The Badger. [Face page 110.
The stems of the furze have swept off his cap; so bareheaded, but triumphant, he goes straight to Sir Bevil, holding up between the forefinger and the thumb of his right hand the precious evidence. The men crowd round Squire and Earthstopper with amazement written on their faces as they behold the white bristle—for such it is—and ready for whatever exertion may be needed to secure the trophy. The Squire, suppressing the excitement he feels, orders the bushes that screen the earth to be cleared away. When Trevaskis and Shellal have done this, Andrew gets permission to send in one of the terriers to make sure that the badger is at home. On being released by the keeper from the chain that holds her, Vixen runs to where Andrew is lying at the mouth of the set, and, after being patted and encouraged, enters the hole and disappears from view. With his head in the tunnel and with one hand raised to silence the chatter of the farmer and coachman, who are standing a few yards away, the old man listens to the bitch as she makes her way along the galleries of the subterranean fastness. After some seconds, neither he nor Sir Bevil, who is lying at full length with his left ear to the ground—he was slightly deaf in the right—can detect any sound of her movements.
Presently they hear a faint bark and that peculiar thumping noise which a badger makes when moving along its underground passages.
“He’s theere, sir,” says Andrew. By way of response the Squire winks his right eye as though to say “I can hear him.” A sharp struggle succeeds, and the yell of the dog echoes along the winding way. At last the Earthstopper catches what he has been listening for, the welcome yap, yap, yap . . . coming always from the same spot, which tells him that the terrier is face to face with the badger in an end of its earth.
Without a moment’s delay, Sir Bevil instructs the miners where to sink a shaft to intercept the badger and cut it off from its galleries. The surface is littered with boulders, but fortunately there is a clear space some four feet wide between two outcropping rocks, and there the men set to work. Whilst they ply pick and spade, Andrew listens anxiously to the sounds that reach him from below, his fear being that the badger may force its way to some remoter part of its earth and render their labour of no avail. Hour after hour, six men working in reliefs continue to sink the shaft through the soft ground between the two walls of granite. No child’s play is this. As the pit gets deeper and deeper, the effort required to throw the earth to the surface begins to tell on the miners, who are working away as energetically as if some of their mates were entombed below. And here let it be said that digging out a badger, always an arduous operation, is frequently impracticable. Some of the sets in use to-day, such as those at Toldavas, Bosistow and Boscawen-un, are of considerable depth and extent, and defy all efforts of the spade. Whether they are hundreds or thousands of years old must remain a matter of conjecture, but as the badger is one of the oldest of living mammals there is little room for doubt that it has had its earths in the Cornish hillsides from a very remote past. Andrew is wondering as he lies there whether the set below him is one which will baffle all their efforts. As long as the terrier can keep the badger where it is there is hope of bagging it. But Vixen has already been for three hours in that stifling den, and during that time has been throwing her tongue almost incessantly. Incited by her yaping and an occasional cry of pain, the miners—they can hear her now—work bravely, despite their aching arms and backs. Suddenly the sound ceases, and shortly after, the Earthstopper hears Vixen as she makes her way slowly along the passages to the surface. Panting and exhausted out she staggers at last, and the next instant Turk, who has long been straining at his chain, is sent in to continue her work. Fatal interval! Alive now to the insecurity the holt it had deemed impregnable, and unable to dig its way farther on account of the rocky nature of the ground, the harried creature has stolen quietly away—at least neither Earthstopper nor miners heard it—and by means of a side gallery reached another stronghold on the far side of the Cairn. The Earthstopper, ignorant of this strategic move, is wondering why it is that Turk, so long gone and generally so noisy, is not giving tongue. What he fears as he continues to listen is that the badger has buried itself during the few seconds it was left, in which case all hope of securing it is gone. . . . Ah! what was that? a very faint yap, a mere echo of a yap, reaches his ear. It seems to come—does come—from far away under the Cairn.
“Wonder if the men down below can hear anything, sir,” says Andrew to Sir Bevil.
“Not a sound,” is the Squire’s response after inquiry.
“The badger’s shifted, sir; I can hear Turk, and that’s about all.”
Then the Squire takes the Earthstopper’s place and listens. “It’s a long way off, Andrew, it comes from under the Witch’s Cauldron.”
“Iss, sir, that’s where I maake et.” The note of despondency in the Earthstopper’s voice as he said this, served only to stimulate the Squire. The hopelessness of the situation would have daunted most people, but Sir Bevil had no thought of giving in, much less of owning that he was beaten.
Jumping up from the mouth of the earth, he rushes to the edge of the work and letting himself down the face of the rock, joins the two miners at the bottom of the shaft.
“Men,” says the Squire, “the badger has shifted from his old quarters, and we must drive a level under the Cairn. Andrew!”
“Plaase, sir?”
“Give me the direction; is that about it?” says he, stretching his arm across the shaft.
“Iss, sir, as near as can be.”
“Now, my man, give me your pick and let me have a turn: it’s not the first time I’ve used one.” Taking off his coat, he uses the tool with a vigour that astonishes the miner.
Fortunately, the ground admits of his working round the edge of the rock nearer the Cairn, in a direction almost at right angles to its already exposed face, and before long he has dug his way out of sight, and is shouting for a candle to enable him to see what he is about. A forlorn proceeding it might well seem to the old miner shovelling away the soil as the Squire fetches it down, for they are nearly a hundred feet from the badger, and at any moment may come on rocky ground and have to give up. The Squire knows this, but sticks to the apparently impossible task with his never-say-die tenacity. And when things seem hopeless, fortune befriends him. For to his surprise, after driving several feet, and narrowly escaping injury from a rock that fell behind him and dented the miner’s shovel, the pick penetrates the wall of mixed earth and stone at the end of the level. Putting his ear to the aperture, he makes out distinctly the yapping of the terrier on the far side of what, judging from the hollow sound, appears to be a cave. The discovery stimulates him to further exertions, and in a short time pick and spade clear away the partition that separates the workers from a cavernous chamber. The flame of the candle held at arm’s length burns as steadily as in a room. Its light falls on huge columns of granite under the Cairn, and makes the mica sparkle. This is not the place to describe the grim remains that were subsequently found in this weird sepulchre. An article from the pen of that learned antiquary, the village doctor, in the records of the Cornubian Society, gives a detailed description of the bones of animals now extinct, discovered there, and of the skeletons of two men with their tattered plaids still about them.
“A queer place this,” says the Squire, forgetting the badger for a moment; “a place for bats, owls, and buccaboos.”
“Yes, a wisht ould plaace, sure ’nuf, ’tis a soart o’ fogau, sir,” says Andrew, who has crept along the tunnel, and is peering over the Squire’s shoulder. “How deep es et, sir? I caan’t see the bottom.”
“Only a few feet, judging from the sound of the stones as they rattled down.”
Then the Earthstopper lets himself down the wall of the cave, and holds the candle whilst the Squire descends. The flame, held at arm’s length, was nearly on a level with the floor of the tunnel. Guided by the sounds of the conflict, they thread their way between the rude pillars of granite, and at length reach the badger’s stronghold on the far side.
“They are no distance in, Andrew,” says the Squire, speaking of the terrier and the badger, who are going at it tooth and nail.
“No, sir, touchin’, do ee hear un gruntin’, wonder ef I can see un.” Whereupon he lies flat on the loose soil, and holding the candle in front of him, looks into the hole.
“Can you see the badger?”
“No, sir, the dog’s in the way, and the dust es enough to blind ee; but he’s ourn, sir, we shall get un; white or grey, we shall get un. Have ee got the tongs, case they’re wanted?”
“Yes, I’m holding them.”
At this moment the man who had been shovelling comes up with another miner, with candles stuck in their hats, Shellal and the coachman, from the mouth of the tunnel, see the twinkling lights come and go as the miners make their way across the cave, and a spark or two struck by hobnailed boots, and they start at Andrew’s scream of encouragement to the dog, and the echoes it awakes.
“Es that your teeth chatterin’, Shellal?”
“Iss, you wonder, do ee? bra’ wisht auld place edna? don’t et strike thee that way? mowldy smill about un.”
“Arn’t you goin’ hover to ’em?”
“What? Shellal go over there? No, no, my son, not for the best dunkey this side New Brudge. Theer diggin’ again: hear ’em do ee? Bra’ fuss about an auld badger, semmin’ to me.”
Yes, they are digging again. The Earthstopper has taken a pick, and with his shirt-sleeves tucked up, is working away with a will, whilst one of the miners shovels the soil back, and keeps the hole open to enable the dog to breathe. The badger retreats as the sappers advance, and unfortunately the earth extends farther in than the Earthstopper imagined; but that is a trifling matter, as every stroke of the pick is bringing him nearer to the prize. It is only a question of time. The Squire leans against a huge rock, just behind the workers, holding the tongs in one hand, and pulling his moustache with the other. Every sound in the savage fray can now be heard, and at times the excitement is intense. Once the badger charges the dog to the mouth of the hole, and would have shown itself, but that the indomitable Turk pushes home the counter attack, and drives his foe right back to the corner of its earth. For half an hour longer the fight lasts, and at the end of it the dog comes out exhausted. For once the bull terrier has had as much fighting as it cared for but, though its under jaw is scored with wounds, its panting shows that its exhaustion is due rather to the stifling, dust-laden atmosphere in which the unequal struggle has been carried on.
But where is the other terrier? why is not Nell at hand to engage the badger and prevent him from digging his way farther in? Unpardonable over-sight! There can be no excuse. Squire and Earthstopper must have known that “fighting Turk,” as he was called, could not last very long against the badger in that cramped, suffocating hole. “Look sharp and fetch Nell,” says Sir Bevil. “She should have been here”—and would have been, had he but given the word. The keeper has no difficulty in getting Turk to follow him across the mirky cave, but what a time he is, getting the terrier up to the dimly-lighted tunnel from which Shellal and the coachman have already withdrawn. Hurry man! What an age he is, making his way along the level! A child would crawl faster. Every second is of the utmost value. The instant the terrier came out of the earth, the badger, most formidable of all sappers, began to dig his way farther in, gaining at every stroke of his powerful claws on Andrew and the miner. Then the Earthstopper, impelled by a curiosity excusable perhaps, but certainly ill-timed, drops his pick, believing he has hit upon a means of seeing whether the creature before him is really the white badger or not. Taking the shovel from the miner, he sticks a piece of candle on the end of it and pushes it into the earth as far as his arm allows. Then he peers into the hole. Better that he had kept on with the pick instead of wasting his time! Not a glimpse does he get of the creature. The flame burns feebly in the stifling air, and through the dust he can barely discern the heaped-up soil behind which the badger has effectually concealed itself since the terrier came out. He hears the untiring beast working away with the power and regularity of a machine, though he sees not a hair of it; but where are his quick, faultless eyes that he fails to descry that bit of furze root amidst the soil? It would, at least, have warned him that the badger is near the surface. As he withdraws the light he sees to his dismay that a big boulder arches over the hole, a little way in, rendering further digging impracticable. “I’m afeerd we shall lose un after all, sir,” says he turning his face towards Sir Bevil.
“Lose him, lose him, why? why lose him, my man?”
“We’ve got into hard ground, sir, the rocks have closed in like the walls of a drain, nawthin’ but a drill and dynamite can get through this cappin’ stone,” and the sound as he strikes it with the iron of the shovel reaches Sir Bevil’s ears above the pounding of the indefatigable creature within, and makes painful discord to the music of the badger’s claws. “Halloo!” says the astonished Earthstopper as he withdraws the shovel; for at this instant a current of fresh air fans his heated face, the noise from the earth almost immediately ceases, and he realises—what he had known happen but once before—that the badger has dug his way through to the open. “He’s broke out, sir,” says he excitedly, as he jumps to his feet. Seizing a candle he hurries with Sir Bevil and the miners across the cave, climbs the wall of it, and crawls along the tunnel into the trench. In a twinkling he reaches the surface and rushes in frantic haste round the rocks, shouting as he runs, “Loose the dogs, loose the dogs.”
On the other side of the Cairn he expects to get a glimpse of the badger hurrying down the rugged hill at its best pace. But when he gets there, no sign of fugitive, white or grey, meets his disappointed gaze. Climbing a rock he looks down on the somewhat sparse brake, his eyes searching the motionless furze and waving bents to detect by tell-tale movements of bush or withered grass the whereabouts of the quarry. If it is stealing away under their shelter, the cover keeps its secret well. From its unresponsive surface the Earthstopper gleans no inkling of its presence, and with surprise, so quickly have the hours sped, sees that the gathering shadows are stealing over the base of the sunlight slope. Suddenly with a wild scream he leaps from the rock into the stunted furze and plunges through it like one possessed. It was only the snapping of a brittle stick he had heard, but it was enough; it betrayed the whereabouts of the heavy beast that had unwisely dwelt near the Cairn until it heard the hue and cry raised by the Earthstopper.
Attracted by Andrew’s scream, Vixen and Nell fly to him, and getting on the line of the badger soon overtake it. “Where’s the badger?” shouts Sir Bevil as he and the others come tearing down the hill. No need is there of other answer than Vixen’s yell to tell him where badger and dogs are keeping up a running fight by that big boulder half-way down the slope. All eyes are riveted on the spot, but till now only the terriers have seen the creature. A somewhat barren patch lies right ahead of where the bushes are being violently shaken. Has the badger slackened its pace that it seems so tantalisingly long in reaching the edge of the furze? . . .
“ ’Tes, ’tes the whi——, the white wan, sure ’nuf, sir, and a beety,” cries the Earthstopper, as the clean-cut head projects beyond the bush.
“What a grand beast! but how are we to secure him?”
“Dust ee want un livin’ or dead, sir?” shouts the excited Andrew in his broadest vernacular, running to keep abreast of the creature.
“Alive, alive, my man,” replies the Squire rather testily, as the quarry crosses a belt of ground Shellal had recently burnt, and its hair, that all but sweeps the ground, shows as white as snow against the charred surface. With the tongs underground—the Squire had dropped them as he scrambled up the wall of the cave—and no man volunteering to go and fetch them for fear of losing the fun, here is a nice business for Andrew. He must secure the badger with his bare hands: an order easily given but difficult to execute. The dogs too, good as they are at sticking a badger up in its earth, game as they are at meeting its terrible rushes underground, are powerless to hold such a monster as that brushing on there through the bushes and treating their savage attentions with disdain. Through close furze and brambly thicket it presses forward as if through gossamer, stopping but to make the terriers yell with pain.
Ned now arrives breathless with the sack, and not a minute too soon, for Andrew, despite his excitement, sees that the beast is heading for an old drain in the valley, in which it would find safe refuge. “Stand handy, Ned,” says he to the keeper, in a voice so ominously calm and firm as to make even the coachman feel that the crisis has arrived and that the next few minutes will be worth living to a spectator. A barren space, it might be twenty yards wide, lies in the badger’s path; and there Andrew awaits. He is only just in time. A movement of the furze, and its sharp muzzle protrudes, then the eyes are seen—they were not pink—then the massive body. Vixen and Nell, bleeding from their wounds, make feints at it, one on each side. Listen to the snapping of the jaws as the badger bites right and left at them. Clear of the bush, not a tussock screens the plucky, friendless creature. Across the bare patch lies a close brake at the foot of which is the unstopped drain. The cover gained, he is safe. The badger knows it, and is resolved to reach its shelter. Andrew is equally determined to dispute the passage. The Earthstopper is not hampered for space; the semicircle of spectators give him plenty of elbow-room. With every fibre strung but under control, he closes in on the badger, with nimble, springy movement learnt in the wrestling ring. He looks the incarnation of wariness. He knows his enemy, he knows the risk he is running. Ill-timed onset may mean the loss of finger or hand.
With a cry that thrills man and dog but does not daunt the quarry he calls on Vixen and Nell to seize the badger, and stooping the instant its attention seems occupied by the terriers, he tries to seize its tail. Quick as lightning the supple creature, shaking off the dogs, turns on him, just missing his hand as suddenly withdrawn. Fired by failure and desperate from the nearness of the brake now scarce two yards away, Andrew renews the attempt, and this time getting a firm grip of the tail lifts the heavy beast clear of the ground, totters and staggers under the weight, but by an effort recovers his balance and holds his prize at arm’s length. Then raising it above the mouth of the canvas bag which Sir Bevil and the keeper are holding open with trembling fingers, he twirls the writhing, snapping brute round and round, and plunges it into the sack. It was the work of a few seconds, but the exertion brought the sweat to the Earthstopper’s face.
“Bravo, Andrew,” shouts the Squire, who with the others had been looking on breathlessly, “very neatly done: twice I was afraid he’d got you.” After tying the mouth of the sack, the keeper slung the badger on his back and made for the wagonette. The rest of the party, with the exception of Sir Bevil, Trevaskis and Shellal, returned to the Cairn to collect their belongings. Though it was dusk, they succeeded in recovering everything except the tongs, which were afterwards found by the exploring party. Lights were already twinkling in the windows of the farmhouse as they descended the hill; and before they entered the yard, Ned had lit the lamps of the carriage, where they found him standing guard over the badger, locked up in the boot.
“A good day’s sport, Andrew,” said the Squire as he put on his coat which the Earthstopper had brought him.
“A grand finish, sir; but a very poor start.”
The next minute Shellal brought out the horse which he had been saddling by the light of the stable lantern and held it for the Squire to mount. After a cheery “good night, sir,” from the miners, whom he had liberally rewarded, Sir Bevil hurried home along the dark lanes as light-hearted as a schoolboy, tossing a crown-piece through the open door of the toll-house as he galloped past.
He was anxious to select a safe kennel for his precious and formidable capture. He chose a strongly-built stye, once the abode of a savage boar, and had it well littered with straw. One of the troughs in the enclosure was half-filled with milk; into a smaller one Sir Bevil himself poured a jar of honey. An hour later the badger was turned loose in this luxurious snuggery, securely fastened in, and left to himself. Early next morning Sir Bevil went to see how the captive had fared. The milk and honey had not been touched, but in the space between the troughs was a pile of bricks, mortar, and soil. The heap lay at the mouth of a U-shaped tunnel that passed under the foundations and came out on the other side of the wall.
“The devil! he’s gone!”
Yes, the badger had dug his way out and escaped.
Hue and cry and search till nightfall proved of no avail. He had sought a cairn that overlooks the ocean, drearier and safer than Cairn Kenidzhek. Had he been content to stay in the Squire’s pigstye, his would have been the life of a prisoner, pampered, but pining for liberty. He chose the bare subsistence and the freedom of the wild; and from that day to this, the eyes of cliff-owl and fox alone have seen his white form as he wanders mid gorse and bracken and fallen cromlech, within easy reach of his lonely refuge.
It is difficult to imagine a wild creature making a harder struggle for existence than a hare in West Penwith. From beginning to end its life is one of persecution. As a leveret it can hardly escape falling a victim to the stoat, carrion crow, or magpie; or, when full grown, becoming the prey of the polecat or the fox. If it be objected that puss has to run the gauntlet of these enemies elsewhere, it may be answered that in few parts of England is vermin so abundant. This is only in a measure due to the many strongholds which this wild country affords. In the Land’s End district game is not preserved, and the absence of the gamekeeper and his traps accounts for the prevalence of predatory creatures, furred and feathered. It is curious too, to note how interest in the hare and the protection afforded it, have declined before the popularity of fox-hunting. Time was when it was highly esteemed as a beast of the chase, and when money was freely spent on the destruction of its enemies, though to a much less extent than is now lavished on poultry-funds for the perservation of the fox. In those days, as parish registers attest, the churchwardens paid with an easy conscience five shillings for a fox, a shilling for an otter, a shilling for a grey or badger, twopence for a fitcher or marten, and a penny for a hedgebore or kite. Whether the register of Buryan Church contains entries referring to the payments of these fees, I do not know; but there is evidence that in this, the largest parish of the Land’s End district, the hare formerly flourished, its pursuit forming the chief diversion of the local gentry. Of these, Squire Levelis of Trewoofe was, perhaps, the most enthusiastic sportsman, and it is related of him in an old Cornish romance, that one day after a very arduous chase, at the moment his hounds were on the point of running into a hare, the astonished Squire suddenly found himself confronted, on the spot where the scent failed, by a witch. The belief that witches at times assumed the shape of a hare lingered in West Cornwall at least as late as the early part of the last century, for it is related of Sir Rose Price that on his entering a cottage into which his hounds had driven their quarry, he found to his astonishment not a hare but a haggard old woman, whose torn hands and face removed all doubt as to what he had been in pursuit of. This occurred at Kerrow in the parish of Zennor. Squire Levelis’ uncanny adventure took place in the Lamorna valley; and within the memory of those still living, this wild “bottom” has resounded with the merry music of “hare-hounds.” No pack of harriers exists in West Penwith to-day, but the greyhound is very much in evidence; and all things considered, the latter state of poor puss is far worse than the first. What with “long dogs,” foxes, vermin, snares, and cheap guns, this most timid of creatures lives in a state of perpetual apprehension. Nevertheless, it makes a stubborn struggle for existence on the lone upland wastes, where it enjoys partial immunity from its natural four-footed enemies, which, for the most part, harbour in the wild overgrown valleys that tin-streaming has rendered worthless for agricultural purposes. It says something for the keenness of the miner and the crofter that they should search miles and miles of bleak moorland on the remote chance of finding a hare which will, if found, in all probability run their dogs to a standstill. Small wonder that to these men the few surviving hares should seem to bear a charmed life, and that those remarkable for stamina and endurance and recognisable by some slight distinguishing mark, should be as well known as a bob-tailed fox to the members of a hunt.
St Buryan Church. [Face page 130.
Of such none was more famous than the little Jack of Bartinney, whose life history was typical of that of his race. His first home was amidst a clump of rushes bordering a lonely pool on the high ground between two of the Cornish heights. Even when maternal instinct is strongest, fear of detection kept doe and leveret apart during the day; but she never failed to suckle him at nightfall and before sunrise, on her way back from the feeding-ground on the lowland. From dawn to dusk the leveret lay in the snuggest of couches in the trough between the hills, and when not asleep would watch the reeds waving over the shallows, or the moor-hen, whose nest was on the opposite bank, swim on the open water. One morning he saw her issue from the reed-bed with four fluffy little red-billed creatures following in her wake. This novel sight aroused his curiosity, and when the moor-hen and her brood skirted the little bay near him, he jumped out of the nest and ran to the edge of the water. At that instant a raven flying overhead, on the look-out for food for its young in Bosigran Cliffs, espied him, and the next minute the ominous shadow of the marauder darkened the bright grassy margin, scaring the leveret and making him flee for his life. Quick as the moor-hen and her chicks had dived, before the depredator could transfix him with its powerful beak, he made for the thickest of the rushes, squatted and, though the raven made careful search, escaped. This was the one fright of the happy days spent by the side of the pool. There he got to know the varied voices of nature—the carol of the lark, the scream of the gull, the hum of the insects, the murmur of the wind, and the music of the ripple in the reed-bed; the chief sounds that broke the silence of the upland. From below came faintly at times the bark of the dog, the crowing of the cock, and at night the yelp of the fox, the snarl of the badger, the whurring of the night-jar, and the song of the sedge-warbler. Once he heard, from the direction of the Land’s End cliffs, that mysterious roaring of the sea, which when the farmers hear they say “G’envor is callin’.” His growth was very rapid, and when a month old, a spirit of restlessness and a desire to roam possessed him, and thrice he accompanied the doe in her night rounds and got a knowledge of the lay of the country.
One day at dusk he left the nest and the narrow grassy green amidst the rushes where he had gambolled, and made his way down to the tableland alone. He soon learnt that the country over which he roamed was full of enemies, finding to his surprise that even the rabbits were unfriendly to him. His first form was on a pile of earth in the middle of a field from which the hay had recently been carried. Wild growth luxuriated there, and before he abandoned the heap it was gay with the golden corymbs of the harvest-flower. Thence he could hear the voices of the hoers in the turnip-fields, the rumble of wheels in the near lane, and morning and evening Shep’s bark as he drove the cows to the milking-shed. Lying there all day, his long black-tipped ears flat on his back, and his dark, hazel-rimmed eyes that never wholly closed watchful of every movement in the life around him, the hare was a timorous spy on the ongoings of the farm where he was an unknown guest. For nearly two months he occupied the form undisturbed, but when the clover had grown again bullocks were turned into the pasture to graze, and one morning a lurcher dog that accompanied the farmer on his round, found him in his seat and pursued him so closely across three fields that he would not have escaped its jaws but for the wiles he instinctively used. He did not return to the seat for some days and then, detecting that the stale scent of a dog tainted the ragwort, he abandoned the field altogether, and resorted to another form he had but rarely used in the valley below Sancreed Beacon. It was made amongst withering bracken on a mound skirting a small stream, and dawn always found him sitting in it. To baffle any enemy that might follow his trail, he would run past his form, keeping some twenty feet wide of it, and then double on his foil. When opposite his seat he made a sidelong spring, and then another which took him across the stream to the mound. His eyes, ears, and nostrils satisfying him that no enemy shadowed him, he crept under the arch formed by the drooping fronds and lay concealed until evening. He never failed to take these precautions, and he soon had proof of their necessity. Once, shortly after he was esconced, he heard a slight rustling in some brambles on the opposite bank a little way down stream. Presently a long-bodied creature with dark fur emerged from it. Though short of leg its agility was remarkable, and with its nose to the ground it was evidently in quest of some victim’s trail. It was a polecat, which, on hitting the scent of the hare at the spot whence he had taken his second spring, became terribly excited. As if familiar with the wiles of its favourite prey, the blood-thirsty creature began at once to quarter the ground in its attempt to discover the track. At length in making a wide cast it hit the line, but followed it in a direction contrary to that of the hare and, running heel, disappeared with long bounds through the gap where the Jack had passed less than half an hour before. Soon afterwards the light crept down the hillside, and the hare knew that the chattering, archbacked fiend would not return, that the danger was past. During the time he watched his enemy he never stirred, and had the polecat discovered him he could not have escaped, so helpless were his limbs from a strange terror that possessed them—one which he had not experienced when found by the lurcher. Fortunately for the Jack, his greatest trials did not overtake him until he came to his full strength and had a perfect knowledge of the hills, where in order to avoid his enemies he now made his forms. These he never left—not even during the breeding season—before sundown, when he stole down to the tableland.
Stone Circle at Boscawen-un. [Face page 138.
One dark night he was cropping clover in a field at Boscawen-un, near a circle of stones belonging to a grey past of which no man knows the history. Whilst browsing, he stopped now and again to listen, as was his wont, and anon he heard a cry that made his blood run cold. At first he thought that two stoats were fighting on the other side of the stone wall that bounded the field, but as the horrid noise drew near the gap through which he had come not long before, he stood up on his hind legs and looked towards it. Then he saw not two but five stoats come between the stone pillars where a gate had once hung, and knew at a glance it was his trail they were following. The dread of the weasel is so paralysing that some hares—for, like men, all hares have not the same courage—would have crouched on the ground, or dragged their limbs in lessening circles until their fate overtook them; but not so this little Jack. He was away at once at full speed, and the pack of fiends, sighting him as he passed the rubbing-post near the middle of the field, extended themselves at full gallop and, as they seldom fail, when hunting together, to run down their prey, reckoned they would soon be sucking his blood. If the hare had had only the danger behind to fear, his greater speed would soon have enabled him to out-distance his pursuers, astoundingly fleet of foot though they are for their size. It was far otherwise; for at every gap, at every gate, he paused and snuffed the air for tainted snare or lurking fox, and this allowed the stoats to lessen the space that would else have separated them. So that it gladdened the Jack’s eyes, when he had left the hamlets of Brahan and Crowz-an-Wra behind, to see at last the murky cone of Chapel Cairn Brea rising before him against the scarcely less black sky. Once free of the cultivated land he breasted the hill at his best pace, but on reaching the summit paused near a ruined chantry, to listen. His long ears were pricked to catch the slightest sound that should break the unusual silence.
The night was still as death, as if nature held its breath at witnessing this tragic chase of its own ordering, and before very long the hare heard the weasel-cry coming from the direction where his ascending track lay. At first it fascinated him as it does all his tribe, and he felt inclined to stay and await his fate; but the love of life was too strong within him, and shaking off the paralysing feeling that was numbing his limbs, he set his head in the direction of Bartinney. With his back to the danger, terror seemed to add wings to his feet, and like the wind he went down the eastern slope of Chapel Cairn Brea until he reached the margin of the Lidden’s Pool. Instantly he dashed through the shallows and, losing foothold where the water deepened, swam across it in a slanting direction as he had more than once seen the doe, his mother, do. Having landed, he repeated his usual ruse, and then squatted in a seat in some sedgy growth not a stone’s throw from the clump of rushes where he was born. With the sheet of water, which is some fifty yards wide, between him and his pursuers, he believed he was safe. Indeed, it did not much disturb him to hear them coming down the hill, but when he saw them take to the water, on the black surface of which their glowing eyes showed like green beads, he was filled with dismay. They landed near him, for they had swum straight across the pool, and at once, without staying to shake their wet fur, strove to pick up the lost line, two working the margin one way, and three the other. Presently one succeeded, at the spot where the hare had landed, near the extremity of a finger-like creek, and making a cry, called the rest of the pack, which flew to it. Then together they followed the scent through the belt of rushes and over the sable face of the heather, and coming to the end, spread out like a fan, the while making a chattering noise, and displaying an activity more fiendish than hound-like in their ineffectual attempts to recover it beyond. A stoat which seemed to be the leader, for he it was that came first through the gap and afterwards led the others across the pool, returned on the trail, making short casts on each side of it, and only just failed to find where the hare had landed from his first spring. Wearying at last of his efforts, or fearful of being discovered at daybreak on such a bare expanse of moorland, he uttered a strange cry which summoned the well-disciplined band around him. Less than a minute later the terror-stricken hare, who had watched their every movement, saw the baulked marauders steal away over the shoulder of the hill by a path slightly barer than the ground about it, where a much-used bridle-track had been in the days of pack-mules, before wheels rumbled over the roads that now “ribbon” the countryside.
After this horrible experience it was long before the hare ventured down to the lowlands. Save for an occasional raid on a labourer’s garden at the foot of the hill, he contented himself with the less succulent fare of a farm on the barren upland between Bartinney and Caer Bran. The harder life was not without its compensations. By journeying over the hills in search of food—for at times he would wander far to browse on wild thyme and other tender herbage in sheltered spots of the waste—he got to know his beats as well as the Earthstopper knew every step of the rough ways between the fox-holts. To this knowledge, and to his powers of endurance thus strengthened, he owed his many escapes from greyhounds, which he led by paths that gave him the advantage.
His favourite seat at this time, when persecution had driven him from his old ones, was amongst the sere grasses that grew on an ancient earthwork or “gurgoe” near the summit of Bartinney. In winter-time few bleaker spots can be found than the crest of this Cornish height, to which the scanty herbage clings close like a skull-cap, and on which stonecrop and lichen make nearly as hard a struggle for existence as the hare. Yet for one thing the spot is favoured, inasmuch as it catches the earliest rays of the sun when the slopes are yet grey and the lowlands lie in gloom. This advantage the hare did not fail to utilise. Returning wet from the dew-drenched grasses in the troughs of the hills, he would, before entering his form, stand on the boulder crowning the crest, and dry his fur as a cormorant dries his wings after fishing.
During the great frost before the blizzard he clung to the hilltop, and lay there under the snow, with just a breathing-hole in the side of his white hut. For three days he fed on the shoots of the furze, but at last, hunger dispelling his fears, he ventured down to a mowhay and had his fill of clover from a stack near a dog-kennel. Fortunately, snow fell that night and hid his tracks, so that he was not followed next morning by poachers, as he had been once before despite the long round he took and the various shifts he resorted to for the purpose of throwing them off his track.
“The many musets through the which he goes,
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.”
In snow, storm, and sunshine, the hare clung to the summit of the upland, and but rarely used the form near the pool. Its solitude and the great silence that brooded over it were almost as sweet to him as life itself. Rarely did anything move across the broad slopes he overlooked save the fleeting shadows of the clouds. All the summer through but one man came up the hill—an aged botanist he was, of world-wide fame—who more than once toiled to the top, and the hare got accustomed to the gleam of his big spectacles and the flapping of his long coat-tails, and somehow knew that he was harmless, though his eyes, like those of the men who had sought him with dogs, were always on the ground.
On the dry bank, with the thick grasses to screen him from the hot rays and the sea breezes to fan him, he would sleep through the noontide heat when the lizard left the sparse brake to bask in the sun, and “king-crowner” butterflies flitted above the crest, or settled on the outcropping rocks to open and close their gorgeous wings though there was no eye to admire their beauty. In these neighbours the hare had nothing to fear, nor in the kestrel that hovered over the hill, nor now, in the raven that winged its way high overhead as it crossed from the northern to the southern cliffs.
This happy time lasted until the splendour of the dwarf furze faded, and chill October stripped the storm-bent thorns of foliage; with the advent of the black month (as the ancient Cornish styled November) it came to an end, and the hare was called upon to bear the greatest trial of his life.
About this time there returned to St Just a native of the parish who had made his fortune in the Far West of America. He was brought up as a miner, but the discovery that enriched him was really due to his love of sport. For, tiring of work in a copper-mine, he took to trapping and big game shooting, and one day in following the trail of a grizzly in a remote gully, lit on a shallow creek containing gold. The claim is worked out now; but in some maps of the States you will see, near the Canadian frontier, a small river marked Digory’s Creek. Amongst the cottonwood and spruce trees near its source, in the heart of the Great Divide, the hunter built a log-cabin, hung up his traps, tethered his favourite mare and pack-horse, and devoted his whole energies to “panning out” the gold from the sand. His fortune made, he returned after a long absence to England, settled for a year in Lancashire and attended coursing-meetings all over the country. It was on his native downs that he had first seen a course, and it may be that the sight of a hare before greyhounds kindled old memories, for Digory Strout frequently found himself thinking about his native village and the wild moorland that runs up to it. At last a longing to see the old place got so strong a hold on him that he resolved to yield to it and pay a flying visit to West Cornwall. It was towards the close of a September day that the carriage which had brought him from Penzance reached the high ground above New Bridge, overlooking the scene he remembered so well. To the West, the roofs of St Just Churchtown were outlined against the bright sea; and to the North, grim and unchanged, old Cairn Kenidzhek crowned the bleak moorland and looked down on the lonely farms lying like islands in the waste. Digory gazed on these familiar landmarks with a choking sensation in his throat, and when at length he came in sight of the row of grey cottages where he was born, his eyes filled with tears. The people of St Just who remembered him when he set out as a youth, welcomed him warmly, and he resolved to spend the winter among them. His decision made, he sent for a famous greyhound he had bought, that he might enjoy a few days’ coursing during his stay.
The arrival of the greyhound was an event in the dull life of the parish, and the reason for the interest it aroused is not far to seek. The St Just men, the best of judges on a rich lode of tin and the points of a greyhound, had no sooner cast eyes on Digory’s dog than they recognised what a perfect creature she was. Such a greyhound had never been seen in West Cornwall before; and when it leaked out, as somehow it very soon did, that she had won the Liverpool Cup and had cost Digory Strout a thousand guineas, the St Just men were all agog that a challenge should be sent then and there to Farmer Pendre of Selena Moor, whose famous dog, Beeswing, had carried everything before it the previous season, and turned the heads of the men of Buryan. No doubt a coursing-match might have been amicably arranged by the owners, but unfortunately some of the miners let fall certain taunts which reached the ears of their rivals and stung them into a state of fury. Thus old enmities were aroused, the two parishes became once more involved in a feud, and Farmer Pendre, who was a hot-headed man, singled out Strout as his enemy. Digory drove about the countryside apparently unconcerned, but the feeling between the parishes grew worse and worse; and the constable at Buryan, foreseeing a fray and being anxious to take part in it, sent in his resignation. Matters soon came to a head. A fortnight after the arrival of Fleetfoot, as the greyhound was named, a fight took place inside the Quaker’s burial-ground between a St Just man from Dowran and a Buryan man from Crowz-an-Wra, and the St Just man got badly beaten.
This was a spark that threatened to set the inflammable material of the two parishes in a blaze; and no one knew this better than the manager of Balleswidden mine, who, as soon as he heard the result of the fight, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and went and saw the parson. What happened in the study at the back of the rectory is not known; but, at all events, Parson Grose was seen galloping through the Churchtown before nine o’clock the next morning, and somehow everyone knew that he was on his way to Buryan. When he reached the high ground near Chapel Cairn Brea and could see the road below him, there, to his surprise, was Canon Roulson on his white horse coming uphill on his way to St Just. They met where the parishes meet, and by the boundary-stone they discussed the best means for allaying the animosities of their parishioners.
In the end Parson Grose proposed that Farmer Pendre should send a challenge to Mr Digory Strout, and Canon Roulson as vehemently proposed that Mr Digory Strout should send a challenge to Farmer Pendre. Each advocated the cause of his own parish with great warmth, speaking louder and louder, until Parson Grose noticed a man who was ploughing two fields away stop his team to listen, and then he gave in, certain that the canon would have his own way, if they argued till doomsday. Their interview over, the good parsons mounted their dobbins and galloped home, only to find that Digory and Pendre had gone to Penzance, for it was market-day there. The rivals met at the junction of the St Just and Land’s End roads, and what must they do, after looking daggers at one another, but race all the way to the Western Hotel? In Penzance they moved about the streets until dinner-time with a supporter on each side, and farmers, foreseeing an outburst at the ordinary, flocked to the “Western” in such numbers that sitting-room was hard to find. A chair, however, at one end of the long table was reserved for Digory, who was two minutes late. Strout was the coolest man in the crowded room, and seemed to be enjoying the beefsteak-pie, for he had a second helping; but Farmer Pendre, who sat facing him, spent the time in watching his rival from behind a huge rump of beef. The general conversation, which was fitful from the start, became hushed when the cheese came on, and Digory, who spoke in his ordinary voice, could be clearly heard at the end of the room. As he happened to make some casual remark in which the words “best dog” occurred, up jumped Farmer Pendre and in loud, excited tones exclaimed, “Ef you want to find the best dog, you must look for et outside St Just.”
In the dead silence which followed, all eyes were fixed on Digory, and the waiters moved about on tiptoe. Digory sat turning over Farmer Pendre’s heated words during twenty seconds, which seemed like twenty minutes to the company, then standing up he said, “I hope I do not misinterpret the drift of Mr Pendre’s remark. If he means it for a challenge, I accept it. I am willing that my dog shall run against his on Feasten Monday for any stakes he likes to name.” The emphatic manner in which the company brought their glasses down on the table, making the spoons ring again, showed they approved of Digory’s challenge, which had been uttered in a voice that betrayed no sign of passion.