THE GREAT WINTER
After leaving the form the hare kept loping to and fro on the strip of waste by the cliffs. No tempting bit of herbage detained him; he nibbled neither leaf nor spray; his movements were as aimless as they could be. He was in a quandary; he did not know where to turn because he did not know where he was going to sit, though it had occupied his thoughts since the withdrawal of the marten.
Of the many spots that occurred to him not one offered especial attractions like the hill, which kept presenting itself to his notice, without however winning him to it. And this is not to be wondered at, in view of the fear he had of being waylaid and gobbled up by Grey Fox if he ventured there. Nor was his fear groundless. Grey Fox had haunted the hill in the hope of securing what he esteemed the titbit of the wild. Day after day in the half light of the morning and in the dusk of the evening he crouched in one spot after another beside the path by which he thought the hare might leave or return, persisting in the quest until he had completely ringed the form with his ambuscades and satisfied himself that the hare was no longer using it.
At last he went to examine the seat: it was cold and scentless, and he realised what a fool’s business he had given his best energies to. Standing there he chided himself for throwing away so many precious hours, above all for being outwitted by a hare. Scathing was his self-reproach, yet brief, for Grey Fox wasted little time in vain regrets. He wanted to come to a settlement, and was concerned to know where the sly hussy of a grass-feeder had betaken herself. For a moment he stood with his bluish-green eyes fixed on vacancy, lost in thought, as if wondering where she could be, then stole down the slope, trailing his great brush as he went. He was abandoning the hill.
This was on the night that the hare narrowly escaped falling into the gully, so that after all puss might have safely returned instead of racking his poor brain over a new seat. In the end he found one on the moor, atop of a grassy mound which had once taken his fancy as he passed. From the slightly raised station he commanded a wide outlook across the waste, whose monotony the pool with its yellow reeds served in some measure to relieve. The moor, drear and barren though it was, furnished hospitality to a few migrant birds; a jack snipe fed within a dozen yards of the hare, a flock of golden plover was on the ground out of his ken beyond the pool. Later, eleven in all, they flew with musical whistlings over the reeds and across his front. Nor were these the only feathered visitors. Soon, as the weather grew colder, duck, widgeon, and teal visited the pool to feed, arriving at nightfall and leaving at dawn for the sea, where they rested through the day. Their line of flight was only a little wide of the mound, and the hare was always back in time to see the skeins go past. More than once too he caught sight of the dusky forms of otters stealing back to the cliffs; they were returning from a raid on the waterfowl.
But nothing is of long continuance in the wild. The visits of the duck were abruptly terminated by the freezing of the pool, and a phalarope, whom the lone water had attracted, was driven away at the same time.
The plover remained, the snipe foraged along a runnel fed by a warm spring, but the heath was rendered uninhabitable for the hare by the piercing wind, against which the withered grasses of the mound afforded no protection. He endured the discomfort for some days, then as it became unbearable he forsook the spot and returned, not without misgivings, to the hill. But Grey Fox was still present to his mind; he approached with the utmost caution, carefully shunned the old form, and sat at a spot midway between it and the chantry.
In this higher station, however, he found effectual shelter from the wind, though its whistling sounded menacingly close, especially when it rose, as towards night it often did, to a shriek.
In its shrillest notes the north-easter was almost articulate; it seemed to sound a warning of the bitter weather to come. For the cold was no mere snap like the previous visitation; it was, as the old tenant of Brea Farm foresaw in the red sunsets and dead set of the wind, the beginning of a season of unusual severity. The flocks of redwings and fieldfares which had sought the westernmost angle of the land found the exposed fields as hard frozen and inhospitable as those they had fled from. In the sheltered valleys alone, when the abundant crop of haws along the hedgerows had been consumed, were they able to pick up a living and find what was almost as necessary as food, a roosting-place out of the eye of the wind. The blackthorn brakes, every branch of the holly and the furze, any bush screened by ivy, were all occupied at night by thrushes, mistle-thrushes, blackbirds, linnets, and finches, whilst bevies of larks slept on the ground below.
Remarkable as was that December for the inrush of common birds, it was scarcely less so for the rarer visitants: a bittern harboured in the reed-bed of the pool, a gaggle of bernicle geese haunted Porthcurnow Cove, five wild swans sought a refuge in the waters of Whitesand Bay, whilst quite a number of Dartford warblers and firecrests found sanctuary in the snug brakes of Golden Valley. There was not a sheltered bottom or bay without its feathered guests. On the other hand, not a bird was to be found on the hills: Sancreed Beacon, Caer Bran, Bartinney, were deserted by every living thing save hibernating adder, slow-worm, and newt; the old toad and the hare were the sole tenants of Chapel Carn Brea.
Protected by his thick winter coat the hare was able to withstand the nipping frosts that blackened all but the hardiest and most unpalatable herbage, to which he was for the most part now driven for support. He fed on furze and lichens and no longer looked forward to the joys of pasturing time. Instead, his thoughts turned to the nights of plenty, to remembered feasts on tender corn and sweet trefoil, to banquets on fragrant thyme and juicy sow-thistles, to titbits like the pinks, above all to the musk, the tastiest morsel that his beats had furnished. He never wearied of dwelling on the appetising list; he would rehearse it again and again, and wonder whether the good things of the honeysuckle time would ever come again. He quite lost himself in these reveries; the hissing of the wind, even the ring of the horse’s hoofs that broke in on his musings as the farmer rode away to market, failed to disturb them.
He was trying to recall the flavour of dandelions as he dreamily watched man and horse cross the lowland which seemed to shrink and cower beneath the low-hanging sky. Clouds, grey and depressing, spread from horizon to horizon save in the south-west, where at close of day after day the red sun emblazoned the heaven, and for a brief while bathed ocean and promontory with its cheery rays. They were especially pleasing to the hare, coming as they did between the dull day and the dark night when he wandered far and wide after pasture. Yet widely as he roamed he never came across the packs of stoats which the host of birds had attracted, nor—a thing that excited his surprise—once encountered Grey Fox.
Nevertheless he often thought of him, wondering what had befallen him: whether he had met his death from the lurcher or been expelled from the earth by the badgers and betaken himself elsewhere. Neither supposition was right. Like the stoat-packs, Grey Fox harboured in the valleys, attracted by the easily captured prey and making the most of his opportunity. It was well for him that he did. In the middle of December snow fell, shutting off food from the birds and causing all but the hardiest to perish of hunger.
It would seem that the wind had delayed the fall, for no sooner did it die away than the flakes began to descend, lightly at first, then close enough to hide all but the nearest objects, so that when at last they ceased, the land was covered to a depth of several inches. Spray and frond did not submit more passively to the fall than did the hare; in the end he was as completely hidden as a sheep in a drift. And like the sheep he had not to bear the weight of his covering, for the heat of his body thawed the snow round it, with the result that, when it froze again, a shell of ice was formed, thin indeed, yet able to sustain its load. For a while the hare was in complete darkness, but his breath presently melted the snow in front of his nostrils, forming a peep-hole through which he looked out on a world he could no longer recognise. His very threshold seemed strange; only the side of the near boulder with its streaks of yellow and grey lichens presented a familiar face.
The heavy fall had cleared the sky, whence a vast array of stars looked down on a world as hushed as the depths they lighted. A wondrous silence reigned over hill and plain, till it was broken in the dead of night by a vixen calling from beyond the farm. The penetrating cry had scarcely died away when from the distance came a faint response. On hearing it the vixen squalled again, and was answered from Bartinney.
Again the awful squall rang out; this time the reply rose from beside the rock near the chantry. The sharp yap, thrice repeated, made the hare tremble, and no wonder, for it seemed to him to proceed from the back of his snow-hut. Then he heard the muffled thud of approaching footfall, and the next instant the form of Grey Fox flashed by as he bounded down the hill straight for the curlew-moor, whence the vixen had called.
Perhaps it was as well for the hare that a vague fear, caused by the new element, had kept him to the seat, for had Grey Fox and his mate chanced on him before he was accustomed to the snow, the countryside might have known him no more.
But staying within his snow-hut was not without its drawbacks; he had to suffer for his inaction; his fore legs ached; his hind legs were gripped by cramp; even worse than that was the itching of his ears, which he was afraid to scratch for fear of bringing his house down.
Luckily these attacks came one at a time, until the hour before sunset, when they fell together and nearly drove him mad. The red sun that had previously been such a comfort to him, now seemed as if it would never go down and set him free to stretch his limbs and scratch his ears. But it sank at last, though a bit of the rim still showed when he burst out and made off like the wind. Beyond the chantry he pulled up; he would at last be rid of the itching in his ears; but the cramp threatened and sent him going again. So down the hill he tore, putting his feet into a blind hole and tumbling head over heels with the impetus of his rush. He was on his feet in a twinkling, and aided by the hairy soles of his pads, scurried over the frozen surface with singular ease towards the linhay field, where he began scraping the snow away to get at the herbage beneath. What little he found he ate ravenously, but there was not enough to stay his hunger, which he appeased with the shoots of the furze.
The light in the farmhouse window was yet burning when he ceased feeding and began wandering over the moor. He was not happy. The vague misgivings which had harassed him whilst in the form, the disquiet caused by ancestral monitions, became real fears when he recognised that he was leaving a trail easy to follow unless he confused it. Whereupon, coming to the end of the outward journey, he wove a maze of tracks amidst the scattered bushes, and the better to conceal the line by which he returned, crept along an overgrown ditch where only a practised poacher could have traced him. He roamed until day was about to break, and when the sun arose it found him sitting by the spring near the Fairies’ Green.
He was very tired, but afraid to drowse. Every moment he expected to see some enemy coming along his trail, and for hours he kept watch on the white plain till sleep claimed him, leaving his sentinel senses on guard. No moving objects, however, fell on his sight, nothing save the waste of snow and the vapour over the spring: no sound smote his ears except the purl of the rill and the faint tinkle of the ice-crystals on the sedge, so that—a most unusual occurrence—he did not awake till the sun was about to go down and it was time to think of leaving the form. After an uneventful night’s wandering he returned to the seat, and would have continued to use it had not the wind risen again, rendering the situation so inclement that he had no choice but to go.
His intention was disclosed by his carelessness on quitting the form. Instead of bounding from it, as was his usual practice, he simply stepped out, leaving tracks that a child might have traced home, and leaping across the runnel he rolled on the green, a thing he would never have done had he meant to come back. Very different was his conduct at dawn in the field by Johanna’s Garden. He crossed and criss-crossed his tracks before springing on to the hedge, and from that into the garden, where, after two of his longest leaps, he squatted some dozen yards from the medlar.
Yet, carefully as he had concealed his approach, he could not conceal his person. Indeed, he looked very conspicuous on the surface, which, if not quite flat, was only slightly wavy from the ridge and furrow beneath. Perhaps he knew that snow threatened, and relied on it to hide him. However that may be, the flakes began to fall thickly soon after he had settled down, and when they ceased he was as effectually covered as he had been on the hill. Then the sun came out, turning countryside and garden into a glittering fairyland.
The resplendent enclosure seemed to be crying out for some creature to enjoy its delights, when suddenly, without a sound to announce their approach, two full-grown stoats appeared on the wall by the badgers’ creep and stood looking down at the snow. They were not seeking the tracks of the hare, they were not hunting, they were abroad simply for the snow, and the next instant they sprang to the ground and began rolling over one another, uttering a happy chuckling noise the while. On separating they wallowed in the snow, as if they could not get enough of the joy of it. But all at once they rose to their feet, raised their long necks and listened; an unusual sound had alarmed them. It was only the noise made by the snow that fell from the overladen branches, and the instant they discovered the cause, they resumed their romps, twisting and turning like snakes and time after time leaping into the air. The height they jumped was quite surprising; almost eerie was their speed as they galloped over the snow.
The hare watched them at their games without serious alarm, he was almost interested in their movements, when presently they fell to “hide and seek,” but the moment they gave over playing and began searching the furrows for mice he was in dread lest in their tunnellings they should bump against and discover him. Hence he kept an anxious look-out, and when a long interval passed without a sign of them he suffered agonies of fear. Even when they did show, it was not much he saw, just their heads, and that only for a moment or two. As they approached, however, he could discern the slight heave of the snow that attended their progress. Presently up popped the head of the nearest, within a few yards, and when it was withdrawn up popped the head of the other in the adjacent furrow, only to disappear again as the two made their way towards the gate. The hare, more and more terrified, awaited their return, and before long saw the snow lift along the furrow next the one in which he sat. Then the head of the stoat appeared, but was instantly drawn back as a dark shadow fell on the snow.
It was a kite who, in her station high overhead, had espied the stoats, and carrion-feeder though she usually was, had come after them. For the bird, ravenous with hunger, was forced to get anything she could secure, and from the medlar-tree on which she alighted watched the snow eagerly for sign of the prey. The stoats, aware of her presence, lay as still as death. An hour, two hours passed, then the bigger stoat cautiously raised his head to reconnoitre, and on seeing that the kite was still there, as cautiously withdrew it, hoping thus to escape her attention. But in vain: nothing could escape the bird’s fierce, searching eyes. She instantly glided to the spot, and with the outstretched talons of her great yellow feet kept grabbing at the heaving snow, yet always too far back to secure the retreating stoat, for he moved with amazing rapidity and never once stopped nor showed his head. Of course the kite could move as fast as he, and ought to have caught him; indeed she would have done, had she not been so stupid as to keep striking just behind him. A more exciting chase could hardly be witnessed; again and again the kite seemed to have learned wisdom and to be about to close her talons on the stoat, but as often failed, and when at last she struck directly above the stoat he had gained the drift by the hedge and was too deep for her to reach. Thus the pursuit came to an end, but not the incident, for from his vantage ground the stoat chattered insults at the bird as she flew back to the tree to await the appearance of the other stoat.
The second stoat, however, had peeped out during the chase and, seeing the way clear, ran to the near hedge, where she lay safe amongst the stones that once formed the walls of the cottage. Her tracks on the snow told of her withdrawal; but they had no message for the kite who, after watching in vain till the day was nearly gone, at last spread her wide wings and sailed away in the direction of the Kites’ Carn. Lucky creature, thought the hare, whose eyes followed the bird’s flight as far as the narrow peep-hole allowed, lucky creature to be able to glide through the air and avoid the drifts. The reflection came into his mind that night as he struggled through deep snow near High Down, whither he was attracted by the hawthorn bushes.
On reaching the bleak spot, he went from tree to tree gnawing the bark on the windward side, so that while he fed, his back was to the gale and his face in a measure protected from the driven snow. He seemed to prefer the rind on the upper part of the stem, for at each of the three bushes he stood on his hind feet and reached as high as he could, despite the swaying of the bushes under the gusts that shook them. The creaking noise they made formed a weird harmony with the moan of the wind, which was quite in keeping with the spirit of the haggard upland.
Soon the hare, unable to endure the bitter cold, forsook the down for the lowland and made for home. Home! Can it be said that he had ever had a home? The hill had perhaps the best claim, then there was the Fairies’ Green, and the moor, but all of them too exposed for him now, hardiest of earth’s children though he was. Privation, besides, had begun to tell on him, and in his weakened condition he turned from the wild to seek the protection afforded by man; so he was making for the homestead of whose daily life he had been so close an observer, striking through the blinding storm over field and waste as unfalteringly as though guided by some visible beacon.
In the midst of the great croft by Boscawen-Un stone-circle he became a prey to misgivings which caused him to stop and consider. “Is it safe,” he asked himself, “to entrust myself so near to man?” Instantly from that mysterious second self of his came the answer, “Why not? Man has never injured you, never even sought you, though you have battened on his crops and taken of his best.” Reassured by this thought he held on his course across the moors till abreast of Chapel Carn Brea, where he again paused. Dark though it was, thickly as fell the snow, he could discern the form of the great hill that had been to him like a second mother. If it be possible for beast to love a spot on earth, the hare loved the hill where he had been born and suckled, the hill which had sheltered him, the hill to which, in his trouble, he had always turned. He had never passed it by unregarded, he could not even now. But it looked ghastly and cold, it repelled him, Chapel Carn Brea repelled him as a dead thing once loved repels the living; so he averted his gaze and moved on towards the homestead. He followed the bridle-path all the way, but just before reaching the house he passed under the third bar of the gate of the rickyard, made his way between the turf and the furze-stack, and jumped on to the wall in their lee. There he sat between the stems of two elders, with his face to the farmyard, wondering what the coming day had in store for him. His heart was beating faster than its wont.
PERIL OF DEATH
For some time the hare seemed to be the only living thing within the homestead: not a cry broke the silence till the finches and linnets roosting in the furze-rick, in the eaves and crannies of the buildings, and even in the buildings themselves, began to twitter, heralding with their low, sweet chorus the wintry dawn.
Presently too there was a sign of stir within the house: smoke rose from the chimney, now and again a spark with it, quenched immediately by the snowflakes which fell as close as ever, thickening the covering that lay like a robe of ermine on the yard, on the roofs of the house, sheds, barn, and the derelict pigeon-cote springing from its ridge.
But though the household was astir no one seemed disposed to venture out, till at last Andrew, the farm-hind, lantern in hand, appeared, his feet sinking deep at every step as he made for the cattle-stalls under the barn. The flame lit up his corduroys, his homespun jacket, and beardless chin; it faintly illuminated the mud wall on which his shadow fell; it dispelled the pitchy darkness of the byre, where with loud lowings ox and bullock greeted his entry. He was soon busy chopping turnips, whose fragrance spread around till it reached the hare and set him longing; then the munching of the cattle almost drove him beyond endurance; but he remembered that he was an outlaw, so he turned a deaf ear to the tantalising sound, though he could not help envying the beasts which he had hitherto pitied. By this the farmyard was wide awake; the inmates of every shed and pen clamoured to be fed; the bull bellowed, the horse whinnied, the pigs squealed, the geese cackled, the rooster crowed at the top of his voice, whilst the linnets, finches, siskins, a yellow-hammer and a snow-bunting looked mutely on, hoping not to be forgotten.
And so the hours of early morning passed, succeeded by a sunless forenoon and the dinner hour, during which the hare contemplated an act of unusual daring, nothing less than joining the three yearlings who were eating hay from a rack in the midst of the yard. After all, it did not seem a great thing to do. He had but to slip from the wall, steal a dozen yards or so over the snow, then the fodder would be his for the taking. Yet he could not do it; his wild nature restrained him. Once indeed he half rose, only, however, to settle down again and watch the yearlings empty the rack, which the man removed on returning from his dinner. As he carried it he chanced to look towards the hare, who, ever suspicious, feared that he was discovered. It was quite a critical moment to the wildling; had the man’s eyes met his, had the man only stopped whilst gazing in his direction, he would have made off: luckily, neither event befell, so that the hare, who had gathered himself ready to spring, relaxed his muscles and remained. The incident, however, left him somewhat disquieted, till a wren foraging in the elder diverted his thoughts; then he became composed and followed the movements of the man with the same unconcern as before.
Yet, fearful as he was of man’s gaze, he was able to disregard sounds that would have made fox, marten, and stoat cower and slink to cover; he was quite unmoved by the shrill voice of the farmer’s wife when she called after her husband, “Mind, John, whatever you do, don’t forget the saffron[4] and a penn’orth of Christmas[5]”; he never even started when the man wrenched the faggots from the furze-rick, though he sang the Flora[6] tune to words of his own composition, as he pulled at the stems. Three loads of faggots the man bore to the house, the low sun which caught the ridge of the barn and cote bathing his face as he went past the farmyard gate. In the quiet that reigned when at last the kitchen door closed for the night behind him the hare dropped to the yard, where he picked up every blade of hay he could find before leaving for his round.
Rarely had he been at a greater loss to know where to go; it was of no use seeking the moor, nothing but the unpalatable bark of withy and alder awaited him there, the fields with their scant herbage were out of his reach, High Down was inaccessible since the last snowfall; so without a goal to make for, he loped along the bridle-track, where at least the going was easy, and food, such as it was, to be had in the furze that bordered it. He was in hard case, yet not so hard as that of the predatory creatures who nightly ravaged the country and often returned supperless to their lairs. The hare knew of their forays from the trails. He had crossed two on his way back from the Down; this very night he leapt the burning line of a stoat-pack just before turning aside whilst the farmer rode past. Close to Crowz-an-Wra he stopped to browse on the bushes, standing on his hind legs and reaching as high as he could to get at the tender shoots.
Eager, however, as he was to satisfy his hunger, he was alive to everything around, and kept pricking his ears at the noise of the merriment from the cottages with windows all aglow from turnip lantern, rushlight, and the blaze of furze fire. For Crowz-an-Wra was keeping Christmas Eve with its customary cheer, little dreaming of the lonely stranger at their doors. At his slowest pace the hare passed through the village; he was no more alarmed by the illumination of the cottages than by the splendour of the heaven.
Just beyond the milestone he frisked and frolicked, and in the same high spirits galloped along the track as far as the granite cross, where, in his leverethood, he had scampered up and down the then dusty way under the eyes of his mother. At the cross he stood and listened as he had listened then, but there was not a sound; even the little stream had been frozen into silence. So he fell to rolling on the crisp surface, which crackled under him; then jumping to his feet, he scratched a pit in the snow simply to get rid of the energy which the nip in the air had excited. About midnight he galloped off through the deep snow at a pace that was surprisingly rapid, considering the weight of the snow that clung to his fur. Soon he was out of sight.
Four hours later he repassed the cross on his way home. The heavens were as resplendent as ever; Orion showed no sign of fading, the Milky Way was still a path of splendour, but the hamlet lay in gloom, and save for the rocking of a cradle, was as silent as the hills. In the homestead there was not a sound, and as if afraid to disturb the quiet, the hare stole noiselessly as a ghost to the form, where he sat watching for the dawn without a thought of sinister intrusion on the yard.
Yet he had not been there long when the cruel head of a polecat showed at the far corner by the pigsty, whence it surveyed the enclosure. She had not come for prey, she had come for shelter, and her keen eyes were peering here, there, and everywhere to see that the coast was clear before she tried to reach the retreat that had taken her fancy. Presently she galloped past the door of the cattle-house and made her way to the top of the barn steps. There she stood looking for a way in, and descrying a hole in the shutter, she scrambled up and aslant the mud wall till she gained it and squeezed through. She had not long disappeared, however, when to the amazement of the hare, her head was suddenly thrust through the snow covering the thatch, and the next instant she was hurrying over the white surface to enter the pigeon-cote. Now the cote was the home of an owl. Scarcely had the polecat curled up in it when the bird alighted on the sill, discovered the intruder, and made such a to-do that the polecat at once came out lest man’s notice should be attracted, her presence revealed, and—the dread of her life—hue and cry raised. In the circumstances she was for peace at any price. Dashing past the owl she made down the roof to the hole in the thatch, where she struggled for some time to get through. At last as the result of a desperate effort she forced a passage to the barn, and so reached the yard by the way she came. From the foot of the steps she headed for the narrow passage by which she had entered, but, instead of following it, she skirted the pigsty, the poultry-houses and the open shed, with the intention of crossing the wall to the turf-rick which she had noticed from the roof. She reached the wall and was about to climb it when the latch of the kitchen door lifted. At the sound she abandoned her purpose, and that very unwisely, because she was in quite as much danger of being seen as if she had crossed the wall. For where was she to hide? There was the open shed, it is true, but she could hardly hope to gain it before the man reached the yard. “Crunch, crunch, crunch,” sounded the snow under his feet; he was already close to the gate, discovery was imminent. In desperation, the bewildered creature dived into a hole in the snow made by a hoof of one of the yearlings. Even then her tail was exposed for some seconds before she succeeded in worming a way out of sight, but it did not catch the eye of the man, and for the time at least she was safe.
The hare, who had observed every movement of the polecat, kept a close watch on the spot, for he greatly feared that the creature would cross the wall at the first opportunity and perhaps discover him.
Meanwhile the hind busied himself about his ordinary duties until near noon, when he began to remove the snow from the front door, a sure sign that guests were expected. As he shovelled, he sang:
“I saw dree ships come sailing in,
Sailing in, come sailing in,
I saw dree ships come sailing in,
On Christmas Day in the morning”—
shovelling and singing till the steps and the path all the way to the gate were clear. No sooner had he finished than the farmer’s three sons arrived, with their wives and families, the women riding pillion behind their husbands, and the children in panniers borne by donkeys. There was quite a string of donkeys; the headgear of each and of the little foal which closed the procession, was decked with holly; the merry voices of the laughing, chattering children rang out most musically. Last of all came the fiddler, a long, lean man, shivering in his thin garments as he ran, his nose blue with cold, his violin in a green baize bag under his arm. He threw a snowball at Andrew, then skipped up the steps like a lamplighter, and as the door closed on the heels of his cloth boots, it shut in the welcome with which the children greeted his arrival.
Now the work that Andrew got through between the coming of the fiddler and two of the clock, in order not to be “worrited” whilst at meat, was a record on Brea Farm. In the multitude of his duties, however, one thing escaped him—he forgot to shut up the rooster. The oversight, as things turned out, meant a sore trial for the cock, tragic consequences for the hare. Nor were they long in coming.
At a few minutes past three the long snout, yellow eyes, and red tongue of Grey Fox appeared round the very corner where the polecat had showed. Whilst lying in the brake, he had heard the cock crow, and with his mate had come after it. They had come as fast as they could lay pad to ground; they were starving. For three days they had found nothing to eat over the miles and miles of country they had searched, and now at last within four leaps, there stood this fat rooster scratching away the snow. Was ever so tempting a morsel, ever so easy a victim, exposed to the eyes of ravenous wildlings? Yet the unusual silence excited Grey Fox’s suspicions of a trap. Might not the bird be a bait, a decoy to lure him into the gin where he had already left one of his claws? If not, what was cock-a-doodle doing there alone? After all it was too great a risk.
But by this the little vixen—she looked but half the size of her mate—who at first kept at his brush, had come more and more forward till her mask was side by side with his. Did she by whisper or sign of eye or lip banish his scruples, goad him into action? We do not know. But the next instant he launched himself towards chanticleer, who saw him coming and raised cries so penetrating that they caused the hind and the fiddler to drop knife and fork and rush to the yard. Grey Fox had just seized the cock when the fiddler burst out, and making the most of his long legs, succeeded in heading him from the passage that led to the moor. The fox refused to drop his prey, though the huge wings kept flapping in his face and hindering him in the race with the fiddler, who pursued him over the dung-heap and around the yard, to the amusement of the rest of the party crowding the gateway. As he ran, the fiddler trod on the polecat, whose sudden appearance so startled the fox that he dropped the cock, crossed the wall to the rickyard, and rejoined his mate, who had hurried away to the moor at the first shout of the fiddler.
Merry as the party was before, it was twice as merry now, yet there was not a child, nay, nor a grown-up around that festive board, who would not have been sorry to know that in the act of crossing the wall Grey Fox had espied the hare and was already plotting his destruction.
For in the earth amidst the furze, Grey Fox, who had an old score to settle, and the vixen, who had searched for him when a helpless leveret, sat mask to mask, with wrinkled brow, scheming how they should take him. It was a matter of life or death to them, at least so they themselves regarded it; and the moment their plans were laid they were all eagerness to put them into execution. Their eyes glowed with excitement; twice they rose and went to the mouth of the earth to observe the light; the third time they stole away to the rickyard.
On reaching the wall, Grey Fox peeped over, and turning his head slowly to avoid attracting notice, exchanged looks with the vixen. “It’s all right, she is in the seat,” that is what his glance conveyed. As the light faded he got on the wall, and watched as he crouched. Later the vixen took his place whilst he stole round to the other end of the wall. The hare was now between them, knowing all, and taking counsel with himself. From time to time the sound of the fiddle or the laughter of the children broke the tense silence, but without disquieting the foxes, who lay with their heads towards the yard ready to spring the moment the hare made off. Then the hind came and saw to the cattle, and as he presently returned to the house, hare and foxes gathered themselves for the work before them.
With a mighty bound the hare reached the yard and made for the gate, through which he passed to the front of the house with the foxes in close pursuit. The light from the window fell on the fleeting forms of all three as they rounded the corner by the beehives on their way back to the bridle-track, which the hare followed to the point where it bends. There, instead of swinging round in the direction of the hamlet, he set his face straight for Chapel Carn Brea.
Now, as at all times, he looked to the hill to escape his pursuers, but it was no longer the familiar place it had been, for the pits filled by the snow were level with the runways. Consequently the surface was treacherous, and therein lay the hope of the foxes, a hope immediately realised. Twice during the ascent the hare fell into blind holes, from which he managed to extricate himself only just in time to avoid being seized by Grey Fox. Though he escaped capture he lost the lead he had gained; abreast of the chantry he was so dangerously close to his pursuers that a false step would have meant death, and he knew it; while the foxes, who knew it too, were already anticipating a feast. For thirty yards farther the ground beneath the snow was so broken, so full of pitfalls, that the chances of traversing it without stumbling were small, but the hare got over it without mishap and reached the ridge, along which he held bravely, for the going there was good. His heart sank, however, at sight of the snow in the hollow, where only a rush or two showed above the smooth surface. But those few rushes served as a guide, a welcome guide, for they indicated the position of the Liddens, towards which he at once directed his steps.
In this he was wise, because the ice afforded reliable foothold to his hairy pads and enabled him to plough his way through the snow at quite a good pace, much faster indeed than the foxes, though they kept along the furrow in his wake. The lead thus gained he kept on increasing as he ascended Bartinney, to the discomfiture of his pursuers, who would have abandoned the chase had not the big drift in the next hollow, which they believed impassable, encouraged them to keep going. On reaching it the hare’s courage failed him, and no wonder, for stretching from foothill to foothill, and completely filling the dip between, lay like a great white lake, a drift which threatened to overwhelm him. Face to face with this new danger he forgot the foxes for a moment, but the instant he looked back and caught sight of them bounding down the hill, he flung aside his hesitation, plunged into the drift, and put forth all the strength of his limbs in an effort to reach the other side.
Nearer and nearer the foxes came to the drift; they leapt into it without flinching, and began to battle with the feathery mass, striving to overhaul the hare now some dozen yards ahead. It was a weird scene, that drift amidst the hills, marked now by the glowing eyes of three protruding heads, now by the tips of the ears, now only by a slight flurry of the surface, which showed where pursuers and pursued struggled beneath, till, where the snow lay deepest, there was no slightest sign of movement, and it seemed as if all three had found a grave.
At last towards the farther side the points of two ears showed, then two eyes; they were the ears and eyes of the hare, who had tunnelled his way thus far, and was standing on his hind legs looking round to see where he was. Before you could count three the head was withdrawn and the hare again lost to sight, but presently out he came from the drift with a long leap, the snow on his back shooting forward between his ears as his fore feet struck the ground. He bounded up the slope, and had gone perhaps a score yards when the foxes emerged, pressing after him at their best pace.
The struggle with the drift had told more on the hare than on them. Between the drift and Caer Bran, where he passed close to the spot on which months before he had sat dreaming of the life before him, he actually lost ground, yet, though seemingly doomed, on, on he sped; nay, more, he even began to gather his strength for a supreme effort to shake off his pursuers. The wood on the Beacon was the place he chose for it. The moment he felt the pine-needles under his pads he breasted the hill with the speed of the wind, and gained its granite crown several seconds ahead.
This spurt amazed the foxes, for they imagined the hare to be failing, and they would have been still more amazed had they known how he was using his advantage. He did not keep on as the foxes themselves would have done, for that he thought would only prolong the chase, whereas his intention was to put an end to it. So just over the ridge he leapt from rock to rock and back again, then to the great slab that looks like a vast table amidst the furze, and finally into the furze itself, into which he flung himself just in the nick of time, the bushes closing over him as Grey Fox appeared on the apex of the Beacon.
With swift glances Reynard swept the hillside, but not a spray stirred to mark the line along which their escaping prey was stealing towards the foot of the hill; forthwith he and his mate, who had now come up, stooped again to the scent with the object of following the trail. But the hare had succeeded in foiling his line; they immediately discovered the hopelessness of the task, and both returned to the high rock conscious that their only chance lay in sighting the hare as he left the hill.
Their movements had been as quick as lightning, so quick that not more than ten seconds had passed since Grey Fox gained the Beacon. How his flanks heaved, how quick the breath came from him, yet despite distress of lung and agony of lacerated pads that stained the snow with blood, his one thought was for the game; he did not waste a glance on the lanterns[7] illuminating the church tower, he was deaf to the carol-singers, all his senses were in the eyes that watched every opening between the bushes, every avenue of escape.
Suddenly, they—for the vixen was at his side—sighted the hare as it crossed the bridge far below. Instantly they were off. Twice Grey Fox tumbled head over heels in his mad haste, but the shaking made no difference to him: there was no slackening in the speed with which he led along the trail which presently recrossed the stream to a plantation. Here, in their excitement, first he then the vixen gave tongue on the scent. Their sharp yaps fell like a death-knell on the ears of the hare, who, believing the pursuit was at an end, was loping leisurely along the bank of the stream. For a moment his heart sank within him, but only for a moment; the next he pulled himself together and redoubled his pace, the thought of being seized and gobbled up by Grey Fox acting like a spur on his flagging energies. At a bound he again recrossed the stream, sped across the slope of the opposite hill in full view of the foxes and headed for a gap at the top.
The pursuers’ plan was formed at once: they would waylay him at the gap and seize him as he passed. A hedge with a ditch on its further side ran up the hill. At their utmost speed the two foxes galloped along the ditch, gained the crest and reached the gap whilst the unsuspecting prey was yet a dozen yards from it. The fate of the hare was apparently sealed. But Grey Fox was not content to trust his ears to apprise him of the hare’s approach; in his eagerness he could not resist peeping round the corner. This betrayed him: the hare saw his long snout, turned and made down the hill, the breathless foxes following as fast as they could. In the descent the hare gained quite a good lead, but it seemed all to no purpose, for his line of flight was leading him directly towards a quarry which cut off all escape.
Yet on he galloped straight to the brink, and reaching it, leapt headlong into the great drift that rose half-way up its sheer wall.
The foxes checked themselves on the very verge and stood gazing at the snow marked by the cleanly-cut hole made by the hare as he fell. “Done after all,” was the meaning of the expression on Grey Fox’s mask. But he was not to be thus deprived of his prey if search could avail, and to this end he and the vixen made their way down to the base of the quarry and were lost to sight in the drift as they worked towards the spot where they expected to find the hare lying dead.
Far from being dead, however, he was not even disabled; indeed he was none the worse for his dive, the snow having completely broken his fall. On feeling the ground beneath his pads he moved forward, and had advanced some twelve yards when he found himself confronted by the huge heap of loose rock which the quarrymen had piled there. It barred his way, threatening to prevent his escape, until presently he found a small opening, and through it squeezed to a narrow tunnel-like passage which led to a chamber littered with the remains of rabbits, mice, eels, and frogs. It was a polecat’s den—the den, indeed, of the polecat that had chased him, the den where she and her kittens had slept after the pursuit. He crossed the foul lair and tried to pass through the narrow space between two rocks on the farther side. This looked like courting destruction, for he ran the risk of being jammed and unable to extricate himself; but he could hear the foxes behind him; he must go that way or perish. With a struggle he forced his head and shoulders through; then he was fixed, he could not clear his hindquarters, tug and strain as he might. As he stopped to recover his breath, he caught the patter of his pursuers’ pads: they were approaching the den: in a few seconds Grey Fox’s jaws would close on him and the rocks ring with his death squeal. Frantic with fear, maddened by dread of his fate, he made a frenzied effort and just managed to pull his long hind legs through before Grey Fox could seize them.
Yet to that very opening which had all but proved his destruction, he was now to owe his life. For Grey Fox, desperately anxious to reach him, forced his great head through the hole with the hope of seizing him, and got it so firmly wedged that some minutes elapsed before he succeeded in withdrawing it. By that time the hare was once more well on his way up the hill. He had passed over the brow before the foxes discovered the line of his retreat. But it was soon evident, from their half-hearted manner, that they were on the point of abandoning the pursuit, which they did a bow-shot beyond the lighted cottage.
What a change had come over them! They hardly looked the same creatures as when, alive in every fibre, they had stood on the Beacon, the embodiment of eagerness and energy. Now their heads drooped, their brushes that had waved like feathers, dragged and seemed to weigh them down. They looked dispirited, as indeed they were, and humbled too: the grass-feeder had proved more than a match for both of them, though, as they had seen, he was hampered by large balls of snow that clung to his fur. They went back the way they had come, the vixen leading, Grey Fox hopping on three legs. Twice he stopped to scratch his aching jaws, and at the bend by the quarry he disappeared from view.
The hunt was over, but even when satisfied of that the hare still held on. He was harassed now by a fresh fear, the fear of being tracked. This possessed him so strongly, that weary as he was, he wandered in and out the patches of scattered furze, confusing his trail so as to baffle any enemy who should try to trace him, and not until the long night was giving way to dawn did he settle in his form, which he sought in the old spot on the bank of the mill-pool.
That day, whilst the Squire was abroad after woodcock, he came on the triple trail above the quarry, and recognising the track of the hare, was at once filled with desire to see the end of the story told on the snow. His excitement, as he stood on the lip of the quarry, looking at the shaft-like hole, astonished his henchman: the feeling he displayed when he discovered the track of the hare by the cottage door was altogether beyond the man’s comprehension.
“Ah, that shows how sorely the poor thing was pressed. Had the door been open, she would have gone in and taken her chance.”
At every stride he expected to come on the end of the tragic chase, and kept looking ahead for the remains that would mark the last scene. All the greater, then, was his delight to find that the foxes had withdrawn from the chase, and greater too his determination to try and get a view of the animal whose survival in that vermin-haunted district seemed little short of miraculous. For three hours he followed the trail, pondering as he went over the animal’s hairbreadth escapes as his imagination called them up and, in his anxiety to come on the hare before dusk, almost losing his temper at the delays the creature’s ruses caused him. “Give it up, Squire,” said his man at last; “you’ll never come up with her, take and give it up.”
“Not whilst there’s light to see by,” was the laconic reply. It was nearly four o’clock when they came to the mill-pool. Even then they searched and searched in vain, for as the hare had landed from his last spring the snow fell from the tuft and concealed him. “She’s here, I know she’s here,” said the Squire in despair. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the hare bounded from his feet and crossed the pond.
“Shoot, shoot,” shouted the man; “darn ’ee, shoot.” Instead of raising his gun, the Squire raised his hand and kept it at the salute till the creature passed from sight. It was his way of paying homage to an animal hero.
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Saffron is much used in Cornwall for colouring cakes. |
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A pennyworth of holly. |
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On Flora day, the 8th of May, dancing takes place in the streets of Helston. |
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It was formerly the custom to illuminate the church towers on Christmas Day. |