connected with the events of the morrow. During the early morning the
villager paid a second visit to the garden, and examined closely the
soft mud at the margin of the ponds. The remains of the otters'
feast--the skins and the eyes of frogs--lay in several places, and, near
the largest of the ponds, the otters' "spur" showed clearly that the
animals had for some time been busy there. Taking a straight course to
the river above the pools, the watcher again detected the marks of the
otters on the sloping bank. By the riverside below the garden, however,
he failed to observe any further sign, and so concluded that the animals
had probably left the water at the opposite bank.
When, later, the Hunt crossed the bridge on its way up-stream, the
villager told his story to the Master, who immediately led his hounds
over the hill-top in the direction of the ponds. This unexpected
movement drew the followers of the Hunt away from the river; they
imagined that the hounds were to be taken across country to a well known
gorge where, during a previous season, good sport had been obtained.
At the farm, the Master, leaving the hounds to the care of the
whippers-in, waited till the villagers and the farmers had congregated
in the yard. He then addressed the crowd, telling them that otters had
visited the garden during the night and probably were still in hiding
there, and that, if good sport were desired, it would be wise for his
followers to form two groups and watch the fords above and below the
river-bend, while he, alone, accompanied the hounds to the garden; his
chief reason, he said, for pointing out to them the advisability of
leaving him was that if an otter still remained near the pond it should
be given every chance of reaching the river without molestation. The
crowd, recognising the wisdom of the Master's remarks, moved off with
the whippers-in to the fords; and, when all was in readiness, the pack
was led into the garden. One, and another, and yet another of the "young
entry" soon gave tongue; then, after a minute's deliberation, an old,
experienced hound raised his head from the rushes, uttered a single
deep, clear note, climbed the garden hedge, and galloped across the
meadow towards the river.
The rest of the hounds speedily found the line of the "drag," but all
came to a check at the water's edge. They were taken back to the ponds,
and thence to the pool by the farm, but the scent was weak above the
waterfall. They again "cast" to the upper end of the garden, and onward
to the river. Carefully searching every hole and corner in the bank,
they drew down-stream around the bend, and at last struck the scent of
the otters among the reeds below the pool. Lutra heard them tearing
madly past, heard also the dull thud of human footsteps above her
"holt," but she discreetly remained close-hidden in her sleeping
chamber. For hours, in a pool beyond the trout-reach, her visitors of
the previous night were hustled to and fro, and frequent cries of "Gaze!
gaze!" and "Bubble avent!" mingled with the clamour of the hounds. Then
the commotion seemed suddenly to subside. After an interval the hounds
splashed by once more among the alder-roots, and the thud of human
footsteps resounded in the "holt." In the silence that followed, Lutra,
reassured, dived from her "holt," and, paddling gently to the surface,
saw the last stragglers of the Hunt climbing the slope towards the farm.
That night no otter from the down-stream trout-reach wandered to the
salmon-pool beneath the farm. The water-voles and the moorhens were
unusually alert as they swam hither and thither in the little bays along
the edge of the current. The fear of man and his loud-tongued hounds
rested, like a spell, on the creatures of the river. Even Lutra felt its
power; but when the scent of her foes became so faint as to be lost in
the fragrance of the meadow-sweet along the river-bank, she ventured
into the old garden, and, on returning to the pool, played again in the
raging water by the fall.
III.
THE GORGE OF ALLTYCAFN.
When Lutra had attained her full size and strength she was wooed and won
by a young dog-otter of her own age, and lived with him in a "holt"
among the great rocks of Alltycafn. Now, again, the Hunt arrived in the
neighbourhood. It was a lovely morning in May. The sun shone brightly;
the leaves were breaking from their sheaths; the birds sang blithely in
the trees. Suddenly the otters, resting in their "holt," were awakened
by a loud commotion--the sounds of hurrying feet, reverberating in the
chamber among the boulders, and then the music of the shaggy hounds,
varied occasionally by the yap-yap of the terriers. The noise drew
rapidly nearer. Presently a man, in red stockings and vest, blue
breeches and coat, and a blue hunting cap bearing an otter's "pad"
mounted in silver, poked among the boulders with a steelshod pole. The
dog-otter was now thoroughly alarmed. He rushed from his lair, dived
straight into the stream, headed through the seething current, and rose
in the adjoining pool. Threatened by a hound, he dived again, walked
over the gravel, and swam under the gnarled roots of an oak. The members
of the Hunt stood watching the bubbles, filled by his breath, as they
floated up and broke. The hounds swam pell-mell in hot pursuit, and the
otter was forced to turn up-stream. Moving cautiously under the rocky
ledges, he regained the "holt," where his terrified mate awaited his
return. Sorely pressed, the dog-otter hid close, hoping to baffle his
relentless pursuers. But a bristling, snarling terrier soon came down
the shaft from the bank. Maddened, and courageous with the fury of
despair, Lutra seized the intruder by the muzzle, and, in the combat
that ensued, sorely mangled her assailant's lips and nostrils. Then, as
her mate dived out once more and swam down-stream, she also left the
chamber. She rose immediately among the surrounding boulders, and hid in
the furthest recess. With nostrils, eyes, and ears raised slightly above
the surface of the water, she stayed there, unseen and hardly daring to
breathe, and, with strained senses watched closely every movement of
hounds and hunters.
Fortunately for Lutra, the arch of the boulders below was shaped so
peculiarly that the scent of her breath and body was sucked into a
cavity and carried down-stream, and, passing beneath the stone, mingled,
at the raging cataract near the rock, with air in the bubbles formed by
the tumult of the waters. These bubbles, instead of bursting, were drawn
into the vortex of a little whirlpool; and the keen-nosed hounds, though
suspicious, could form no definite opinion as to the presence of a
second otter among the rocks. The terrier knew the secret, but he had
been put out of action and sent off, post haste, to the nearest
veterinary surgeon. Lutra saw her tormentors--some of them of the pure
otter-hound breed, some half otter-hound, half fox-hound, and others,
again, fox-hounds trained for otter-hunting--rushing backwards and
forwards in the water and on the bank. Another terrier, led by a boy,
strained at his leash near the river's brink. Women, dressed, like the
men, in smart scarlet and blue, and as ready to wade into the stream as
the huntsman himself, stood leaning on their otter-poles not far away.
At the fords above and below the "pool," the dog-otter's egress was
barred by outposts of the enemy standing and splashing, in complete
lines, from bank to bank. Once, in despair, the otter actually tried to
break through the human chain; but a hunter "tailed" him for a moment,
and then dropped him into the deeper water beyond the ford.
The sound of horn, the shouts of men, the deep-toned notes of great
hounds, the shrill yapping of eager terriers, and the splashing and the
plunging on every side, almost bewildered Lutra. Fearing to move from
her shelter, she floated in the deep basin of the hidden pool beside the
cataract, till at last the commotion gradually subsided, and hounds and
hunters passed out of sight down-stream.
Lutra awaited her mate's return, but in vain. Not till night did she
venture from her hiding place. When, however, the stars appeared, she
swam wearily from pool to pool, calling, calling, calling. She explored
each little bay, each crevice in the rock. She walked up the dry bed of
a tributary brook, and searched among the gnarled roots and the dry,
brown grass fringing the gravelly watercourse. She skirted the meadows
and the rocks where the hunters had beaten down the gorse and the
brambles near her home; thence she returned to the pool. Hitherto she
had loved the placid night; to her the stillness was significant of
peace. But now that stillness was full of sadness, and weariness, and
monotony. The shadows were deep within the gorge; from the distant woods
the hoot of an owl mocked her loneliness. She heard no glad answering
cry. Still calling, calling, calling, she floated through the shadows,
and out into the moonlight shimmering on the placid water below the
gorge; but she sought and called in vain.
Lutra spent the rest of that year in widowhood. In consequence of her
fight with the terrier, and also because of her grief, her two little
cubs were still-born.
Midsummer came, and the shallows were almost choked with weeds. The
countryside experienced a phenomenal period of drought, and for weeks
the river seemed impure and almost fetid. Night after night, and
steadily travelling westward, Lutra took short cuts across country from
pool to pool. Late in July she reached the estuary of the river; and for
the remaining months of summer fished in the bay, finding there a
pleasant change in her surroundings. Once she was chased by some men in
a boat, who shot at her as she appeared for an instant to breathe. Quick
and watchful, she dived at the flash, and the pellets fell harmlessly
overhead. Again she rose, and again she dived just in time to avoid the
leaden hail. Then she doubled back towards the estuary, and the baffled
sportsmen sailed away across the bay. As autumn came once more she
returned to the river, and fed chiefly on the migrating eels that
swarmed in the hollows near the bank. Presently, by many a nightly
journey, she gained the upper reaches, where she lived, till the
following spring, close to her old home.
The winter was long and severe. In January, the fields were buried in
snow, the roads were as smooth and hard as glass, and the
well-remembered pool beneath the pines was almost covered with a great
sheet of ice. At this time another young dog-otter began to show Lutra
considerable attention. The village children often saw the pairing
otters, for the animals, hard pressed, had perforce to fish by day
instead of by night. All night the trout lay dormant under the stones in
the bed of the river, and only at noon did they rise to the surface on
the lookout for hardy ephemerals that, in a short half hour of warmth,
were hatched at the margin of the stream. Lutra and her companion
followed the fish, and afforded a rare, unexpected sight as, bold with
hunger, they ascended to breathe between the sheets of ice in the pool
by the village gardens. At night the otters wandered over the snow, and
sometimes visited the hillside farms. There, among rotting refuse-heaps,
they discovered worms and insects sheltering in genial warmth. When
exceptionally hungry, Lutra and her mate would dig into the chambers of
the mole and the field-vole in the meadows, and search ravenously for
the inmates. Among the roots of the spreading oaks, the otters found,
also, such tit-bits as the larvae of moths and beetles. A starved pigeon
fallen from the pine-boughs; an occasional moorhen weak and almost
defenceless; a wild duck that Lutra had captured by darting from beneath
a root while the indiscreet bird was feeding, head downwards, at the
river's brink--these were among the varied items of the hungry otters'
food. Life was indeed hard to maintain. And, to crown the misfortunes of
the ice-bound winter, Lutra's matrimonial affairs were once more cruelly
disturbed: her mate was caught in a steel trap that Ned the blacksmith
had baited and laid in the meadows near the village bridge. He had
marked the otters' wanderings by their footprints in the snow, and had
then matured his plans.
The calamity occurred one morning, just before daybreak, as the otters
were returning to the river from a visit to a hen-coop, where they had
found an open door and a solitary chicken. The trap was placed on the
grass by the verge of the stream. A light fall of snow had covered it,
but had left exposed the entrails of a chicken which, by coincidence,
formed the tempting bait. Distressed and perplexed, Lutra stayed by the
dog-otter, trying in vain to release him from his sufferings. The
trapped creature, beside himself with rage and fear and pain, attempted
to gnaw through his crunched and almost severed foot; but as the dawn
lightened the east, and before the limb could be freed, Ned the
blacksmith was to be seen hurrying to the spot. Lutra dived out of
sight, and, unable to interpose, watched, for a second time, a riverside
tragedy. Her attachment, however, had not been of so ardent a nature
that bereavement left her disconsolate. Before April she forgot her
trapped friend, and was mated again.
Lutra's new spouse had his home in the tributary stream of a
neighbouring valley. So, when the snows had melted and the rime no
longer touched with fairy fingerprints the tracery of the leafless
boughs, and when Olwen the White-footed had come once more into the
valley called after her name, Lutra forsook the broad river in which she
had spent her early life, and, with her companion and a promising
family, lived contented under the frowning Rock of Gwion, secure in
peace and solitude, at least for a season, from the shaggy
otter-hounds.
THE WATER-VOLE.
I.
OUR VILLAGE HOUNDS.
Not many years ago the pleasures of life among my neighbours here in the
country were simpler and truer than they are to-day. Perhaps in that
bygone time money was more easily made, or daily need was met with
smaller expenditure. It may be, too, that family cares were then less
pressing, or that a prolonged period of general prosperity had been the
privilege of rich and poor alike in this green river-valley around my
home. In those days, to which I often look back with regretful yearning,
everybody seemed to have leisure; the ties of friendship were not
severed by malicious gossip; old and young seemed to realise how good it
was to have pleasant acquaintanceships and to be in the sunshine and the
open air. Fathers played with their children in the street: one winter
morning, when, after a heavy fall of snow and a subsequent frost, the
ground was as slippery as glass, I watched a white-haired shopkeeper,
lying prone on a home-made toboggan, with his feet sprawling behind for
rudder, steer a load of merry youngsters full tilt down a steep lane
behind his house. The sight was so exhilarating that I also forgot I was
not a child; and on the second journey I joined the sportive party, and
came to grief because the shopkeeper kicked too quickly at a turn in the
course and sent me with a double somersault into the ditch.
It happened in those days that in the miscellaneous pack of mongrels our
village sportsmen gathered together when they went rabbit-shooting among
the dense coverts of the hillsides were two exceptionally clever dogs--a
big, shaggy, bobtail kind of animal, and a little, smooth-coated beast
resembling a black-and-tan terrier.
The big dog, Joker, lived at a farm in the village, and, during the
leisure of summer, when rabbiting did not engage his attention, took to
wandering by the river, joining the bathers in their sport and poking
his nose inquisitively under the alder-roots along the bank. While, one
sultry noon, the fun in the bathing pool was at its height, Joker routed
an otter from a hiding place near which the bathers were swimming with
the current, and a terrific fight took place in the shallows before the
_dwrgu_ made good his escape. The dog was found to have been severely
worsted in the fray, and was taken home to be nursed till his wounds
were healed. Meanwhile, Joker's fame as an otter-hound was firmly
established in the village, and he was regarded as a hero.
The little dog, Bob, lived at the inn, and for years his droll ways
endeared him to every villager, as well as to every angler who came to
"the house" for salmon-fishing. He loved nothing better than a
friendship with some unsuspecting fisherman whom he might afterwards use
to further his own ends. The sight of a rod placed by the door in the
early morning was sufficient promise of a day's continuous enjoyment;
the terrier assumed possession of the rod at once, and kept all other
curs at a distance. On the appearance of the sportsman, he manifested
such unmistakable delight, and pleaded so hard for permission to
follow, that, unless the sportsman happened to be one whose experiences
led him to dislike the presence of a fussy dog by the riverside, the
flattery rarely failed of its object. Once past the rustic swing-bridge
at the lower boundary of the waters belonging to the inn, Bob left the
sportsman to his own devices, and stole off into the woods to hunt
rabbits. Unfailingly, however, he rejoined his friend at lunch.
On Sundays, knowing that the report of a gun was not likely then to
resound among the woods, and depressed by the quietness and disappointed
by the nervous manner with which everybody well dressed for church
resented his familiarities, he lingered about the street corners--as the
unemployed usually do, even in our village--till the delicious smells of
Sunday dinners pervaded the street. The savoury odours in no way
sharpened his appetite, for at the inn his fare was always of the best;
but they indicated that the time was approaching when the watchmaker and
the lawyer set out together for their long weekly ramble through the
woods. Bob knew what such a ramble meant for him. The watchmaker's dog,
Tip, was Bob's respected sire, and Tip's brother, Charlie, dwelt at a
house in "The Square." Bob, scenting the Sunday dinners, went at once to
call for Charlie, and in his company adjourned to the lane behind the
village gardens, till the watchmaker and the lawyer, with Tip, were
ready for their customary walk.
When the water was low and anglers seldom visited the inn, Bob, during
the summer week-days, followed Joker's course of action, and attached
himself to a bathing party frequenting a pool below the ruined garden on
the outskirts of the village. There, like Joker, he searched beneath the
alder-roots, but without success as far as an otter was concerned.
However, he vastly enjoyed himself digging out the brown rats from their
holes along the bank not far from a rick-yard belonging to the inn, and
then hunting them about the pool with as much noise and bustle as if he
were close at the tail of a rabbit in the furze. He was so fond of the
water that he became a rapid, untiring swimmer; and the boys trained
him, in intervals of rat-hunting, to dive to the bottom of the river
and pick up a white pebble thrown from the bank. Like Joker, also, he
gained a name for pluck and ability; and one night the village
sportsmen, at an informal meeting in the "private room" of the inn,
decided to hunt in the river on Wednesday evenings, with Bob and Joker
at the head of a pack including nearly every game-dog in the near
neighbourhood, except certain aristocratic pointers and setters likely
to be spoiled by companionship with yelping and excited curs.
A merrier hunting party was never in the world. They would foregather in
the meadow below the ruined garden: the landlord, whose home-brewed ale
was the best and strongest on the countryside; the curate, whose stern
admonitions were the terror of evil-doers; the farmer, whose skill in
ferreting was greater than in ploughing; the watchmaker, whose clocks
filled the village street with music when, simultaneously, they struck
the hour; the draper, whose white pigeons cooed and fluttered on the
bridge near his shop; the solicitor, whose law was for a time thrown to
the winds; and a small crowd of boys ready to assist, if required, in
"chaining" the fords. There they would "cry" the dogs across the stream
till the valley echoed and re-echoed with shouts and laughter.
The first hunt was started in spirited fashion; the men walked along the
bank thrusting their sticks into crevices and holes; but only Joker and
Bob entered the water, and rats and otters for a while remained
discreetly out of view. Near a bend of the stream, however, Bob
surprised a rat secreted by a stone, and, forcing it to rush to the
river, followed with frantic speed. Here, at last, was a chase; the
other dogs all hurried to the spot, and the landlord, swinging his
otter-pole, waded out to perform the duties of huntsman with the now
uproarious pack. His action proved infectious--watchmaker, draper,
lawyer, and curate splashed into the shallows to help in keeping the rat
on the move; and fun was fast and furious till the prey, fleeing from a
smart attack by Bob, was captured by a spaniel swimming under a big
oak-root between the curate and the bank.
I hardly think I have enjoyed any sport so well as those Wednesday
evening hunts in the bygone years, when life was unshadowed and each
sportsman of us felt within him the heart of a child. So great was our
amusement that the village urchins instituted a rival Hunt in the brooks
on Saturdays; they notched their sticks for every "kill," and boasted
that they beat us hollow with the number of their trophies.
We had several adventures with otters, but the creatures always, in the
end, eluded us, and we soon were of opinion that smaller fry were
capable of affording better fun. Some seasons afterwards, when our Hunt
was disbanded, the shopkeepers' apprentices continued, with the
youngsters, to work our mongrel hounds; but eventually Joker's death
from the bite of an adder put an end to their pastime, for the bobtail
and the terrier were the only possible leaders of the nondescript pack.
Bob, the terrier, was always the most interesting of our hounds. He
manifested a disposition to use the other dogs to serve his purposes,
just as he used the unsuspecting fishermen if he wished to go hunting in
the woods. When with me after game on the upland farms, he often seemed
to forget entirely that I had taken him to hunt, not for his own
amusement only, but also for mine. Directly he discovered a rabbit
squatting in a clump of grass or brambles, perhaps ten or a dozen yards
from a hedge, he signalled his find by barking so incessantly that my
spaniels hastened pell-mell to the spot. This was just as it should
be--for Bob. Dancing with excitement, he waited between the clump and
the hedge till the spaniels entered and bolted the rabbit; then he tore
madly in close pursuit of the fleeing creature, and my chance of a shot
was spoiled through the possibility of my hitting him instead of his
quarry.
By the riverside, his tricks were precisely similar. Seeing a moorhen
dive, he would call the dogs around him, so that they might bring the
bird again to the surface and thus afford him sport. The moorhen,
meanwhile, invariably escaped; yet Bob failed to understand that he was
the only diver in the pack.
His antics were comical in the extreme if a vole eluded him by diving to
the lower entrance of its burrow beneath the surface of a backwater.
Having missed his opportunity, but unable to comprehend how he had
missed it, the terrier left the water, stood on the roots of a tree over
the entrance to the vole's burrow, and furiously barked instructions to
his companions swimming in the pool. Disgusted at last by their
inattention to his orders, he plunged headlong into the stream and
vanished for a few moments; then he reappeared, proud of his superior
bravery, sneezing and coughing, and with a mouthful of stones and soil
torn from the bank in his desperate efforts to force his way to the spot
whither the object of the chase had gone from view.
Bob long survived the big dog Joker, and in his old days loved as well
as ever the excitement of a hunt. His originality was preserved to the
end; stiffened by rheumatism and almost choked by asthma, he always,
when in search of rabbits, ran up-hill and walked down-hill, thus losing
both energy and breath that might with advantage have been kept in
reserve.