THE OTTER—_Continued_
THE OTTER AT THE LAKE
THE otter had just landed on the island to eat his last trout before
returning to the cliffs, when the first blast of the horn fell on his
ears. Instantly the fish dropped from his jaws as though it seared them.
It is true that he had heard that penetrating note a few months before
when the foxhounds were drawing the cliffs, and, indeed, a far more
hideous noise from the siren of a steamer whose hull, during a fog,
loomed vaguely within sight as he peeped through a crevice of his holt;
but at these times the ocean lay only four or five fathoms below him,
and, conscious of his safety, he had curled himself up again and stopped
his small ears with his paws. Far different are his feelings as he
crouches under the pampas grass, peering across the lake in the
direction of the Earthstopper. He is quite sure that his enemy knows at
last of his existence and of his present whereabouts, and that the
tooting is meant to alarm him and cut off his retreat to the sea.
Unnerving though the noise is, he decides at once what to do. No thought
of seeking shelter near the lake hampers his resolve to break through to
the cliffs. His powers of stealth and phantom-like movements are all in
his favour, and surely he will succeed in his purpose. Noiselessly he
dives, silently he leaves the water, and steals over the bank to the
dark channel below the moonlit fall, with lithest movements he slips
over the shallows into the pools, his long supple body twisting and
turning with the sudden bends of the narrow stream. In his great hurry
he is nearly on the light ere he can check himself, for the lantern hung
below a sharp angle and a flowering fern hid its rays.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE OTTER. [_Face page 64._]
* * * * *
Quick as lightning, he whips round again, betraying his alarm by
breaking the water. Leaving the stream some thirty yards above he makes
his way aslant the furzy croft to outflank the flickering flame, but oh,
horror! again a terrifying light is there behind a thick bush awaiting
him. He retreats in earnest this time. Ignominious conduct, it cannot be
gainsaid, for a creature with the jaws of a bull-dog, for a creature
heedless of the fiercest lightnings or of the phosphorescent glow of the
waves, and tolerant of the glare of the midsummer sun when basking on
the rocks at the foot of the towering cliffs. He is not, however, at the
end of his resources. Stay at the lake he will not, and why should he?
There are other avenues of escape. In the next valley there is a stone
drain, very safe, though close to a lonely homestead, and he may
possibly reach it before dawn. He knows too well that there is no time
to lose, so leaving the lake he hurries up the hill and gains the crest
of the cairn without mishap. Now why, when every moment is precious,
does he dwell in that clump of bracken near the Giant’s Cradle? and at
what object can he be peering so intently through the fronds? Does a
lantern’s light confront him? or is it, perhaps, the flame of a candle
shining from the keeper’s window in the clearing amidst the pines?
It is no paltry glimmer behind a pane of glass, that holds him there.
Afar off, in the cleft between two dark hills, lines of vermilion streak
the amber East.
Full well the otter knows these harbingers of the sun that will expose
him to the eye of man, whose voice he dreads, whose footfall he shrinks
from, whose smell taints the air and chills the blood. He turns his
lissom head and looks back at the valley of terror. The deep-cut bottom
lies in gloom. Banks, creeks, island and marsh invite him to their dusky
shelter. He can discern tree, bush, reed-bed and the sinuous outline of
the placid lake, as he shifts his gaze from blot to blot of darkest
umbrage. Differences of shade there are, but not a vestige of colour,
save on the dome of a giant pine, the hue of which awakes as he gazes.
Instantly the faint green flush catches his eye, and to the East he
turns his mask again: “umph!” the rim of the sun shows in the trough of
the hills: it is day. Even then he dreads to return to the lake; after
all it is early for man to be stirring and he may reach the drain
unseen. Skirting the plantation he slinks along lanes in the
boulder-strewn gorse, gains the edge of the waste land, and looks over.
A cow is grazing in the rough pasture that runs up to it. He can smell
her sweet breath, but he does not fear her. He is about to jump from the
wall down on the grass and creep along a ditch leading to the drain.
“Shep boay.” It is the shout of the crofter he hears, and then the dog
comes through the open gate and runs up the hill towards the spot where
he is crouching. The cow takes little notice of the noisy lurcher, but
the otter steals back along his own tracks towards the cairn.
The garish hues of furze bloom, lichen and pine stem, the dewdrops that
jewel every blade, disconcert the belated wildling of the night, as with
reluctant steps he steals towards the lake whose shelter instinct has
warned him to shun. It is true that he knows its wild surroundings well,
its hollow banks, its reedy hovers; and this knowledge brings him such
solace as familiar fastnesses bring an outlaw expecting hue and cry
after him. How he wishes, as he decides where to lie up, that the valley
contained one impregnable stronghold, a network of forgotten drains, a
clitter of rocks, a labyrinth of half-flooded mine-workings. He has
reached the foot of the hill, and is stealing like a shadow down the
strand of a little bay athwart which lies a fallen tree. Look! he is
scrambling over the trunk: now he has dived. You will not see him again,
watch you ever so intently. Without once coming up to vent he has
crossed the lake some sixty yards in width and entered, by a submerged
hole in the trunk, the hollow willow on the bank opposite. It is night
in there save for the ray which shoots through a crevice of his
sanctuary, and glows and fades at the will of the trembling leaves
outside. The valley is awakening. The sunbeams that slant over the
lichened cairn now bright as with outcropping gold, bathe stem, leaf and
petal, and dance on the rippled surface of the lake. Hushed, indeed, are
the weird voices of night; but from spinney and brake come the songs of
finch and warbler, moor-hens call amongst the reeds, doves coo in the
pines, and a robin sings on a branch of the willow. Even the midges,
inspired by the joy that moves all creatures at the return of brightsome
day, have resumed their gambols around the gladdening ray up in the
turret of the otter’s lair. Why, look! the old vixen, who had been
puzzled at the midnight tooting, lies blinking at the mouth of her earth
under the gnarled pine on the sunny slope above; but fear possesses the
otter as it never did before. Five years ago—he was a cub then—the
footfall of a coastguard on the cliff above awoke in him the sense of
fear, and from that night he had never been able to throw off the dread
of man that haunted him, that made him steal abroad at dusk and lie
hidden by day. Yet man had never injured him—it was in a life-and-death
struggle with a huge conger that he lost his claw—as far as he knew,
man had never seen him. But fear was his heritage as it was the price of
his freedom. As he lies curled up against the sloping trunk of the
willow he gets a glimmering of what had been a mystery to him—how it
was that some of his tribe had disappeared from their haunts, and why he
had failed to find the skittish little otter with whom he had mated,
though he had sought her everywhere around the coast and along the
streams. A vague apprehension of impending danger kept him awake, and
before the sun was high in the heaven he knew all.