UNDER THE NIGHT.
Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober liv'ry all things clad.
When the embryo poacher has once tasted the forbidden fruits of the
land--and it matters not if his game be but field-mice and
squirrels--there is only one thing wanting to win him completely to
Nature's ways. This is that he shall see her sights and hear her sounds
under the night. There is a charm about the night side of nature that
the town dweller can never know. I have been once in London, and well
remember what, as a country lad, impressed me most. It was the fact that
I had, during the small hours of the morning, stood alone on London
Bridge. The great artery of life was still; the pulse of the city had
ceased to beat. Not a moving object was visible. Although bred among the
lonely hills, I felt for the first time that this was to be alone; that
this was solitude. I felt such a sense as Macaulay's New Zealander may
experience when he sits upon the ruins of the same stupendous structure;
and it was then for the first time I knew whence the inspiration, and
felt the full force and realism of a line I had heard, "O God! the very
houses seemed to sleep." I could detect no definite sound, only that
vague and distant hum that for ever haunts and hangs over a great city.
Then my thoughts flew homeward (to the fells and upland fields, to the
cold mists by the river, to the deep and sombre woods). I had never
observed such a time of quiet there; no absolute and general period of
repose. There was always something abroad, some creature of the fields
or woods, which by its voice or movements was betrayed. Just as in an
old rambling house there are always strange noises that cannot be
accounted for, so in the night-paths of nature there are innumerable
sounds which can never be localised. To those, however, who pursue night
avocations in the country, there are always calls and cries which
bespeak life as animate under the night as that of the day. This is
attributable to various animals and birds, to beetles, to night-flying
insects, even to fish; and part of the education of the young poacher is
to track these sounds to their source.
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I have said that our family was a family of poachers. The old instinct
was in us all, though I believe that the same wild spirit which drove
us to the moor and covert at night was only the same as was strongly
implanted in the breast of Lord ----, our neighbour, who was a
legitimate sportsman and a Justice of the Peace. If we were not allowed
to see much real poaching when we were young we saw a good deal of the
preparations for it. As the leaves began to turn in autumn there was
great activity in our old home among nets and snares. When wind and
feather were favourable, late afternoon brought home my father, and his
wires and nets were already spread on the clean sanded floor. There was
a peg to sharpen, or a broken mesh to mend. Every now and then he would
look out on the darkening night, always directing his glance upward. The
two dogs would whine impatiently to be gone, and in an hour, with bulky
pockets, he would start, striking right across the land and away from
the high road. The dogs would prick out their ears on the track, but
stuck doggedly to his heels; and then, as we watched, the darkness would
blot him out of the landscape, and we turned with our mother to the
fireside. In summer we saw little but the "breaking" of the lurchers.
These dogs take long to train, but, when perfected, are invaluable. All
the best lurchers are the produce of a cross between the sheep-dog and
greyhound, a combination which secures the speed and silence of the one,
and the "nose" of the other. From the batches of puppies we always saved
such as were rough-coated, as these were better able to stand the
exposure of long, cold nights. In colour the best are fawn or
brown--some shade which assimilates well to the duns and browns and
yellows of the fields and woods; but our extended knowledge of the dogs
came in after years.
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The oak gun-rack in our old home contained a motley collection of
fowling pieces, mostly with the barrels filed down. This was that the
pieces might be more conveniently stowed away in the pocket until it was
policy to have them out. The guns showed every graduation in age, size,
and make, and among them was an old flint-lock which had been in the
family for generations. This heirloom was often surreptitiously stolen
away, and then we were able to bring down larger game. Wood pigeons were
waited for in the larches, and shot as they came to roost. The crakes
were called by the aid of a small "crank," and shot as they emerged from
the lush summer grass. Large numbers of green plover were bagged from
time to time, and often in winter we had a chance at their grey cousins,
the whistling species. Both these fed in the water-meadows through
winter, and the former were always abundant. In spring, "trips" of rare
dotterel often led us about the higher hills for days, and sometimes we
had to stay all night on the mountain. Then we were up with the first
gray light in the morning, and generally managed to bring down a few
birds. The feathers of these are extremely valuable for fishing, and my
father invariably supplied them to the county justices who lived near
us. He trained a dog to hunt dotterel, and so find their nests, and in
this was most successful--more so than an eminent naturalist who spent
five consecutive summers about the summits of our highest mountains,
though without ever coming across a nest or seeing the birds. Sometimes
we bagged a gaunt heron as it flapped heavily from a ditch--a greater
fish poacher than any in the country side. One of our great resorts on
winter evenings was to an island which bordered a disused mill-dam. This
was thickly covered with aquatic vegetation, and to it came teal,
mallard, and poachard. All through the summer we had worked assiduously
at a small "dug-out," and in this we waited, snugly stowed away behind a
willow root. When the ducks appeared on the sky-line the old flint-lock
was out, a sharp report tore the darkness, and a brace of teal or
mallard floated down stream, and on to the mill island. In this way half
a dozen ducks would be bagged, and, dead or dying, they were left where
they fell, and retrieved next morning. Sometimes big game was obtained
in the shape of a brace of geese, which proved themselves the least wary
of a flock; but these only came in the severest weather.
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Cutting the coppice, assisting the charcoal burners, or helping the old
woodman--all gave facilities for observing the habits of game, and none
of these opportunities were missed. In this way we were brought right
into the heart of the land, and our evil genius was hardly suspected. An
early incident in the woods is worth recording. I have already said that
we took snipe and woodcock by means of "gins" and "springes," and one
morning on going to examine a snare, we discovered a large buzzard near
one which was "struck." The bird endeavoured to escape, but, being
evidently held fast, could not. A woodcock had been taken in one of our
snares, which, while fluttering, had been seen and attacked by the
buzzard. Not content, however, with the body of the woodcock, it had
swallowed a leg also, around which the nooze was drawn, and the limb was
so securely lodged in its stomach that no force which the bird could
exert could withdraw it. The gamekeepers would employ us to take
hedgehogs, which we did in steel traps baited with eggs. These prickly
little animals were justly blamed for robbing pheasants' nests, and many
a one paid the penalty for so doing. We received so much per head for
the capture of these, as also for moles which tunnelled the banks of
the water meadows. Being injurious to the stream sides and the young
larches, the farmers were anxious to rid these; and one summer we
received a commission to exercise our knowledge of field-craft against
them. But in the early days our greatest successes were among the sea
ducks and wildfowl which haunted the marram-covered flats and ooze banks
of an inland bay a few miles from our home. Mention of our capturing the
sea birds brings to mind some very early rabbit poaching. At dusk the
rabbits used to come down from the woods, and on to the sandy saline
tracts to nibble the short sea grass. As twilight came we used to lie
quiet among the rocks and boulders, and, armed with the old flint-lock,
knock over the rabbits as soon as they had settled to feed. But this was
only tasting the delights of that first experience in "fur" which was to
become so widely developed in future years. Working a duck decoy--when
we knew where we had the decoyman--was another profitable night
adventure, which sometimes produced dozens of delicate teal, mallard
and widgeon. Another successful method of taking seafowl was by the
"fly" or "ring" net. When there was but little or no moon these were set
across the banks last covered by the tide. The nets were made of fine
thread, and hung on poles from ten to twenty yards apart. Care had to be
taken to do this loosely, so as to give the nets plenty of "bag."
Sometimes we had these nets hung for half a mile along the mud flats,
and curfew, whimbrel, geese, ducks, and various shore-haunting birds
were taken in them. Sometimes a bunch of teal, flying down wind, would
break right through the net and escape. This, however, was not a
frequent occurrence.
There is one kind of poaching, which, as a lad, I was forbidden, and I
have never indulged in it from that day to this. This was egg poaching.
In our own district it was carried on to a large extent, though I never
heard of it until the artificial rearing of game came in. The squire's
keeper will give sixpence each for pheasants' eggs, and fourpence for
those of partridges. I know for certain that he often buys eggs
(unknowingly, of course) from his master's preserves as well as those of
his neighbours. In the hedge bottom, along the covert side, or among
broom and gorse, the farm labourer notices a pair of partridges roaming
morning after morning. Soon he finds their oak-leaf nest and olive eggs.
These the keeper readily buys, winking at what he knows to be dishonest.
Ploughboys and farm labourers have peculiarly favourable opportunities
for egg poaching. As to pheasants' eggs, if the keeper be an honest man
and refuses to buy, there are always large town dealers who will. Once
in the coverts pheasants' eggs are easily found. The birds get up
heavily from their nests, and go away with a loud whirring of wings. In
this species of poaching women and children are largely employed, and at
the time the former are ostensibly gathering sticks, the latter wild
flowers. I have known the owner of the "smithy," who was the receiver in
our village, send to London in the course of a week a thousand eggs,
every one of them gathered off the neighbouring estates.
When I say that I never indulged in egg poaching I do not set up for
being any better than my neighbours. I had been forbidden to do it as a
lad because my father give it the ugly name of thieving, and it had
never tempted me aside. It was tame work at best, and there was none of
the exhilarating fascination about it that I found in going after the
game birds themselves.
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