, a brindled lurcher ran with incredible swiftness—and the foothills were the foothills below him, the lurcher was the farm dog from Boscawen-Un; the trail it followed was his own trail. His wide-open eyes beheld every twist and turn of the dog’s advance without suggesting danger, till the enemy was almost within springing distance; then consciousness returned, and at a bound the affrighted creature cleared the bush and fled up the hill. He soon outdistanced his pursuer, fleet-footed though she was, reached the crest, swerved and ran with the gale at his back till within sight of Caer Bran. After coming so far he wished to satisfy himself that the dog still pursued. The wind lashed his face and beat down his ears; it threatened to blow him off the wall he stood on; but he held his ground and looked along his trail.
So had he often stood when followed by foxes, but never once did he get a glimpse of them: one and all recognised the uselessness of trying to overtake him, and relinquished the chase. He was now to learn that a dog will persist though success seems hopeless, for soon he saw the lurcher coming on at a pace that filled him with consternation. At once he became concerned for his safety, but not an instant was he at a loss where to go.
A naked lane ran down the long slope to Boswarthen Farm, and the hare struck into it in the hope that the gravelly track, holding little or no scent, would render further pursuit difficult if not impossible. The lane, which winds considerably, ends at a gate; under this he passed to the fields, skirted the homestead, and finally reached Johanna’s Garden, where, after confusing the trail, he lay down in a furrow between two ridges of the upturned ground.
He had hopes of having defeated or disheartened his pursuer, yet it was in a fever of anxiety that he watched the gate under which he himself had crept.
His suspense was short, for soon to his horror a fox-like snout and long red tongue showed beneath the lowest bar. The next instant the lissom beast forced her way beneath it to the field. She at once picked up the line and followed it to the far corner near the old seat where the hare had leapt on the wall and walked along the rude coping-stones before leaping back and squatting near the medlar. Carefully and not without difficulty the lurcher followed the scent to the last of the stones, naturally thought that the hare had gone on, and dropped to the oat stubble, but finding no trace of scent, recognised her mistake. Then back she leapt to the wall, with wondrous ease considering its height; and though she could hardly keep her feet for the gale, she stood there all excitement, scrutinising the ploughed ground with eager eyes. She searched every furrow without descrying the hare; the leaves that whirled about him baffled her.
Though she failed to find him, she was so convinced he was there that she sprang to the ground and began questing, beginning at the lower end and casting to and fro across the wind in the most leisurely fashion, as if she knew there was no occasion for hurry. She had drawn about a third of the field when the hare, seeing discovery was certain, slipped from his hiding-place and, crouching very low, stole towards the wall. He hoped to get away unobserved, but his hope was vain.
Just as he reached the ditch the lurcher espied him, and with a single whine started in pursuit. Her pace down the stubble was tremendous; she was not more than ten yards behind the hare at the badgers’ sett in the hollow below. But on the opposing rise she lost ground. By the time she came to the big pasture where she had picked up the line at dawn, the quarry was out of sight. She was again running by scent.
Though the hare had won and maintained a lead of nearly a furlong, he was beginning to feel the strain of the chase, and anxiously consulted with himself about his safety. Two voices made themselves heard: the homing instinct kept urging him to return to the hills; the voice of self-preservation with even greater insistence whispered, “Seek the moor, there alone safety lies”; so towards Hal Kimbra moor he held on and on, till at last, from a bit of rising ground, he saw the bleak waste stretching away before him. The fear of being sighted and coursed on the level surface made him shrink from crossing it: his indecision, however, was only momentary; on looking back and seeing no sign of his enemy, he determined to commit himself, though not before foiling his trail.
Between him and the lip of the moor lay a tract of marshy ground dotted with rushes and coarse grasses. Here, with a view to checking his pursuer, he leapt from tuft to hummock and from hummock to tuft until he had confused his line. Then he continued on his way, heading for an outlying turf-stack which stood between him and the pool. In the teeth of the hurricane he made slow progress, but he reached it at length, and glad of the shelter it afforded he sat down on the lee side, facing the ground he had just traversed. Soon he saw the lurcher coming, and watched her anxiously as she stood on the brow of the rising ground scanning the moor. The moment she set foot on the marshy ground, where she was lost to view, he quitted his shelter and made for the pool. Many a time he had covered the intervening ground in a minute or two; but the wind seemed bent on arresting his progress; in his exhausted state all he could do battling against it was to make headway. At length he gained the pool, and there his heart fell, for between him and his goal, the islet, lay a stretch of raging water. He had not reckoned on that.
He was a miserable creature as he sat on the shore, looking now towards the islet, now back over the moor. He could see no hope; death stared him in the face in both directions; yet the instant he saw the lurcher coming he decided to entrust himself to the pool. Strangely enough, he did not wade in, but galloped a score yards along the strand and then cast himself into the hissing water, striking the spray from the surface. When he rose he struck out for his goal. He was hardly visible even on the crests of the waves; he was completely lost to sight when they broke over him; but he drew nearer and nearer to the islet, and after a terrible struggle at last landed at the otters’ creek.
Great as was the hare’s distress, the love of life was greater. Even in his extremity he was careful not to betray himself by any sudden movement to his pursuer, now at the side of the pool. For fear of detection, he stole from the water at a snail’s pace and, so slowly that no eye on the shore would have been aware of any movement, sank down on the sodden fern. There he lay hour after hour whilst his persistent enemy circled the pool and ransacked the waste in search of him.
It seemed as if she could not wrench herself away. Once, indeed, she withdrew; but when near the turf-stack she suddenly turned and came back, though the gale raged more furiously than ever. On reaching the pool, she entered the water and stood staring at the islet. The hare observed her with feverish anxiety; he knew that his fate hung by a thread, and scarcely breathed. To the dog the spray-washed rock gave no sign of life whatever, yet it was long before she abandoned this last hope and finally withdrew. A more crestfallen creature than she looked it would be difficult to picture; her gait had lost all its briskness, her limbs relaxed, her ears drooped. Her disappointment overwhelmed her; for she had counted the quarry hers the moment she sighted it, and on the moor had felt absolutely certain of it.
The hare watched the retreating form of his enemy till it became a speck and finally disappeared from view. Then he rose, looked round to see that no other enemy was in sight, shook his coat, rolled where the otter had rolled, ensconced himself in the most sheltered spot his inhospitable refuge afforded, and there remained till night. It was pitch dark when he withdrew by way of the rocks he knew so well.
FROM PILLAR TO POST
With its overcast sky and sombre landscape November opened true to its character of the black month. The clouds seemed to have conspired to shut out the sun; only at rare intervals did the patient orb find a rift, but when it did its rays lit up with intense vividness the spot they fell on: Brea farmhouse, a bit of the moor beyond, Sennen Church tower, a patch of ocean, the welter of surf about the Wolf. To all of these, as the shafts of light illuminated them, the eyes of the hare were irresistibly drawn. A week of gloom and gleam was succeeded by a day of startling clearness, with lowland pencilled out distinctly as on a map, a day when the sea came so near that far-off sails and even the unobtrusive isles of Scilly made their presence felt. This phenomenon boded rain, and one morning soon after dawn it fell, gently at first, violently on succeeding days, with a gradual, decided shifting of the wind from the north-west to the north-east, whence at nightfall it blew with wintry coldness.
Had it been a dry wind the hare would have enjoyed its keenness, but it brought showers of sleet which wetted him through and through, making his days miserable. At night also these showers greatly inconvenienced him, inasmuch as he had to be continually shaking himself or galloping to and fro on the moorland tracks to keep his coat dry when he should have been at his pasture. He disliked the sleet more than the rain, and the hail more than the sleet, for the stones beat in his face and eyes; worse still, they lashed his ears and made them burn as he sat in the form, when his body shivered with cold from the dampness of the underfur.
During this inclement time he continued to use the seat on Chapel Carn Brea, the retreat under the drooping fronds drawing him as did no other. True, he could have found shelter beneath the chantry, but since lying there he had seen Grey Fox brush close by the opening which was the only way out; from that moment he abandoned all idea of repairing thither again, for fear of being cornered. He did give a thought to the cave in Brahan Croft, but could not bring himself to sit there; to the hut by the fowling-pool and to the linhay on Brea Farm, which presented themselves to his mind, he had still greater objection; whilst the rabbits’ holes which proffered their shelter were altogether beneath his dignity, and indeed against his nature, to which no other roof but the sky was acceptable.
At last he had to abandon Chapel Carn Brea, on account of the water which lodged in the form and rendered it untenantable.
It was in pouring rain that the hare ransacked the country in search of new quarters, which he at last found in a plantation on the western slope of Sancreed Beacon. On reaching it, he remained awhile on the outskirts hesitating to commit himself to such a strange place, for so the wood with its array of trees seemed to him after the naked hills and barren moorland he was alone used to. Presently, with tremulous steps, he moved in and looked about him for a suitable seat. In selecting it he showed that he had his wits about him, for the spot he chose was as free from the drippings of the pines as any within his ken. After scratching a slight hollow amongst the fallen needles, he sat with his face to the hill taking in his surroundings. No undergrowth impeded his view, nothing save the stems and a tree or two blown down by the gale.
He soon felt at home, for the spirit of the place soothed him and banished the sense of strangeness. At first the fall of a pine-cone would startle him; by and by he took no more notice of it than he had of the popping of the furze-pods in the heat of August. He loved to listen to the soughing of the wind in the lofty tops, where the goldcrests were to be seen flitting to and fro. He believed them to be his only neighbours, till one night, just as he had risen, an owl came to the mouth of the hole in the next tree and called. The cry caused him to start, but at sight of the bird he regained his composure and finished stretching himself; in future if he happened to be by when the owl hooted, he did not even trouble to look up. One day was monotonously like another, so much so that the visit of a woodpecker, or the arrival of a wood-pigeon, was quite an event. Small wonder then that the hare, with his hermit-like tastes, felt happy in this peaceful solitude, and soon abandoned all thought of the intruders his imagination had conjured up.
Yet, before many more dawns had broken, the wood was visited by a pine-marten, a dangerous marauder, who resembled the hare in this respect that she too was the sole survivor of her kind. She came early; the stars had hardly begun to pale when, with scarcely a rustle to announce her coming, the hare saw her making as straight towards him as the trees permitted. Indeed, she threatened to overrun him, but stopped a dozen yards away near a patch of gaudy orange-red fungus, and sat scratching an ear till a shout from the glebe farm suddenly arrested her attention. At the sound she stood erect and listened with ears acock. She was an elegant creature with a bushy tail, resembling, save for her dark-brown colouring, a dwarf fox; and, like reynard himself, the moment she was satisfied that the shout, twice repeated, was not the hue and cry that had pursued her again and again, she relaxed her tense attitude and fell to play. She ran with bewitching grace and activity along the trunk and branches of a fallen tree, rested at the end of the longest branch, and, after brushing a feather from her muzzle, renewed her frolics, as if for the hare’s entertainment. Then back she jumped to the ground, sprang to the nearest bole, climbed up and up, was plainly visible at the dome against the now reddening sky, and finally lay at full length on a horizontal branch scanning the scene below. Her quick eyes were everywhere—now on the jackdaws astir on the church tower, now on a labourer faring to work, now, as the light grew, on the vessels wind-bound under St Michael’s Mount, and presently on the sun when its bright face showed above the Lizard and laid a golden pathway across the waters of the bay. Soon the rays fired the pine-tops, and turned to brightest crimson the tongue of the marten as she licked her glossy forelegs and buff-coloured breast. When she had finished grooming herself she lay awhile with her head between her paws, blinking and enjoying the genial warmth that dried her coat, and at last sought the deserted hawk’s nest in the fork, where she had often curled up during her forays.
Her fastness was in the Land’s End cliffs. Never was castle wall so stately or so majestic as the mural face of the precipice that furnished her a refuge some thirty feet above the Atlantic, whose roar was her lullaby.
There she slept away most of the hours between grey dawn and night. Awakened either by the scream of homing seafowl or by the level rays penetrating her lair, she watched through the narrow portal of her retreat the sun set, the glow die out of the west, and darkness spread over the face of the waters, before sallying forth to execute the raid she had planned. She was the wiliest of marauders, pilfering here to-night, elsewhere to-morrow, and, save that she avoided Boscawen-Un—the lurcher’s home—ranging in all directions. She took toll of seafowl on the dizzy ledge, she robbed the farmers’ henroosts and beehives, she stripped the squire’s strawberry beds and plundered the crabber’s bait, hang it where he might. Few places were inaccessible to her; she was as much at home on the crags of the Kites’ Carn as on the loftiest pine of Sancreed Beacon.
It was a wonder that those quick eyes of hers had not descried the hare, but probably that was owing to the shouts which distracted her attention just as her gaze was being directed towards the spot where he sat motionless. As for the hare his eyes never left the strange creature. Her character he had read at sight. He read it in the feather on the muzzle, the blood-stain on the whiskers, and above all in the apprehension she showed on hearing the shout. To his view that was an infallible sign of a felon. He was glad when she ascended the tree and the length of the long stem separated them, for he believed that the marten had seen him and might have pounced on him at any moment. As he was far from being assured that she would not attempt to get at him before the day was out, he made a point of keeping awake and on the look-out for sign of movement in the eyrie between him and the blue vault.
Higher and higher rose the sun, flooding the hill with light, warming the resinous trees and filling the wood with their fragrance. But for the cold nip in the air it might almost have been a summer’s day. One less suggestive of evil happening could not be; yet the first act of a tragedy of which the wood was to be the theatre was being enacted less than a furlong away, where two weasels were pressing a rabbit from gallery to gallery of its burrow. No hope for the defenceless thing lay there, still less in the wood across which it presently came loping with fateful laboured movement. A look of entreaty appeared in the rabbit’s starting eyes when it saw the hare, but the doomed creature did not stop. On, on it struggled, followed still by the murderers, the two puny, lithe, fiendish-looking weasels.
The sight of these bloodthirsty miscreants stirred the hare to fury; scarcely had they passed when he rose and stamped with his hind feet: surely not to warn his own kind, it could not be that; it was his protest, his poor, ineffectual protest, against the outrage.
Intent on their quarry, the weasels gave no heed, but the owl looked out of its hole to learn what ailed its exemplary neighbour, and the marten peered over the edge of the nest to ascertain, if possible, the cause of the disturbance. She saw nothing of rabbit or weasels, for the trees hid them from sight, but she had an uninterrupted view of the hare, and at once was all excitement at the prospect of an unexpected feast. Though she had tasted hare once and only once, the memory of the delicious flavour remained, and she had often longed to taste it again. So eager was she that she could not take her eyes from off this unlooked-for prize; even the death-squeal of the rabbit which presently rent the air did not distract her gaze. After a while she lay down again, but not to sleep. She spent the rest of the day planning the capture of the hare, interrupting her deliberations only to rise every now and then to assure herself that the quarry was still below.
Far different had been the effect of that despairing cry on the hare. It left him disquieted and unnerved, with but one desire, to get away at the earliest possible moment from the wood and the murderer up above whom he had surprised in the act of looking down at him. Short as the day was, he thought that it would never end; and the moment the sun dipped below the plain he stole away noiselessly as a ghost, ascended the opposite hill, made along the high ridge, passed the earthworks, crossed the old camp on Bartinney and came to the chantry, where he stood awhile with his face towards the sunset. He seemed to be watching the expiring effort of day, but he was really considering where he should forage, above all where he should sit, on the morrow. He had no wish to sit on the hill; he wanted to get farther away from the wood than that; farther from its horrid association with blood. He thought of the island; he thought of a place that had once taken his fancy on the cliffs; he thought of Sennen Dunes, and in the end decided to seek a form there. The moment he had made up his mind he glanced along his trail, and, descending the hill, set out across the lowland.
That back look told that he had the pine-marten in mind; and well he might, for she was no mean enemy. She had watched the hare leave the wood, but so great was her dread of man that she feared to follow till the dusk deepened. As soon as she dared, however, she came down from the tree and took to the trail, following it up the long slope and along the heights past the Liddens to the chantry, where, with her breath coming quickly, she stood eagerly scrutinising the hillside and the flooded lowland all agleam in the moonlight. Her coat was wet from the heavy dew, but she was too preoccupied to shake it; all her senses were in her eyes searching in vain for the quarry now far away in the midst of that water-logged moor. When she saw no sign, her heart sank; she was at a loss to know what to do. She was very loath to abandon the quest, but the dread of a blank night if she persisted weighed with her, so she presently forsook the trail on which she had stood and disappeared into the night.
Meanwhile the hare, who had reached the moorland farmstead he had made for, passed from one small enclosure to another, picking what little herbage he could find. With the help of the furze-shoots he managed to get his fill before leaving to roam for hours over the snipe-haunted waste. Hither and thither he journeyed, seemingly without any other object than to pass the hours away, going farther and farther from his goal, to which, however, he turned at the first crow of the crofter’s cock, so that the somewhat stormy dawn found him ensconced in a shallow pit on the brink of the dunes. He had chosen wisely; the sand was dry, and the thick marram-grass screened him from the keen wind which tore the spindrift from the rollers that tripped and foundered on the strand.
Yet, comfortable though he was, his mind was ill at ease; he was haunted by the tragedy of the pinewood. He did all he could to deaden memory of the scream, but the cries of the gulls kept it alive till a peregrine shot into view and drove them to the cliffs: then it faded and left him at peace. Even now he dreaded falling asleep, for fear of being visited by nightmare; he fought against his drowsiness, but in vain; he had dropped off before the gulls returned. Neither marten nor weasel harassed his peaceful slumbers, rendered delectable by a vision of the strand up and down which he was speeding like the wind, not alone, but in company with mother and sister. It was a very vivid dream; he felt the breeze in his face, the shells under his feet; his happiness was complete. He was sorry to awake, but the presence of the beach cheered his disappointment as he looked forward to a good gallop on the smooth sand left exposed by the ebb. At earliest nightfall he left the form and in part realised his dream, tearing up and down the level foreshore and spurning the sand as he went. It looked as though he would never tire, his sinews seemed to be of steel; but at length he withdrew and betook himself to the feeding-ground.
Dawn after dawn he returned to the dunes. Dusk after dusk he enjoyed his gallop, till one night he discovered the cat and two kittens crouching beside the path he always left by. Then, rather than run the risk of capture, he decided to forsake the delightful spot and return to the hill. True to his resolve, he was at Carn Brea on the morrow, and to his joy found the seat much drier than he expected. Better, however, had he gone anywhere else, for as things chanced he was to be the harassed spectator of a terrible affray between his two most dreaded enemies, the final scene in the drama that began to unfold itself soon after he was ensconced.
The dawn was clear despite the grey sky, with only a belt of mist here and there on the lowland to interrupt his watch for the night-prowlers returning to their lair. The scanning of the moor was his constant practice, because of the haunting dread he had of being stumbled on by homing fox or fitchet; in fact, he never settled down with a feeling of real security until day had fully declared itself and driven all his persecutors to their retreats. Not a living thing showed at first; presently however his gaze was arrested by some animal that issued wraith-like from a patch of mist, and after crossing a wide strip of moor entered the croft bordering the “linhay” field. There he could see it as it threaded the stunted furze, though not plainly enough to make quite sure that it was a fox as he suspected. All doubt was removed when the creature, after being hidden by intervening bank and overgrown ditch, crossed the boundary wall and began stealing up the hill straight for the form. It was Grey Fox himself. It looked now as if the hare’s forebodings were at last to be verified, but it was not so, for the brute entered the clump of tall furze midway up the slope and remained there.
The hare concluded that the fox had kennelled; he even judged him to be already asleep, so weary and exhausted did he look. But Grey Fox never thought of curling himself up; he was far too anxious for that; he was eagerly surveying the plain for sight of the enemy who had been pursuing him from farm to farm and moor to moor since midnight. He looked long without seeing aught, but he dared not compose himself to sleep. Instead he withdrew to the little grassy space behind the furze, where he kept walking up and down under the eyes of the hare, like a wild beast in a cage. “Strange behaviour this,” thought the hare. “There’s something very wrong with Grey Fox this morning. See how his flanks heave! what a mist his breath makes!” Presently the gaunt creature ceased pacing and lay down at full length, but after a few seconds he got up again and went back to the furze.
There he again watches the plain, where a speck scarcely discernible grows larger and larger, and tells him that the lurcher has recovered the trail she had temporarily lost, the trail he himself had left, and that the lifelong feud is on the point of settlement, for Grey Fox has made up his mind to have it out with his enemy. By this time the hare too has seen the dog, and whilst following her progress in the furze, wonders that the fox does not retreat whilst there is time. So excited does he become that he fain would warn the fox, but dares not; though more than once he is on the point of stamping his feet, he refrains. Meanwhile, the lurcher shows on the boundary wall, on which she stands and surveys the face of the hill. Her breath too comes quick, like jets of steam. She is wondering, as she gets no glimpse of the game, whether it is worth her while to go any farther, for twice before during the hare’s absence from the hill she has hunted Grey Fox half the night, only to drive him to ground on the north side of Bartinney, where at this moment she thinks he is probably curled up in his inmost den, far beyond her reach. But such is her keenness that she cannot resist the burning, alluring trail, and leaping from the wall, she makes her way up the hill and enters the furze, where Grey Fox awaits her.
Without growl or snarl the fight begins. Except the violent shaking of the bushes, there is no outward indication of the terrible struggle that goes on. For a long while the hare, watching excitedly, sees nothing of the combatants save the white tip of the fox’s brush, but anon they come into the open, where not a spray shuts out the view. They seem equally matched, because though Grey Fox leaps, now this way, now that, as if yielding to the lurcher’s determined onslaught, he is not giving way: it is but his method of preventing the enemy from fastening on his throat. The quickness of his movements is wonderful, nor does he forget to use his jaws. See how he snaps! The strange noise is the clashing of his teeth when they fail to get home. The struggle is too furious to last: before the lapse of half an hour the life-long enemies lie exhausted on the ground, face to face with each other, their laboured breathing audible to the hare.
The fox when he recovers has no more wish to renew the fight than he had to begin it, but the lurcher’s one thought is to destroy the hateful wild thing before her, or die in the attempt. Again they fight; only for a short while now; limb and wind are unequal to further effort; their exhaustion is complete. At last the lurcher recognises that to kill the fox is a task beyond her powers. After a time she staggers to her feet and looks into the eyes of Grey Fox, who has also risen. The meaning of the looks they exchange no pen can tell, unless it is that the curled lips and bare teeth bespeak undying hate. Then the lurcher withdraws, leaving the fox to himself. Reynard’s ears are pricked, he is listening to the retreating footfall, and when the sound dies away he drags himself into the bushes.
There, screened from the light of the sun and the eyes of all observers, he sat and licked his wounds, interrupting the process only to rise and reconnoitre through an opening in one of the bushes. Though he saw nothing of the dog, the fears which urged him to withdraw became at last so insistent that he actually crept out in the broad sunshine and made for the earth. At once the hare was on the alert. His apprehension, however, subsided on seeing the crippled condition of his enemy, who was limping on three legs and had to pick his path. Soon the fox swerved to avoid a patch of broken ground within twenty yards of the form, and now he must pass close to its occupant. Discovery is certain, is imminent. The hare’s scent betrayed his near neighbourhood; his conspicuous eye betrayed his person. Did the fox, ravenous though he was, attempt the capture of the prey? Not at all, he knew the futility of trying in his disabled condition. The situation was one that called for the exhibition of his powers of make-believe. His aim was to convince the hare that he had not seen him, and to this all his cunning was directed; he checked the working of his nostrils excited by the scent, he averted his glance and looking straight before his long nose, which was badly scarred, held on as though ignorant of the hare’s presence, with the demeanour of a creature overwhelmed by misfortune. But the hare, every whit as crafty as he, had caught the glint of his eye, had observed the sudden arrest of the nostrils, had read his mind through and through, and before Grey Fox was abreast of the chantry had already made arrangements not to be at home when he called. An indescribable look came into the hare’s usually impassive eyes as he thought of the disappointment that awaited reynard, on whose mask as he crossed the ridge played an expression of satisfaction at the prize that would be his before the moon was very much older. The prospect of the delicious feast forced the memory of the fight into the background; for the rest of the way he ran on four legs, and it was of the hare, not of the lurcher, he was thinking when later he fell asleep curled up in the innermost recess of his earth.
Meanwhile the hare, who had resolved to abandon the hill for a while, sat thinking over the question of a new seat. His mind once more ran over all the old forms, but in the end rejected every one of them for the untried retreat in the cliffs to which he had been on the point of going before.
That night he spent on the moorland, where—a most unusual thing—he did not encounter a single trail or hear a disturbing cry, though after his gallops he always stopped to listen. He looked the picture of attention, standing on knoll or barrow with his great ears raised to their full height to catch the voices of the wild. A few seconds only did he bestow on this duty; he was in too high spirits to give more. His exuberant energies called for vigorous exercise, and when he was not spinning along or hearkening, he skipped and frisked about like a frolicsome kid. He travelled miles and miles, “going all ways,” so that midnight had long passed when he set foot on the strip of waste overlooking the sea. There he nibbled the herbage and ate all the blackberries he could find, shrivelled though they were. Rearing on his hind legs he stripped every bramble patch before crossing to the cliffs, where he dropped from terrace to terrace till he came to the spot at which he intended to sit.
But then a steep slope that still more took his fancy opened to his view. Though eager to reach it, he paused at the edge of the chasm that separated him from it; the turmoil of the water in the gully and the raging of the surge in the great cave to which the gully led disconcerted and checked him. After a moment’s hesitation, however, he leapt the opening, gained the slope, and sat on a cushion of thrift overlapping the lip of the under-cliff. Within the ambit of his wanderings he could not have selected a more secluded spot. Man had never set foot there; save for the old fisherman who rested on his oars to gaze at the primroses, sea-pinks, and foxgloves that in their season decked this hanging garden, no human eye had seen its beauty. Even now the solitary furze-bush amongst the naked rods of the foxgloves was gay with blossom, for the slope fronted south and caught the sun. Sitting there the hare observed every living thing within his ken. He watched the gannets that sent the spray flying as they dived into a school of pilchards; he was interested in the cormorants that stood on the rock below and dried their outstretched wings; even the little companies of mullet did not escape him, when they came scurrying past the point and coasted round the tiny bay; and by such sights his attention was drawn, his curiosity excited, as he enjoyed the warmth of the sun that brightened the austerity of the cliff and sparkled on the wintry sea.
December found the hare using this retreat. All went well with him till one day in leaping the chasm he landed a little short and nearly fell back into the sea, but by great good fortune his hind feet, striking blindly for support, found foothold on a ledge. That saved him. The mishap was the result of carelessness, and afterwards, being cautious as to the place from which he took off, he cleared the opening with several inches to spare.
But he was never free from fear. One morning he had returned very early whilst the stars were yet bright; the cluster above the headland sparkled like a diadem. Towards this the eyes of the hare were directed, when one of the constellation was suddenly shut out by some dark object which was at first unrecognisable; by and by it turned; it was the pine-marten. The creature went as suddenly as she came, but soon reappeared on a narrow shelf of the headland, where she stood looking down at a chough some twelve feet below. Rapid in decision, the marten dropped with the intention of seizing and disabling the bird before it could take wing. The chough, however, was too quick and flew off, so the marten fell on the rocks, and failing to get the grip for which she strove frantically, tumbled head over heels into the boiling sea forty feet below. The hare thought that he had seen the last of this nimble enemy. He was soon to be undeceived, for presently to his surprise her mask, then her whole body showed above the edge of the chasm where she sat examining the slope. She kept looking in the direction of the furze-bush as if she saw something of interest there, then suddenly turned, leapt the opening without an effort, and disappeared along the very ledge from which she had tried to drop on the back of the chough.
The visit of the marten greatly disquieted the hare. He believed that if she had discovered him he could hardly have got away. So the question, Should he abandon the retreat? confronted him. He was loath to leave, but in the end decided to forsake the spot, because he felt that even if the marten did not return, he would enjoy no peace through fear that she would. It was an unfortunate resolve; had he decided otherwise, he might have avoided the most harassing trials of his life.