THE FIRST TREK
Not a single night was given up to frogging after the cubs had learnt to
skin their prey. Forthwith the little mother, anxious to make the best
of their time, led them to the moorland waters of one of the tributary
streams to teach them to fish. There she had taken her first litter for
their earliest lessons, and now, as then, she made for the pool above
the old two-arched bridge, which she still thought most suited for a
starting-point. To reach the fishing-ground betimes, she left the morass
with the first shades of night and, crossing the river near the fallen
pine, struck across country towards her destination. Her path led
through the woodland to a waste of furze, and this to the high moorland
which the stream serves to drain. Once on the heathery tableland, otter
and cubs advanced at a rapid pace, and presently hit the track to the
bridge, which they followed, leaving their footprints here and there on
the margin of the shrunken puddles. When nearly abreast of the Giant’s
Quoits, first the otter and then the cubs caught the voice of the
stream. The low murmur was almost lost in the sigh of the night wind,
but grew louder and louder, till soon chattering run and plashing
cascade appeared in the dip below.
On reaching the pool, the otter entered the water with the cubs at her
side, dived, and drove the trout to the shelter of the banks. Thereupon
the cubs, who saw where the fish had fled, fell to drawing the hovers,
thrusting their flat heads into hole and crevice as far as they could
reach. But the trout had found secure recesses, and though a few felt
the lips of the otters, they could not be seized, and all but one
escaped. In the pool at the bend, however, where the bank, hollowed
though it is, affords poor shelter, three were taken. Then the captors,
two on the gravel, the other on a mid-stream boulder, lay at full length
and ate their prey, munching ravenously. The otter seemed to have set
aside her fears since reaching the moor, for never once did she trouble
to listen or even to scan the sable waste around her. All her thoughts
were for the cubs, whom she led from pool to pool, aiding them until
they began to fish for themselves; then she stood aside and watched
them. Trout after trout they caught and devoured along the winding
reaches leading to the long, sullen pool in the midst of the moor, where
the mother, elated by their success, joined merrily in their gambols,
which were kept up until past the usual hovering-time.
Day was on them when they landed and sought the most inviting couches
the bank offered. First the cubs wormed themselves out of sight, then
the otter; and so effectually were all three concealed amongst the rocks
and heather that a kestrel, hovering over the spot, failed to get a
glimpse of their brown forms, and flew on without a suspicion of their
presence. Nevertheless, the open bank, though it had a marshy tract on
one side and a deep pool on the other, was an insecure lodging, so that
it was only because the moorland afforded no better that they returned
thither on the morrow. After that the otter, jealous for the cubs’
safety, made some five miles downstream, where the holts amongst the
roots of withy and alder were strong and sheltered from the rain that
had rendered the upland hovers so uncomfortable on the second day. It is
true the trout were scarce, but this mattered little to the otters, for
eels, their favourite prey, were abundant. Amongst them was a very large
one which, on being gripped by the male cub, coiled itself round his
neck and threatened to strangle him. In this predicament the otter,
after a short struggle, made for the bank and rolled amongst the fern
and bramble to free himself of his antagonist. Finding this of no avail,
he shifted his grip to a point nearer the head and, using the terrible
force of his jaws, broke the back of the eel, and so got rid of it. This
fish had been captured in the shallows, but for the most part the eels
were only to be had by turning over the big stones under which they
darted at sight of their pursuers. The young otters eagerly joined their
mother in dislodging their prey and catching them when they bolted. The
swiftness of the animals in this pursuit was amazing, and no less so the
quick turning movements in which rudder and fore-paw were both brought
into play. Indeed the long, lissom, tapering creatures resembled huge
eels, and might have been mistaken for eels but for the bubbles which
rose to the surface and marked their course.
The otters kept to this part of the stream for nearly a week—that is,
until the freshet which had caused the run of eels subsided, and
rendered a change of quarters necessary. They then betook themselves to
the main tributary on the opposite bank, three miles above the morass;
but finding that some other otters had disturbed the water in front,
they pressed on, and at length came up with them where the stream winds
sluggishly through a swampy bottom. Two were fishing in the stream, the
rest in the marsh; but presently the whole party came into view, and as
they trotted along the bank were seen to be four well-grown cubs with
their dam, old and slightly grizzled. They all went on in company, but
as day approached drew only the best pools, and gave up fishing
altogether after striking the trail of the moorman who had forded the
stream at sundown. Indeed on finding the dreaded taint of man there was
quite a stir amongst them, especially amongst the cubs, who kept close
alongside their mothers, and wondered where harbourage was to be found
on the seemingly bare upland to which they were being led. At length the
scared creatures sighted the weedy lakelet where the stream rises and,
just as the rim of the sun showed gained the shelter of the reeds that
fringed it.
The day proved intensely hot and still, with not a breath to ripple the
surface or freshen the stifling air of the brake where the otters lay
panting until dusk fell and allowed them to quench their tormenting
thirst without fear of detection. Then, leaving their quarters, the two
families travelled together till, after crossing two naked hills, they
came to a rushy flat, lined with sour watercourses, where the trail
forked, and there they parted company.
The otter was bound for the head-waters of the tributary nearest the
source of the river, and soon after midnight reached the boggy gathering
ground with its network of runnels and chain of pools in which she and
the cubs fished until the stars began to pale. Then the hunters in
single file made along the slender stream for the basin below the fall,
sporting together till the sun rose over the distant sea and flooded the
upland with its beams. The otter, usually observant of the first signs
of dawn, seemed not to heed the golden light, even when the cubs began
to grow uneasy and to shoot reproachful glances at her for keeping them
abroad at so late an hour. But she needed not to be reminded of her
duty. She knew they ran no risk in that untrodden spot; indeed on
leaving the pool she stood on the bank to gaze across the dew-spangled
waste and then at the gilded crags of Lone Tarn, before at length
withdrawing to a clitter some half-mile down the stream.
There the dark recesses of the pile of rocks proved a welcome retreat to
the cubs, and with the music of the waters for a lullaby they soon fell
asleep. They hovered there again on the morrow; after which they
continued on their journey laying up under the bank of the wide pool
where the stream joins the river.
At setting-out time the otter seemed half-minded to follow the river to
its source, for she kept looking towards the lone hill where it rises;
but presently—the lowness of the water probably weighing with her—she
decided to go downstream, summoned her cubs and trotted across the bend
to the head of the long rapids, where they entered the water and drifted
with the current. At dawn they sought a rabbit-burrow on the river-bank
so near the woods that the cubs, who lay by the mouth of one of the
holes, could hear the pigeons cooing. The retreat was safe and very dry,
and would have left little to desire if the rabbits had taken no notice.
But the timid creatures, thoroughly alarmed at the presence of the
otters, stamped almost without intermission and prevented their
uninvited guests from sleeping. At noon the otter, annoyed beyond
endurance, rose and chased the rabbits along the tunnels; but this only
made them worse. After that the drumming was kept up in every level, and
made the visitors long for night. So at early dusk, after another raid
on the persecutors, the otters slid down the bank into the water and let
the stream take them along reach after reach until they were far into
the wood. All the way they never ceased to scan the banks; they seemed
to suspect an enemy behind every tree, but surely without sufficient
cause. At one spot the green eyes of a fox watched them as they passed,
otherwise they floated along unnoticed save by the bats flitting up and
down the dark spaces beneath the overhanging boughs. On reaching the
fallen pine they began to fish, and so continued all the way to the
salmon pool, where they sported till dawn drove them again to the
morass.
During the weeks that followed they kept to the neighbourhood of the old
nursery, lying up for the most part under rocks and tree-roots at the
water’s edge, but occasionally in the morass itself. It was whilst
couching there that the otter, alarmed by the continued fall of the
river and the exposure of the mouths of the strongest hovers, suddenly
resolved to make for the tidal waters, whose holts are unaffected by
droughts, and where she could teach the cubs many new lessons. She first
thought of going down the river to the estuary, but changed her plans
almost at the last moment and determined to make for a creek where she
had had good fishing with her mate, the father of the cubs. The
destination was two good marches distant, but she knew a stronghold by
the way where they could lodge, and from which they could easily reach
the creek on the following night.
In her anxiety to gain this refuge before dawn, she left her couch in
the reed-bed at early dusk and, full of her purpose, made for the old
hover where the cubs always slept when in the morass. Hearing the faint
rustle of the herbage as she approached, the quick-eared creatures left
the nest, and when she came up, fell into their place at her side.
Leading past the pool to the river, she crossed it and headed towards
the woodman’s cottage. The rapid pace at which the animals travelled
soon brought them within sight of the low, thatched building beneath its
sheltering oak, but as nothing stirred they passed close to the garden
fence and into the gloom of the pines beyond.
A happier little band of nomads could not be found than the otter and
her cubs, quite unsuspicious of danger, though they were running
straight into its jaws. At a sudden turn of the mossy track where rocks
contract the way they came face to face with Venom, the woodman’s
terrier. Venom was returning from a badgers’ sett which he visited
whenever he could slip away unobserved, and his begrimed and
bloodstained condition told how severe had been the fray between him and
one of the badgers. He looked a woebegone mongrel as he limped along on
three legs; but the instant he found himself face to face with the
strangers he forgot his fatigue and flew at the otter’s throat with a
fury that threatened to make short work of her. He soon discovered,
however, that he had caught a Tartar. The shaking he gave her had little
other result than further to exhaust himself, while the otter began
punishing him about the face and shoulders, making her teeth meet at
every bite. Besides inflicting severe wounds, she was actually pushing
the dog back, and after a prolonged tussle was clear of the rocks and
close to a fallen tree from which the terrified cubs were watching the
fray. Another scrimmage here took place, even longer and fiercer than
the first: then the dog hesitated to renew the fight and stood on the
defensive. Thereupon the otter, whose one thought was escape, joined the
cubs and made off. The sight of their retreat was, however, more than
Venom could stand, and they had scarcely disappeared before he was in
pursuit. On overtaking them, he laid hold of the male cub, probably
mistaking him for his mother. With a viciousness that belied his
cubhood, the young dog-otter closed with his first assailant, and would
have made a brave fight had he been allowed to conduct it alone. But he
was not. Like a tiger the mother fell on the terrier, and it looked as
if the dog would be cut to pieces. His one thought, however, was to
destroy the vermin, and instead of drawing off as he might have done at
the foot of the steep slope, down which they fell rather than rolled, he
actually closed again, fought to the edge of the pool there, even held
on to the otter when she dived, and kept his hold until his lungs were
exhausted. Then he let go, but on coming to the surface he did not make
for the bank. He swam round and round, looking for his enemy, and only
when he had lost hope of viewing her again did he land at last. On being
freed from his grip, the otter had made her way close along the bottom
to the upper end of the pool, where the cubs were waiting for her among
some rushes. From their shelter mother and cubs now watched the
movements of their puzzled foe, who began examining the banks of the
pool. When he came near, they sank almost out of sight, their nostrils
alone showing, and so remained until he had time to pass; then the otter
raised her head to reconnoitre. Once as she did so she found the terrier
standing within a few yards, but looking so intently in another
direction that he failed to sight her; whereupon she sank again as
noiselessly as she had risen, not leaving even her nostrils exposed. A
score of times, at least, did the dog make the circuit of the pool; and
had he been able to scent the otter—a thing which but few dogs can
do—he must at least have driven them from their shelter, and possibly
from the pool, for it was very small. Yet, insensible though he was to
the scent, he was so convinced the animals were there that, after
departing, he actually came back and looked again before taking himself
off for good and leaving the otters free to resume their interrupted
march.
For three hours they had been detained, and now, hurry as they might, it
was impossible to reach the cairn before daybreak. Indeed, they were yet
two miles away when the ridges above them were touched by the risen sun.
To add to their troubles a magpie espied them, and though they were
strange to him as to the terrier, he knew they were nightlings with no
right to be abroad after sunrise, and mobbed them as he would have
mobbed a leash of foxes. Under the brambles and osmunda ferns they were
hidden from the pest, but in the open he had them at his mercy and, now
fluttering just beyond their reach, now hopping from branch to branch of
rowan or alder or wild-cherry, he annoyed them with impunity. At last
they came to the foot of the slope at the head of the ravine threaded
the furze as fast as their pads could carry them, reached the pile of
rocks, and one by one disappeared through the narrow crevice near its
base. The magpie, however, instead of flying off, perched on the
pinnacle of the cairn and, with his head knowingly cocked on one side,
watched for their reappearance. Long, long he waited, but as the
creatures made no sign, he tired, took wing, flew down the ravine past
the precipice where the ravens had their nest, and regained the wood of
which he was so vigilant a sentinel.
The persecuted beasts soon forgot the magpie, but the terrier had left a
deeper memory, and all three were long in falling asleep. The otter,
indeed, was still awake at noon, when a weasel threaded the way to the
heart of the cairn, and, poking his snake-like head round the angle of
rock, saw the curled-up forms of the animals whose scent had drawn him
thither. But a single peep satisfied his curiosity, and he went out into
the blazing sunlight, fragrant with the perfume of the furze. Then the
mother otter slept like the cubs.
The ravine was weird with the shades of night, raven and magpie were
asleep, when the nomads left the cairn and took to the trail. Like three
shadows they stole over the crest above and entered the covert. In the
silence of that still, sultry night they might have been heard forcing a
way where the furze was densest, and presently they emerged from the
lower edge, and, traversing a strip of open ground where a rabbit was
feeding, came to a stream. This they crossed by springing from rock to
rock, the otter first and the male cub last. In the same order they
threaded the oak coppice that clad the opposite steep, and made their
way over the craggy summit that crowned it. And so they passed stream
after stream, surmounted ridge after ridge of the wild watershed, and
gained the outlying spur where the cultivated lowland lay before them.
It looked like a sombre, blurred plain unrelieved by water, until the
moon rode clear of the clouds and revealed the winding reaches of the
tidal creek for which they were bound. Their destination was yet a good
way off, but as the going was now very easy the tireless creatures
covered the fields at a swinging pace. The pastures seemed strange to
the cubs; stranger still the sheep and cattle, asleep at such an hour
without a bush to hide them; but leaving them lying there, the otters
kept straight on. A homestead rose almost across their trail; the trail,
however, had been traced ages before the buildings were raised or even
the land was broken, and though disturbed by spade and plough a thousand
times, it was still the otters’ way, so mother and cubs kept to it
faithfully, past the snow-white hawthorns and into the rickyard, where
they stayed to roll and dry their coats, wet from the mowing-grass. The
stamping of a horse’s feet sent them off before they had finished; but
what alarmed them much more was a scarecrow in a top-hat standing
amongst the growing corn. The suspicious creatures gave a wide berth to
this horror, and kept looking back to see whether it was following,
until presently they caught the scent of water; then they never gave it
another thought.
In their eagerness to reach the fishing-ground they increased their pace
across the three enclosures that separated them from it; but at the
sight of the smooth, broad creek the cubs stood and gazed, till a call
from their mother reminded them there was no time to be lost. So they
made down the bank and over the beach to join her on the rocky foreland,
round which the current was eddying. Together they dived and scoured the
sandy bed in search of prey. In her anxiety to secure supper, the otter
soon got separated from the cubs, who, through inexperience, wasted
their efforts in vain pursuit of the bass instead of questing for the
flat-fish that were to be had for the finding. In the end they tired
without having obtained a meal. The last time they landed they were near
the wooded island where the herons build, a long way from the point
where they took to the tide, and it was whilst lapping the water of a
runnel there that they heard their mother’s call from far down the
creek. At once they hurried along the strand, answering as they ran, and
even after they had taken to the flood they repeated their shrill
whistlings until they reached her side. To their delight, a big
flat-fish lay at her feet, its white underside uppermost. The smell of
the prey, strange though it was, so pleased them that their nostrils
twitched with anticipation. Indeed, the flounder was an appetizing
morsel for creatures sated with eels and trout, and soon all three were
busy devouring it. They were not long over the feast, but they had
scarcely finished when the grey light stealing across the creek drove
them to a cave in the overgrown bank.
This was not a hover suddenly chanced on, but a much-frequented place of
call that the otter intended making for when she left the cairn. The
dank vault had been occupied the day before, as was evident from the dry
place on the slab, but it was untenanted then, save by a few bats
hanging from the low roof, and it afforded the new-comers the
accommodation they required. The mother chose the ledge close to the
landing-place, whilst the cubs scrambled to a shelf above, along the
rude way worn in the slaty wall by generations of their tribe. Before
curling up for the day, the otters, as was their wont, teased with their
claws every bit of under-fur, and removed the thorns and furze-spines
about which it had matted. Then, liking the taste of the salt water,
they licked themselves until their glossy coats were as smooth as satin.
As soon as their toilet was finished they settled down to sleep, and so
soft was their breathing, so thoroughly did their dark pelt harmonize
with its surroundings, that there was nothing to betray their presence
except eyes which glowed in the sombre light until the lids closed and
hid their amber fires.