SEA AND MARSH
The otters landed opposite a white buoy, and, to pass the time till the
fish came in, played about on the rocks that strewed the shore. When the
tide had covered most of them, the otter set out to reconnoitre, and had
not been gone long before she summoned the cubs to join her. At the
signal they took to the water, and soon reached the spot where she
awaited them. On seeing her excitement they became excited too, dived
the instant she did, and the three, swimming in line abreast, soon
viewed the prey. It was but the merest glimpse they got of half a score
tails, for the fish, finding there were three otters, wheeled round in
affright and fled before their advance. At this timid manœuvre, so
favourable to their purpose, the otters, eager though they were to seize
the prey, rose to vent, and on resuming the chase came on the alarmed
mullet in a fathom of water. Further retreat meant certain capture, and
the mullet—craftiest of all the finny tribe—knew it. So the little
school of fish made a dash for the deeper water, and, as the otters
flashed up from beneath to seize them, scattered, leaping wildly to
avoid the fatal grip. The confusion of that moment taxes description,
but one detail stands out clear—the effort of the otter to reach the
leader in its leap for life. She did indeed lip it, but no more; and the
fish, which in its fall splashed the water into ripples of silver, got
right away and resumed the lead of the retreating shoal. A few scales
only remained to mark the scene of the fray, and the chagrin of the
otters was complete when, on drawing the rest of the water blank, they
realized that every mullet had escaped.
The disappointed hunters landed through the maggoty seaweed which had
attracted the fish, and making their way along the stream that flows
into the creek, reached the mill where the otter intended to hover. To
her dismay she found the holt behind the wheel in possession of another
otter with cubs, and quite young ones, as she could tell by their
squeals. It was a difficult situation, for day was near; but she was
equal to it. Without losing an instant, she hastened back along her
trail towards the only other lodging she knew within easy reach—a hole
in the wall of the quay. They might be detected whilst making for it, so
the mother scanned the sleeping port from the end of the promontory
before committing herself to the open; but as nobody stirred, the three
made across the estuary straight towards it. When they were about
mid-passage, where the tide ran strongest, a big fish leaped clear of
the water and fell with a resounding splash. It was a salmon. The cubs
turned their questioning eyes on their mother, but she gave no heed. She
was filled with anxiety lest the hole in the quay should prove to be
beyond their reach. High above the water though it was, she herself
entered it easily, for she could throw herself out of the water almost
like a seal; but, as she had feared, the cubs fell back again and again.
The whistling of the distressed creatures must have been audible to
anyone on the quay. An old man was, indeed, there, putting out the green
light which had frightened the cubs as they crossed, but he was as deaf
as his ladder, and before he approached the edge to see how high the
tide had risen, they had made their greatest effort and gained the
shelter of the masonry.
That day they hardly slept a wink. They were within earshot of the
busiest spot in the port, and every one of the varied sounds that
reached them was a cause for fresh anxiety. To the ceaseless pacing to
and fro of hobbler and pilot there was soon added the shout of the
fish-hawker, the bell of the town-crier, and other sounds of trade,
varied towards noon by the squeakings of Punch and Judy, the yelping of
Toby, and the roars of laughter that punctuated their performance—a
strange hullabaloo indeed for the shy wildlings that had been reared in
the quiet of the desolate moorland, where only the calls of bird and
beast reached them; and many a time through the trying hours they longed
to be back in the morass, under the cairn, or in the cave now so far
back on the trail. Welcome at last to their eyes were the dying rays
that fired the windows of the cottages across the harbour; doubly
welcome the departure of the last fisherman from the quay-head. His
footsteps had scarcely died away when the otters slid down the face of
the wall into the water and, threading the moorings of the boats above
them, rose to the surface in the fairway. Three dark spots that to the
man leaning over the side of the brigantine might well have seemed three
corks, showed where the otters swam noiselessly towards the
harbour-mouth.
After they had passed the last buoy and, indeed, covered most of the
mile that separated them from the lighthouse, they learnt that they were
not the only creatures abroad that fine summer night. Barely a furlong
could have separated them from the castles that once guarded the narrow
entrance when they caught sight of some monsters whose noisy breathing,
growing louder and louder as they drew near, might well have proved most
terrifying to the easily scared cubs, had not their mother’s
indifference convinced them they had nothing to fear; and presently
mother and cubs were among the shoal of porpoises, the great backs of
which gleamed as they showed above the waves. The mother knew the errand
of these corsairs, and understood that they were raiding the salmon that
the flooded river had attracted from the offing. Awakened memories of
great chases in the pools and of feasts on the banks flashed across her
brain as she swam, and before she set foot on the point opposite the
lighthouse she resolved to complete the round with as little delay as
possible and regain the upper reaches of the river, where she could
teach the cubs how to weary out the fresh-run fish and bring them to the
bank.
But the lesson she had come to give the cubs in the sea itself was not a
whit less important, she thought, as she watched their wonderment on
beholding the vast liquid plain that stretched out to no shore their
piercing gaze could discern. Streamlet, pool, river, creek, estuary—all
in turn had been cause for astonishment, but on the ocean they looked
with awe. And it was theirs to fish in. In the recognition of this
spacious hunting-ground the timid creatures quite forgot the terrors of
the quay, which had but momentarily passed from their minds in the
presence of the porpoises, and the next minute they were following in
the wake of their mother as she swam towards the Gull Rock in the midst
of the cliff-skirted bay. Bravely the cubs faced the waves, and bravely
they battled with the surf through which they landed; then they looked
to their mother to direct them how to fish in the deep water by which
they were surrounded.
They had not long to wait. After a glance at the birds on the ledges
above her head, she dived; both cubs instantly dived, too, and putting
forth all the strength of their hind-legs, they succeeded in keeping her
in sight along the spiral course by which she made her way down and down
to the bottom, full six fathoms below. To their surprise, they found the
bed of the sea alive with tiny shell-fish, which they spurned here and
there as they quested. On their left rose a wall of rock, in turning the
point of which they came face to face with a turbot, that the otter
seized and bore writhing to the surface. The cubs, who rose with her,
kept gripping the fish as they swam, and by the time they reached the
landing-place it had ceased to struggle. Then all three settled down to
the feast. Nothing but the tail and backbone remained when they again
took to the water. This time they made the circuit of the rock, and the
male cub, rising from beneath, seized a pollack, carried it in triumph
to a reef just a-wash with the tide, and there consumed it. Before he
had quite finished, the other cub, and later, the otter, were busy
devouring wrasse they had taken. When they had eaten their fill, the
young otters amused themselves in capturing fish which they no longer
needed but left uneaten; and it was over these abandoned spoils that the
gulls clamoured at dawn, whilst the otters lay in a cave they had
entered by a submerged mouth at the foot of the cliffs. Curled up in
pits on the sand above the line of flotsam, with the roar of the sea to
lull them, the cubs soon dropped asleep; but the mother, her thoughts on
the big silvery salmon, lay awake making her plans, till at length she,
too, yielded to her fatigue and slept like the cubs.
Night had fallen when the otters stole through the outlet, left half
uncovered by the ebb, and swam with rapid strokes for the head of the
bay. They were off to a new fishing-ground. They landed where a stream
crosses the beach and, striking into the valley down which it flows,
followed its course without a halt, until they reached the junction of
the two rivulets that form it. There, however, the otter stood
irresolute. Each water led towards a delectable destination—the one to
the salmon pools, the other to her native marsh, with its abundant
food-supply and secure hovers among the reed-beds—and which to make for
she could not decide, until it struck her that the cubs might never find
the outlying water without her. Then she set aside her hesitation, and
held along the western branch at a pace quicker than before, as if to
recover the time lost in making up her mind.
Leaving the valley about a mile above the confluence, she cut straight
across the middle of the hilly field to the upper corner, where a flock
of lambs stood awestruck to watch the strange intruders climb the bank
into the next pasture, from which the otters could hear the startled
creatures stamping with excitement, until first the otter, then the cubs
one after the other, got over the wall and dropped into a neglected
road. This led to a stately gateway with big iron gates, and beneath
them the animals crept to the moss-grown drive, flecked by the moonlight
which filtered through the arching crowns of the oaks. They passed a
mole-heap or two and numerous little pits scratched by rabbits, but the
way was innocent of rut or hoof-mark or any evidence of man’s proximity.
Yet they had not long been following its windings before they all at
once found themselves face to face with a scene that filled them with
consternation. At a spot where the road makes a sharp bend about an
angle of the cliff lay a heap of ruddy embers, and near them a dog. The
animal was not asleep, but stretched to his full length and, as his
restless ears showed, alert to the slightest sound. His every movement
was visible against the dying fire, the glow of which fell on the
curtained window of a caravan and dimly revealed the gnarled branches
above it. The otters, thoroughly alive to the danger of attack, stood
ready to defend themselves; but, seeing that the enemy gave no sign,
they sidled towards the overgrown riding-path just beyond the firelight,
and gained it without attracting the dog’s attention. The moment,
however, the herbage rustled with their movements his head was raised
and pointed towards the very spot where they stood concealed. Still as
death, they regarded the lurcher through the fronds, nor did they
advance a single step till the drooping of the pricked ears and the
resettling of the long head on the fore-legs showed that suspicion was
lulled. Then, with a stealth that cheated the prating ferns, they left
their shelter, stole noiselessly as shadows past the gipsy’s bivouac and
the side road by which the human nomads had come, and escaped into the
safe darkness beyond, where the murmur of the sea far below reached
their ears.
[Illustration: _Photo F. Frith & Co., Reigate._ To face p. 62.
THE WILD COAST-LINE.]
After passing the haunted house to which the long avenue led, they came
to a cairn with a roofless lookout, so placed as to survey the wild
coast-line. Here the wanderers again struck inland until they came to a
high wall that threatened to bar their advance. But the otter knew the
way and, threading the nettles bordering the stubble, reached the drain
that gives easy access to the park. As if glad to be clear of the
prickly harvest-field, the little band made down the slope at a gallop,
passing between groups of trees that cast deep shadows on the turf. In
the herbage of the hollow only their backs showed, but every hair was
exposed when they breasted the opposite slope, over whose crest the land
dips abruptly to a fishpond. At a headlong pace they dashed between the
stems of the pines to the edge of the water, into which they glided as
noiselessly as voles. So swift were their movements that almost before
their presence was known each otter had seized a white trout and risen
to the surface. One came up near the boathouse, another in the shadow of
an hydrangea, the third near the only bit of moonlit bank by the
overflow; and all three swam towards the island, where they lay under
the plumes of the pampas-grass and devoured their take. They ate three
or four fish apiece before their hunger was satisfied, and then began
chasing one another over the rocks, from which the sea stretched like a
plain of beaten silver. Soon they returned along the overflow to the
pond, where they gambolled as fearlessly as they had done in the creek
and other lone spots in their wanderings.
To the surprise of the cubs, the taint of man on the path caused their
mother no disquietude; not once did she stop her play to listen or peer
into the bosky gloom about her. Strange disregard of danger in a
creature both suspicious and apprehensive, yet not difficult of
explanation. For all the demesne within the park wall had long been a
sanctuary for bird and beast. Not a gun had been fired there nor a trap
set time out of mind; and so confiding had even otters become that they
used the drain on the island to litter in, and would lay up in the holt
by the moat under the very windows of the mansion.
Behind one of these a light had just before been burning, where the
young squire sat recording the day’s sport with his hounds along the
stream in which the otter had taught the cubs to fish. But as he wrote
he heard the otter whistle. On the instant he dropped his pen, turned
down the lamp and, seizing a field-glass, took his seat by the open
window. Keen otter-hunter as he was, he was no less keen a naturalist.
Deer, foxes, badgers, seals, all interested him, though not to the same
degree as the otter. The fascination this creature had for him was
wonderful. To him it was the homeless hunter, the Bedouin of the wild,
the subtlest and most enduring of quarry, the gamest of the game.
Therefore he sat with glass to eye watching the lighted space between
two clumps of rhododendrons where he expected the otters would show. His
hands shook and his heart beat faster than its wont; for the life of him
he could not suppress the excitement he felt. Presently a shadow, a
moving shadow, followed by another and yet another, darkened the
sward—these were the otters; and without a wink he watched them cross
the turf to the ferny border of the moat, where, though he could see
them no longer, he could follow their movements by the twitching of the
fronds till, a few seconds later, they entered the water and pursued
their graceful gambols full in his view. Once the otter, attracted by
scent or sound, or both, half rose out of the moat and looked over the
low bank; but the moment she saw that the intruders were only a badger
and two cubs she fell again to her romps. Later she looked up and
scrutinized the strange object at the window. The squire remained as
motionless as the gargoyles; her suspicion was allayed, and once more
she resumed her frolics. Anon the trio stole away and, passing through
the drain beneath the park wall by which the badgers had found an
entrance, gained the valley where the weary hounds lay asleep in their
kennels. But without a thought of hound or anything else save the marsh
to which she was hurrying, the otter made across the barren holdings
beyond and, before the squire had given up hope of their reappearance
and resumed his pen, she had dropped from the boundary wall of Cold
Comfort Farm and set foot on the waste that stretches to the very tip of
the promontory.
The wanderers kept near the cliffs, going straight from angle to angle
of the indentations that mark the jagged coast-line. Here and there they
moved along the edge, so close one behind the other as to look like one
creature, presenting even, at times, a snake-like appearance, especially
when twisting in and out of the colony of ant-heaps that dotted the long
slope within a mile of their destination. Near the top they disturbed a
wheatear from amongst some cushions of withered sea-pinks; but not
another creature did they see until abreast of the seal rock, where a
cormorant stood watching for the dawn. Then, striking the marsh at the
end of a finger-like creek, they followed the bank above it till the
mere with its reed-beds lay before them. Not a breath ruffled the
surface: the array of stems stood motionless as forest-trees: all was
strangely still, save that the sea was heaving ominously. After a keen
scrutiny of the cottage opposite them and a single glance at the
sand-bar to the left, the otter trotted down the bank and, entering the
water, swam towards the farther shore. But when near the wall of reeds
she half-wheeled, and coasted along the curves of the little bays,
skirting the lily-beds where she had disported when a cub.
Till now the finny tenants of the mere had given no sign of their
presence; but as the otters drew near the inflow a dace jumped out of
the water, and the jaws of a pike showed above the surface within a few
inches of it. The sight stirred the hunting instincts of the male cub,
and so great was his rage at his mother’s indifference that, when she
crossed the current on her way to the creek, he turned back, determined
to hover by himself. He landed on a point between two bays and trampled
a couch at the food of the reeds. An old otter could not have chosen a
kennel seemingly safer, yet scarcely had he curled up when a most
alarming noise struck his ears. It was the creak of oars against the
thole-pins, and it grew louder and louder till he jumped to his feet to
see what was coming. Almost immediately the bow of a boat appeared round
a clump of bulrushes, and at the oars bent the old marshman in his
reed-plaited hat and guernsey frock, all lit up by the red sun, now just
above the bar. The rower shipped the oars, turned round on his seat, and
dropped the killick quietly overboard; but the boat still moved forward
till the painter stopped the way on it, less than a score of yards from
the otter, who looked on at the baiting and setting of the lines, and
even the lighting of a pipe before the old man settled down to watch the
floats.
Motionless though the fisherman sat, the otter remained on the alert
and, whenever the old man rose to land a fish, was on the point of
diving and making his escape from so dangerous a neighbour. Thus hour
after hour passed, and the morning wore away with no change in the
situation, save that a little before noon black clouds rose above the
horizon and drifted into the blue spaces of the sky. Intent on his
fishing, the marshman took little notice of the sudden change of
weather, until a gust of wind shook the reed-bed and big drops of rain
began to fall. Then, casting a few uneasy glances to windward, he pulled
in his lines, raised the killick, pressed his hat on his head, and rowed
away.