A year passed; a year and three months. Old Mrs Puckey was dead and
laid in churchyard, and the doctor remained a bachelor. Christmas
found him busy upon two papers written almost concurrently: the one
'A Description of a Kind of Trigla vulgarly confounded with Trigla
Blochii,' intended for Loudon's 'Magazine of Natural History,' the
other, 'On Savagery in Dogs and Methods of Meeting their Attacks,'
for the _Journal_ of the Royal Institution of Cornwall.
On the morning of St Stephen's (or Boxing) Day, his professional
visits over, he devoted an hour to the second of these treatises.
He had reached this striking passage,--
'Homer informs us that the fury of a dog in attacking an
approaching stranger is appeased by the man's sitting down:--
'"Soon as Ulysses near th' enclosure drew,
With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew:
Down sat the sage and, cautious to withstand,
Let fall th' offensive truncheon from his hand."
Pope.
'Even at the present day this is a well-understood mode of
defence, as will be seen from the following:--
'At Argos one evening, at the table of General Gordon, then
commander-in-chief in the Morea, the conversation happened to
turn on the number and fierceness of Greek dogs, when one of
the company remarked that he knew a very simple expedient for
appeasing their fury. Happening on a journey to miss his road,
and being overtaken with darkness, he sought refuge for the
night at a pastoral settlement by the wayside. As he
approached, the dogs rushed out upon him, and the consequences
might have been serious had he not been rescued by an old
shepherd, the Eumaeus of the fold, who sallied forth and,
finding that the intruder was but a frightened traveller, after
pelting off his assailants, gave him a hospitable reception in
his hut. His guest made some remark on the watchfulness and
zeal of his dogs, and on the danger to which he had been
exposed in their attack. The old man replied that it was his
own fault for not taking the customary precaution in such an
emergency, that he ought to have stopped _and sat down_, until
some person whom the animals knew came to protect him.
'As this expedient was new to the traveller he made some further
inquiries, and was assured that if any person in such a
predicament will simply seat himself on the ground, laying
aside his weapons of defence, the dogs will also squat around
in a circle; that as long as he remains quiet they will follow
his example, but as soon as he rises and moves forward they
will renew the attack.'
At this point the doctor laid down his pen, arose, and went to the
book-case for his Homer, with purpose to copy the original lines into
a footnote--for, to tell the truth, he had never quite mastered the
methods of the Greek accents. He found the passage in Odyssey 14.
Yes, it was all right--
autar Odysseus
Ezeto kerdosune, skeptrou de oi ekpese cheiros . . .
But--hallo! what was this next line?--
Eutha kev o para stathmo aeikelion pathen algos . . .
--'There by his own steading,' the poet went on, 'would Odysseus have
suffered foul hurt, had not the swineherd hurried out and scolded the
dogs and pelted them off with stones.' It would seem then, according
to Homer, that this device of squatting upon the ground could not be
trusted save as a diversion, a temporary check. Doctor Unonius bit
his nether lip. Strange that he had overlooked this. . . .
He had a scholar's conscience. He could not endure to garble a
quotation or suppress a material point for the sake of illustrating
an argument more vividly. . . . Besides, it might delude some
unfortunate person into sitting down where self-preservation demanded
a more alert posture. Somebody--dreadful thought!--might get himself
severely bitten, mauled, mangled perhaps to death, merely by obeying
a piece of pseudo-scientific advice. That he, Doctor Unonius, might
never be reproached with the disaster, might never even hear of it,
in no degree mitigated his responsibility.
While he stood by the bookcase, balancing his spectacles on his
forefinger and Homer's words in his mind, Jenifer, his one small
maid-servant, entered with word that Roger Olver was at the door with
a message from Penalune.
'Show him in,' said Doctor Unonius.
So Roger Olver, huntsman and handy-man to Sir John Penalune of
Penalune, squire of Polpeor, hitched his horse's bridle on the staple
by the doctor's front door--it would be hard to compute how many
farmers, husbands, riding down at dead of night with news of wives in
labour, had tethered their horses to that well-worn staple--and was
conducted by Jenifer to the doctor's study.
'Ah! Good morning, Roger!'
'Mornin', y'r honour. Sir John bade me ride down an' ask 'ee--'
'To be sure--to be sure. As it happens, no man could have come at a
happier moment. Accustomed, as you are, to dogs--'
'Hounds,' corrected Roger.
'It makes no difference.' The doctor translated the passage, and
explained his difficulty.
'I reckon,' said Roger, after scratching his head, 'the gentleman
acted right in settin' down--though I've never had occasion to try
it, dogs bein' fond o' me by natur'. I've heard, too, that a very
good way, when a dog goes for you, is to squatty 'pon your heels with
your coat-tails breshin' the ground an' bust out laffin' in his face.
I tell that for what 'tis worth.'
'Thank you,' said the doctor. 'I will make a note of it.'
'It wants nerve, seemin' to me.' Roger Olver rubbed his chin.
'That is understood.'
'For my part, if it happened I had a stick, I'd slash out at the
beggar's forelegs--so--an' keep slashin' same as if I was mowin'
grass. Or, if I hadn' a stick, I'd kick straight for his forelegs
an' chest; he's easy to cripple there, an' he knows it. Settin' down
may be all right for the time, only the difficulty is you've got to
get up again sooner or later--onless help arrives.'
'Eureka!' exclaimed Doctor Unonius, rushing to his notes.
'I beg y'r honour's pardon?'
'The modern instance says that the dogs would remain seated in a
circle round the man; that so long as he remained seated they would
do the same; but that, if he attempted to rise, they would renew the
attack. That vindicates me, and explains Homer.'
'Do it?' said Roger Olver. 'But, beggin' your pardon, sir, if it's
about dogs you want to know, why not have a look in at the kennels--
ay, an' follow the hounds now an' then? I've often wondered, makin'
so bold, how a gentleman like yourself, an' knowin' what's good for
health, can go wastin' time on dead fishes, with a pack o' hounds, so
to speak, at your door.'
'There's no sport more healthful, I verily believe,' agreed the
doctor.
'And as for nat'ral history, what can a man want that he can't larn
off a fox? Five-an'-twenty years I've been at it, an' the varmints
be teachin' me yet. But I'm forgettin' my message, sir, which is
that Sir John sends his compliments and would be happy to see you at
dinner this evenin', he havin' a few friends.'
Doctor Unonius sighed. He had designed to spend the evening on his
treatise. But he cherished a real regard for Sir John, whom all the
countryside esteemed for a sportsman and an upright English
gentleman; and Sir John, who, without learning of his own, held
learning in exaggerated respect, cherished an equal regard for the
doctor.
'My compliments to your master. I will come with pleasure,' said
Doctor Unonius, thrusting Homer back in his shelf.