EARLY TRAINING
When the cubs were a little over eight weeks old, their mother resolved
to take them to the pool and teach them to swim; so one starry night at
setting-out time she led the young creatures—overjoyed, as their
excited antics showed, at this new departure—to the brow of the rising
ground, till then the boundary of their narrow world. There, whilst the
otter stood and reconnoitred, the eyes of the cubs wandered wonderingly
from slope and rushy hollow to the woods across the ravine, where a
vixen was squalling. As no danger threatened, dam and whelps made for
the faintly silvered pool lying so still and silent in contrast with the
river that ran brawling along its boulder-strewn channel. On reaching it
the mother swam slowly out, turning her head the while as if to invite
the cubs to follow her, landed on the islet and, in order to work on
their feelings and draw them across the water, hid herself amongst the
withered sedge. This was not without its effect, as the cries of the
cubs showed; yet, distressed though they were at the separation, they
were afraid to commit themselves to the pool and try to join her.
Thereupon the otter swam back to within a few feet of the foreland where
the shrinking creatures stood and, wheeling slowly, returned again to
the islet, calling as she went.
This she did many times, employing every wile she knew to coax them
after her; but all in vain. For three nights, despite all her pains, she
failed to tempt them beyond the shallows. At last, just when she was
about to put them out of their depth, the smaller cub overcame its
hesitation, waded till it lost foothold, then swam bravely across,
landed with a little wriggling jump, and sent the spray flying from
every silky hair along the fourteen inches of its length, as it shook
itself before rolling on the sedge to dry its coat more thoroughly. The
male cub, who had watched her every movement, was now beside himself at
being left alone, and after running for some time up and down the bank,
uttering the most piteous plaints, followed the others across and dried
his fur as his sister had done. Presently they all swam back to the
foreland. Before returning to the hover, they crossed and recrossed four
times more; and once even, in the absence of the otter, who was away
foraging, the cubs crossed alone.
From this night their fear of the water abated, and soon, with scarce a
ripple to mark their smooth progress, they were able to accompany their
proud mother in her circlings round and round the pool. When the smaller
cub tired, the otter slackened her pace, sank very low, took it on her
back, and carried it to the shallows; but the male cub always had to
take care of himself. The subsequent improvement was very rapid, and at
the end of a week so fond did they become of the water that when
released from the hover they scurried to the pool in advance of their
mother, stumbling and falling as they ran in their eagerness to reach
it.
Being full of the young creature’s love of ‘hide-and-seek,’ they often
concealed themselves before she came up. On hearing her approach, they
drew their heads beneath the surface until only their nostrils showed
and, though thrilling with excitement, kept as motionless as the alder
snags about them until discovered. Then mother and cubs joined in play,
disporting themselves at times on the surface, but more often in the
depths. Presently they would rise, locked together as if in deadly
struggle, and roll over and over like a water-logged ball in a current.
All at once, and frequently whilst immersed, they would break up, land,
and make the circuit of the banks, passing one another as though they
were utter strangers, and then suddenly, as if by signal, take to the
water again and resume their mimic warfare. Once whilst they were thus
engaged the whistle of an otter reached them from the river. In a
twinkling they stayed their gambols, and, floating side by side,
listened until the call grew faint as the traveller passed up the
valley; then they fell again to their romps.
Wonderful ease and grace marked their movements in the pool, and still
more in the streams and eddies of the river, to which the otter lost no
time in taking them. They spent hours shooting the rapids below the
salmon pool, landing at the end of the long run where the rush of water
loses its force, and regaining the head of the current by climbing the
rocky bank. So attractive did this diversion prove that but for their
mother’s restraint the eager creatures would have left the nest for the
river long before it was safe to be abroad. Once, indeed, overborne by
their importunities, she so far yielded as to lead them out before the
afterglow had paled; but this concession only made them more exacting.
On the morrow they would have her release them the moment the sun dipped
below the crest and the shadow of the upland fell on the morass. But she
turned a deaf ear to their entreaties and, when they became
insubordinate and attempted to force a way past her, punished them with
many sharp nips and kept them back.
She was also much troubled at this time by their refusal to eat the fish
with which she had been doing her best to tempt them. It mattered not
whether she offered them samlet, trout, or eel, they turned from all
alike, and it seemed as if they would never be brought to touch any.
Nevertheless she persisted, till one night, on the bank of the deep pool
below the rapids, the male cub took a trout from her mouth, and the next
night, just before dawn, his sister did the same. Their aversion to
solid food once overcome, they would chatter over the new diet as if to
testify to the pleasure they found in the exercise of their newly
acquired taste, or even hiss angrily when their savage passions were
stirred by the wriggling or quivering of the fish in their grip. They
held the prey between the fore-paws, slicing off delicate morsels with
their pearly teeth, and champing them fine before swallowing. Most
remarkable was the way they set about eating two of the fish their
mother provided for them. With the trout they began at the head, but in
the case of the eel they attacked the part below the vent, leaving the
upper portion untouched.
This fish diet produced a most significant change: the cubs became
fierce, and at the same time fearful. No longer was any restraint needed
to keep them to the nest or to the holts in the river-banks, where they
occasionally lay; no longer had the mother any difficulty in getting
them to obey the dawn-cry and follow whither she led. Henceforth the
sense of dread lay on their lives like a shadow and deepened with their
development. It was seen in their readiness to crouch or make for the
water at any strange sound, in their suspicion of any strange object. A
bottle left on the bank by the water-bailiff caused them to take a wide
détour, and the snapping of a stick under the foot of a lumbering badger
nearly frightened these noiseless movers out of their wits. Once a
thunderstorm terrified them with its vivid flashes, and one day even a
brilliant rainbow was a source of alarm, until their mother awoke and
showed no concern.
These trifling scares were followed towards the close of March by an
incident they never forgot—an incident which caused the otter even
greater consternation than it caused the cubs. It happened late one
afternoon. The male cub had awakened from his second sleep and, with
head resting on his mother’s flank, sat looking at the light fade over
the wind-swept morass. During a lull an unaccountable rustling in the
reeds caught his ears and brought him to his feet. The startled movement
aroused his mother and sister, and in a trice all three otters were
watching from behind the grass screen for a sight of the noisy intruder.
The next instant they saw a fox, bedraggled almost beyond recognition,
stagger from the reeds, drop from the bank to the stream, lap, raise his
head and listen, lap again, then toil with bog-stained body and sodden
brush up the opposite bank and pass from view. He could not have got far
beyond the river, for which he seemed to be heading, before a hound came
in sight, then two more, followed almost immediately by the body of the
pack, which poured over the brow of the upland and streamed down a gully
towards the morass. Soon they had disappeared, but whine after whine
reached the otters’ ears, mingled with the crashing of the brake as the
pack approached the stream and swept by full in their view. Some minutes
later two yapping, bog-stained terriers crossed, and then the morass
resumed its wonted calm. All this the otters had watched, hissing
through their bared teeth, eyes starting from their sockets, and hair
bristling erect on their thick necks: even when all was quiet again a
great dread still possessed them. Their feral nature had been stirred to
the depths, and they listened and listened, though no sound reached them
save a faint toot of the horn. Setting-out time came and went, but the
otters did not stir, till at length, taking heart from the owls, who
filled the wood with their wild hooting, they stole down to the river.
The otter fished, but not a moment was given to gambolling, and long ere
the woodman’s bantam heralded the day the scared creatures sought
harbourage in the branches of a fallen pine whose top lay half immersed
in the river. Hidden amidst the flotsam caught by the boughs, with the
deep pool just below them, they felt safe, and at length slept as
soundly as they had done in the morass.
They repaired to the same hover the next day and the day following. In
their waking hours they would watch the eddying water and rising trout,
and at times cast a glance at the belt of timber beyond, as if attracted
by the crimson blossom of the elms. Not only did the flowering of forest
tree tell of the passing of winter, but green shoots of flag and reed
shyly whispered the same story, and wild daffodils in glade and dell
proclaimed it. A gold-crest in the tall fir had begun laying her tiny
freckled eggs; a throstle on the lone poplar by the pool sang to his
mate guarding her turquoise treasures by the river’s bank, while the
ravens up the face of the cliff were already busy feeding their young.
Day by day, as the sun grew stronger and the west wind blew, the
sycamores unfolded their fresh green leaves, and soon, the woodland
over, all the buds, responsive to the quickened underworld, opened to
greet the spring.
[Illustration: _Photo F. Frith & Co., Reigate._ To face p. 18.
THE RIVER BELOW THE MILL.]
At the close of a hot day, when every furry wildling had felt its coat a
burden, and longed for sundown and the drinking-place, the otter, who
had been gradually extending her nocturnal rambles, took the cubs three
miles down the river to a point where a part of the water is diverted
into a tranquil mill-stream. Along its bank she brought them to the gate
leading to the mill-yard, where all three stood and listened momentarily
to the croaking of the frogs in the meadow beyond. Then they slipped
under the low bar, crossed the yard, skirted the house, and hurried
towards the ditch from which the noise proceeded. The croaking ceased on
their approach, and before the otter entered the water every frog had
sought a hiding-place at the bottom. The otter had scarcely dived before
she was out again with two frogs in her mouth. These she skinned and
gave to the cubs. Finding the morsel toothsome, and learning that if
they wanted more they must fish for themselves, they joined in the easy
pursuit, and for the first time in their lives satisfied their hunger
with prey of their own taking.
Finally, they quarrelled like little tigers over a frog, of which each
claimed possession, and so loud a chattering did they make that the
miller got out of bed and opened his window to learn the cause of the
disturbance. The creak of the sash silenced and alarmed them, and the
next instant they and their mother were heading for the river at their
best speed. An hour later the raiders started to return home by a route
that took them wide of the mill where the danger lurked, thus reaching
the morass without mishap; and the otter soon fell asleep, but the cubs
lay awake thinking of an incident of the night. It was not the frogs
that occupied their thoughts, not the bare yard or the fearsome trail
across it, but the night-capped monster whom they still pictured as he
appeared at the window.