THE OTTER—_Continued_
THE EARTHSTOPPER’S VIGIL
THE sun had gone down over the cairn and night had drawn its curtain
across the lingering afterglow, when the Earthstopper, with a lantern in
each hand and the hunting-horn in his pocket, set out for his ambush in
the bottoms.
He did not pass through the village, but reached the park by an
unfrequented path, and was soon threading his way amongst the trees in
front of the Castle. The stars were out, and the moon, now at its full,
was climbing the cloudless vault and silvering the countryside with its
rays.
“Grand night, couldn’t be better: wonder ef he’s on hes way up,” said
Andrew to himself as he reached the furze-bush on the bank of the
stream, which he had chosen as a hiding-place. After concealing the
lanterns in a bed of nettles and looking round to see that he was not
observed, he forced his way into the prickly bush and lay down at full
length. He was not quite hidden, though he thought he was, as his bright
hob-nailed soles projected a little, and nearly touched the edge of a
footbridge leading to a farmhouse whose gable showed against the sky. To
have a clear view of the ground, with his clasp knife he cut two
peepholes in the furze, through which he could see the rough track on
his left and a smooth pool on his right. An ivy-clad ash cast a deep
shadow on the stream and track, but bright belts of lighted ground lay
on each side of it, and the pool shone like quicksilver. Seldom does the
footfall of wayfarer disturb the silence of the spot at night. About ten
o’clock, however, a country housewife, returning late from market,
trudges past; thoughts of cream neglected during her absence, or of
geese not securely housed from the fox, hurrying her along despite the
heavy basket she carried. Luckily for her, Andrew has got over a fit of
sneezing, and she passes the bush unconscious of his presence. When her
footsteps die away, night and its shy denizens claim the earth for their
own. A rabbit runs along the space between the wheel-ruts and pauses for
a moment on the further bright space. To the Earthstopper its ears are
in a line with a big stone that holds the gate leading into a rough
meadow bordering the stream. The rabbit has scarcely passed out of sight
before a stoat follows, like a murderer on the trail of his victim, and
is lost to view in the shadow of a hedgerow. Nothing escapes the
vigilant eyes of the Earthstopper behind the furze screen, and his ears
are strained to catch any tell-tale sound along the course of the
stream. As yet there is no sign of the otter, and every minute that goes
by lessens the chance of its appearing, for it is nearly midnight now
and dawn is but a few hours off. Wearying a little from the strain of
his vigil and his cramped quarters the old man begins to fear that the
poacher may not be coming, and again it makes him as “vexed as fire” to
remember the iris and the huge print on the silt.
All at once he becomes alert. Nothing has darkened the lighted space but
the tiny shadow of a circling bat: not a ripple has broken the silvery
surface of the pool. What can it be that has wrought this sudden change?
The cry of a moorhen, startled from her nest among the sags some two
furlongs down stream; and if we may judge from his state of excitement,
the Earthstopper must feel pretty confident that the otter is the cause.
* * * * *
[Illustration: LAMORNA SHOWING CAIRN DHU HEADLAND. [_Face
page 52._]
* * * * *
At dusk the otter had left his holt near the base of Cairn Dhu. Ravenous
after the long day’s fast, he hurried down the steep face of the rock,
and reaching a ledge which the waves lashed, dived through the surf in
quest of his prey. The sea teemed with fish, but a ground-swell that
stirred the bottom and discoloured the water baffled his attempts to
seize them. A greyhound might as well have hoped to catch a hare in a
fog as the otter to capture peal in the cove or turbot on the sandy
bottom near the Bucks. Ever vigilant against such raids, the fish were
only scared by the dreaded and indistinct form of the marauder as he
glided past them in the clouded depths. Convinced at length of the
hopelessness of his efforts, the otter landed on the Mermaid Rock to
consider where he should go to get his supper. He is within reach of two
streams and the lake; and their waters are as clear as crystal. Lamorna
stream is close at hand; but the trout, owing to frequent raids on them
since the gale, are very wary. Newlyn stream is some four miles away,
and attracts him because of its larger fish; but what appeals to him
most is the lake with its bright Loch Levens, then in the pink of
condition. It was several days since he feasted on them, for the taint
of human scent on the iris had alarmed him; but, as he rested on the
rock, hunger proved stronger than fear, and despite the distance he
decided to go there, fully intending to be back in some coast fastness
before dawn. By skirting the base of the cliffs, and running along the
shore where a beach invited him, he at length reached the mouth of
Newlyn stream. There was nothing to arouse his suspicions: the last
loiterer had left the old bridge, candles were out, and the moonlit
village lay wrapped in slumber. Passing under the arch, the otter stole
up the coombe, keeping to the shadows of the bushes that fringed the
stream. Within winding distance of the clump of iris he paused, but
detecting no taint, passed between the flags, made his way up the hill,
and dropped down to the Lareggan stream, on the bank of which the
Earthstopper lay in ambush. Threading his way among the reeds at the
upper end of the mill pool, he disturbed the moorhen, but heedless of
her cry, crossed the stream, and pressed on at his best pace towards the
lake. A few moments later—for the creature’s progress was rapid—the
Earthstopper, who has been shifting his glance from track to pool,
becomes as rigid as the stems about him. His gaze is fixed on a shadowy
patch, no bigger than your hand, under the lowest bar of the gate. He
has not a doubt that it is the mask of the otter, for a minute ago that
patch was not there. He tries to make out its long body, but the bars,
and the shadows they cast, conceal it. What dread of its enemy the beast
must have, to hesitate thus on the skirt of this rude track in the depth
of night! It cannot be that it winds the Earthstopper, for the breeze
that rustles the leaves of the ash, fans his flushed face, and stirs his
bushy eyebrows. At length the creature comes noiselessly across the open
space, as if making for the furze-bush, the moonbeams catching the
glossy hair on its arched back, and lighting the dust it raises. Human
eye has never seen it before, so well has it kept the secret of its
existence. In the shadow of the tree it is almost lost to view, and then
as it brushes past the furze, the Earthstopper gets a glimpse of its
long glistening whiskers, and is sorely tempted to lay hold of its
trailing tail. Why it did not wind him is, like other mysteries of
scent, beyond the power of explanation.
Far from being scared back as the Squire feared, the otter, unconscious
of a lurking foe, pursues its way to the lake. Not for some minutes does
the Earthstopper back out of his ambush. “What a beety! ef I can only
keep un up, we shall see summat to-day: ef!” says he under his quick
breath as he brushes himself down with his hands. Then he lights his
clay pipe and tries to calm himself, for he has seldom been more
excited. Unable to stand still, he walks up and down the grassy bank
above the footbridge, as a sailor paces to and fro on a jetty, only more
hurriedly. It is nothing but his nervousness that makes him puff so
vigorously at the ’baccy, that stops him every few minutes to listen.
Not a mouse may move in the hedge or a cricket chirp in the crofts above
without his thinking it is the otter returning, though the raider is at
the time seeking its prey in the depths of the lake and spreading terror
amongst its finny tenants.
At length tired of his pacings, the Earthstopper feels that he must be
doing something towards keeping the otter up. So he gets the two
lanterns, stinging his fingers as he gropes for them. Notice, as he
lights them, the change in his face since we saw him sitting over his
tea. Had he committed a crime he could scarcely look more agitated. Even
his uncertain stride as he moves along the track betrays his
disquietude, and the blind way he stumbles over the wall of the croft is
as unlike him as the smothered oath he vents on the unoffending stones.
One lantern he suspends from a rude granite slab spanning the stream, so
that it hangs within a few inches of the rippling water. The other he
fastens to a branch of a blackthorn on the far side of the croft. This
done he climbs a mound amidst the furze and looks towards the lake now
barely a furlong away. The surface is like a sheet of silver. No glimpse
of living creature does he get, no sound reaches his ears but the voice
of the fall and the song of a sedge-warbler. Retracing his steps he
takes up a position on the rugged slope near the corner of the park.
It was close on two o’clock, judged by the stars, before he took the
horn from his pocket. He might well have postponed blowing it a little
while, but he could stand the strain of waiting no longer. Only by great
self-restraint had he prevented himself from beginning an hour earlier;
for more than once he thought he heard the otter breaking back, and each
time his trembling hand had sought the horn. It was a relief to him when
at last he raised it to his lips.
Now the Earthstopper is deep-chested and sound of lung, and he was so
fearful that the otter might not hear the notes, that he blew with
needless vigour and frequency. How groundless his fears were! In the
stillness those blasts were heard for miles. So near did they seem to
old Jenny at the park gates that she thought they came from the
plantation behind the lodge. The Earthstopper had not handled a
hunting-horn since his boyhood, much less blown one in the dead of
night; and it never entered his head that his noisy proceedings could
alarm the countryside and lead to a breach of the peace between his
harmless neighbours. But so it was. Presently he heard the door of the
farmhouse violently slammed. “Hullo, T’wheela’s movin’ early thes
mornin’.” Certainly, unless the farmer suspected that a poaching
hedgehog was the cause of the falling off in the cow’s milk, it was
early for him to be moving.
Old Jenny and farmer Trewheela, however, are by no means the only
persons in the parish roused by the untimely music, which had made the
Squire’s hunters prick their ears and set all the cocks a-crowing.
“Maddern” Churchtown is less than a mile away as sound travels, the wind
was not unfavourable, and the notes of the horn were so penetrating that
the Earthstopper might nearly as well have been serenading the villagers
from the heaping stock of the “One and All.” Little wonder that the
heavy sleepers were turning under their blankets before he had been
blowing many minutes, and that the old men were lifting their stiff
limbs out of bed and opening their windows.
“What be et, Jim?” said the parish clerk, whose white-nightcapped head
was set in a framework of thatch, to a silver-haired veteran across the
narrow street.
“Caan’t saay, I’m sure. Ef et happened when I wore a boay I should ha’
ben afeerd that Boney had landed.”
Toot, toot, toot. “He’s goin’ for’n braave an’ no mistake. Wonder who eh
es?”
Toot, toot, toot.
By this time heads were sticking out of all the upper windows save one
behind which a poor woman lay sick.
In the street below, Trudger, the constable, whom the first blast of the
horn had stricken with the trembles, was now parading as if the
incessant tooting were as ordinary an occurrence as the midnight chiming
of the village clock.
“Well, doan’t ee hear nawthin’?” said the parish clerk, taking upon
himself, in the absence of the parson, the duty of spokesman. Toot,
toot. “Iss, iss, I hear un right enuf. ’Tes no business o’ mine, ’tes
outside my beat.” Toot, toot, toot. “’Tes in the corner o’ the park, I
tell ee, down below the bastion. I’m sartin on et.”
“No tedn, ’tes over in Paul parish.”
“Ain’t afeerd of the auld Squire and his hounds, are ee?” said a woman
with a shrill voice. “I’ll come wy ee ef thee art.”
At length the constable, stung by many taunts, was driven out by the
force of upstairs opinion, and set off at the rate of about two miles an
hour, to show that he was not to be hurried.
Thus it chanced that the farmer and the constable, attracted by the same
cause, but impelled by different motives, were approaching the
Earthstopper from opposite directions. Trewheela’s naturally high temper
was not sweetened by his sudden awakening out of a dream in which he
found himself selling basket after basket of butter at half-a-crown a
pound, and the way he strode across his bridge augured badly for the
disturber of the peace if the farmer could set hands on him.
Hearing him coming, the Earthstopper, on whom the truth slowly broke,
blew a stirring blast—for was there not the otter to be kept up?—and
hid himself where, without being seen himself, he could see what should
happen. In a very few minutes Trewheela was standing on the very spot
from which the tooting had seemed to come, and a casual observer might
have thought from the eager way he looked here, there, and everywhere,
that he was mightily taken by the landscape. The scene was indeed very
beautiful, and chastened as it was by the silvering rays it would have
calmed many a savage breast. It worked no soothing effect on the farmer,
whose anger at not finding the offender became unbounded. He regretted
that he had not brought his sheep-dog as well as a horse-whip. In all
the impotence of baffled rage he stood still under the shadow of a tree,
but to his great relief soon heard someone stealing along the other side
of the thick-set hedge which separated him from the park. “Ah, the’rt
theere, arta, Maister Boogler? Out of breeth with blawin’, are ee?
Thee’ll be singin’ a defrant toon in a minit, I reckon,” he whispered to
himself with malicious delight as his hand tightened on the handle of
the whip. Within a few yards of where he had been standing was a narrow
gap; and the farmer, who was moving as stealthily as his unlaced boots
would permit, at the same pace as the constable, in making for the gap
nearly trod on Andrew’s head. We will not, however, dwell on the
feelings of the latter, for the constable, undignified as is the way he
is being stalked, claims our attention.
He has had a terrible time since leaving the village. Half-way down the
long avenue he heard, or thought he heard, a light footfall as of one
pursuing him. The more he hurried his steps, the more distinctly he
heard it, and the closer it seemed to be. Near the haunted terrace, just
past the marble statue, the thing, whatever it was, was all but on him,
and he felt inclined to scream. There was another way out of the
difficulty, and this he took. As fast as “regulation” boots could carry
him, athwart the great park he fled to the one outlet he knew of except
the road he came by. Breathless with his efforts he is following the
hedge to find the gap. The farmer is already crouching there.
On the scuffle that followed there is no need to dwell. Little is known
of it, as the combatants have never opened their mouths on the subject,
and Andrew confesses to being so overcome that tears filled his eyes and
prevented him from seeing through the hedge which of the two was
oftenest uppermost. The combat was too furious to last long, and the
opponents rose to their feet after a short time; but not before the
farmer, who had by this worked off some of the rage that blinded him,
had caught the glint of the constable’s buttons.
“What ded ee haave to me with that there whip for?” said the constable
gasping for breath.
“I’ll tell ee what for. Dust a think I be goin’ to have me skull scat
abroad wi’ that theere troonshun of yourn?”
“I must do me dooty, an’ I shud like to knaw what you’m a’ doin’
hereabouts disturbin’ the paace of the parish.”
“What do ee maan? I heerd a most ghastly noise down in the bottoms, an
I’ve coomed out in the middel of the night to see what et es. The
scoundrel what maade that unearthly row ought to be thrashed, an’ I took
thee for un. What was ee a doin’ crawlin’ like a rabbot down the hedge
like this here”—he imitated the movement of the constable—“ef thee’s
nawthin’ to do with et?”
Despite his attempt to put the constable in the wrong there was a
distinct change in the tone of his voice; for visions of Bodmin gaol
floated before his eyes. Fortunately both saw that the least said would
be the soonest mended; and after all, as the farmer would be able to
recover his boots at daybreak, the only damage done was to the
constable’s helmet.
“Well, look here,” said the farmer, “summons me ef thee’s got a mind to,
but thee’ll be the laafin’ stock of the court. Semmen to me, we’ve made
fools won of t’other; but what I do waant to knaw es, who the devil have
been too—tooting ef et edden thee?—Who es eh? and wheere be un gone
to?”
“Dedn thee saa no wan?”
“No wan but thee.”
“Well, I’ve had my own mispicions about who eh es from the furst.”
“Who do ee maan?”
“Don’t et strike ee who eh might be?” said the constable in a chilling
whisper.
“No,” was the whispered reply, after a pause.
“Who do ee maan?”
“Ded ee ever hear tell ef the auld Squire blawed the horn?”
“Man alive, I niver thought o’ thet. Moast likely you’m right. Moore nor
wance my auld woman has wok’ me up in the dead of night to listen to cry
o’ hounds. Passel o’ nonsonce, I’d say, but ’pend upon et her heerd
summat.”
“Good Lor’! wha—what’s thet glidin’ along by they theere trees?”
“Wheere? wheere? Lor’ a mercy. I’m turned cold as a quilkan a’ moast.
Feel my hand.”
The Earthstopper was biting a bit of furze to prevent himself from
exploding with laughter, and fearing he could control himself no longer
he resolved to give them a toot on the horn and to trust to their state
of perturbation for a satisfactory issue.
At a distance of fifteen paces he blew such a blast as otter or hound
has seldom heard.
For a moment farmer and constable were rooted to the spot, then together
they took the gap, but that being small for two big men, they struggled
as violently to get clear of one another as a few minutes before they
had struggled to come to close quarters. Though convulsed where he lay,
the Earthstopper heard the farmer banging at his door, for his wife had
locked him out for her own safety.
A crash of glass which followed drowned the gasps of the constable as he
bounded along Boscathna Lane, scaring the villagers who had come out to
see the fun.
“Well, ef that doan’t keep the otter up,” said Andrew, “nawthin’ will”;
and gathering up the lanterns and putting the horn in his pocket, he
returned home the way he came.