three weeks passed before they were allowed beyond the threshold of
their home. Then, one starlight night, their mother, having returned
from hunting, awoke them, and, withholding their usual nourishment, gave
the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along the
dark passage, and ventured, close at her heels, into the grass-patch in
the middle of the briar-brake. Vulp was slightly more timid than his
sisters were; even at that early age he showed signs of independence and
distrust. While the other cubs played "follow-my-leader" with the dam,
he hung back, hesitating and afraid. Even an unusual show of affection
by his mother failed to reassure him. A rabbit dodged quickly across a
path, and immediately he stood rigid with fright. Hardly had he
recovered before an owl flew slowly overhead. Enough! He paused,
motionless, till the awful presence had disappeared; then darted, with
astonishing speed, straight towards the "earth," and vanished, with a
ridiculously feeble "yap" of make-believe bravado, into the darkness of
the den. Confidence, however, came and increased as the days and the
nights went by, till, at the close of a week's experiences, Vulp was as
bold in danger as either of his playmates. He learned to trust his
mother implicitly, and, in her absence, became the guardian of the
family when some fancied alarm brought fear. He was always last in
learning his lessons; but, as if to make amends, he always profited most
by the teaching.
Happy, indeed, were those hours of innocence--filled with sleep, and
love, and play. Till Vulp was six weeks old, he was wholly unconscious
of that ravenous hunger for flesh which was fated to make him the
scourge of the woodlands. Nevertheless, his instincts were slowly
developing, and so, when on a second occasion the old buck rabbit that
had frightened him in the thicket bolted before his eyes across the
path, the little fox bristled with rage and, but for his mother's
presence, would doubtless have tried to pursue the exasperating coney.
Invariably, when the night was fine, the cubs gambolled about the vixen
on the close-cropped sward beyond the den, climbing over her body,
pinching her ears, growling and grunting, tugging at each other's
brushes, and in general behaving just as healthy, happy fox-cubs might
be expected to behave; while the patient, careful mother looked on
approvingly--save when, uniting in one strong effort, they endeavoured
to disjoint her tail by pulling it over her back--and smiled, as only a
fox can smile, with eyes asquint and a single out-turned fang showing
white beside the half-closed lip.
A great event occurred when the mother first brought home her prey that
she might educate her youngsters in the matter of appetite and prepare
them for an independent existence. The victim was an almost full-grown
rabbit. Laying it down close to the entrance of the "earth," the vixen
called her cubs, and instantly they rushed from the den, tumbling over
each other in their haste, till they gained the spot where she was
waiting. At that moment, however, they caught sight of the strange grey
object in the grass, and, leaping back, bolted round to their mother's
side. Then, feeling safe under her care, they cautiously advanced in a
row to sniff the rabbit, and wondered, yet instinctively guessed, at the
meaning of the situation. The vixen growled, and, picking up her prey,
carried it to the bramble-clump. The cubs followed, making all sorts of
curious noises in mimicking their dam, and evincing the utmost
inquisitiveness as to the reason of her unexpected conduct. Presently,
having succeeded in arousing their inborn passion for flesh, the vixen
resorted to a neighbouring mound, and left her offspring in possession
of the dead animal, on which they immediately pounced, tooth and nail.
How terribly in earnest they became, how bold and reckless in their vain
attempt to demolish the subject of their wrath! Vulp fastened his
needle-like teeth in the throat, and each of his sisters gripped a leg,
while together they jerked, strained, scolded, and threatened, till the
mother, fearing lest the commotion would betray their whereabouts to
some lurking foe, rated her noisy progeny and in anger drove them away.
But as soon as she had gone back to her seat among the grass-bents, the
youngsters returned to their work. Anyhow, anywhere, they hurled
themselves on the dead creature, sometimes biting each other for sheer
lack of knowing exactly what else they should bite, and sometimes simply
for the excitement of a family squabble.
At last, their unwonted exertions began to tire them; then the careful
vixen, desirous of bringing the lesson to its close, "broke up" her
prey and divided it among her hungry children. They fed daintily,
choosing from each portion no more than a morsel, and soon afterwards,
exhausted by excitement and fatigue, and forgetful of their differences,
were fast asleep, huddled together as usual in the roomy recess of the
den. For a while the vixen remained to satisfy her hunger; then, having
buried a few tit-bits of her provender, she also retired to rest; and
silence brooded over the woodlands till the break of day set every
nesting bird atune.
The vixen proved to be an untiring teacher, and the education of the
cubs occupied a part, at least, of every night. The young foxes were
growing rapidly, and accompanied their dam in her wanderings about the
thickets. She never went far afield, food being easily procured at that
time of year, particularly as in a certain spot additional supplies for
the larder were frequently forthcoming because of the vigilance of the
huntsman, whose one desire was to fit the cubs to match his hounds in
the first "runs" of the coming season.
III.
THE CUB AND THE POLECAT.
The young fox's education, varied and thorough, steadily proceeded.
Though the vixen-cubs were slightly quicker to learn, they were more
excitable, and consequently did not benefit fully by each lesson. Vulp
soon began to hunt for his own sport and profit. In the meadow above the
wood he would sit motionless, his eyes fixed on the ground, till the
voles came from their burrows to play beneath the grass-bents; then,
with a quick rush, he would secure a victim directly its presence was
betrayed by a waving stalk. With the same patience he would watch near a
rabbit warren, till one of the inhabitants, hopping out to the mound
before her door, gave him the sure chance of a kill. But in the
wheat-fields on the slope his methods were altogether different. To
capture partridges required unusual cunning and skill, and such
importance did the vixen attach to this branch of her field-craft, that,
before initiating her youngsters into the sport of hunting these birds
at night, she instructed them diligently in the methods of following by
scent, training them how to pursue the winding trail left by the larks
that fed at evening near their sleeping places, or by the corncrakes
that wandered babbling through the green wheat. Vulp's first attempt to
capture a partridge chick resulted in failure. The vixen-cubs "fouled"
the line he had patiently picked out in the ditch around the cornfield,
and, "casting" haphazard through the herbage, alarmed the sleeping
birds, and sent them away to a secure hiding place in the clover. But
his second attempt was crowned with success, and he proudly carried his
prey into a sequestered nook amid the gorse, where he enjoyed a quiet
meal.
The cub was fully six months old before he knew the precise difference
between stale and fresh scent, or between the scent of one creature and
that of another, and how to hunt accordingly; and several years, with
many dangers and hair-breadth escapes, were destined to pass before he
became expert in avoiding or baffling the numerous enemies--chiefly
dogs, and men, and traps--that threatened his life. And yet, during the
first few months of his existence, he gained sufficient knowledge for
the needs of the moment; and when August drew on towards the close of
the summer, and he was three parts grown, he had so extended his nightly
rambles that the "lay of the land" was familiar for miles around the
covert. His outdoor existence--for now he was wont to sleep in a lair
among the gorse and the bracken, instead of in the stuffy "earth"--gave
him strength in abundant measure, while his scrupulously clean habits,
the care with which he removed even the slightest trace of a burr from
his sleek, brown coat, and the plentiful supplies of fresh food which he
was able to obtain, naturally preserved him from mange and similar
ailments to which carnivorous animals are always prone. For the present,
indeed, life meant nothing more to him than the sheer enjoyment of
vigorous health, at home by day amid the grateful shadows of the bushes
and the trees, or basking in the sun, and abroad at night in the cold,
clear air of the dewy uplands.
Just as sportsmen occasionally meet with a run of ill-luck, when for
some apparently unaccountable reason they either fail to find game, or
fail to kill it, and, to intensify the annoyance, an accident occurs
that leaves a bitter memory, so Vulp, during one of his long rambles
over the countryside, failed entirely to find sport, and gained a
decidedly unpleasant experience. If only his mother had not taught him
that in a season of scarcity a weasel might reasonably be considered an
article of food! One summer night, as he started on his usual prowl, the
covert seemed strangely silent. With the exception of a solitary rabbit
that bolted to its burrow when the young fox crossed the clearing, and
another that disappeared in similar fashion when nothing more than a
slight crackle of a leaf betrayed Vulp's whereabouts near a
bramble-clump, every animal had apparently deserted the thickets. So,
leaving his accustomed haunts, he crossed the furze-clad dingle, and
watched near a large warren in the open. But there, again, not a rabbit
could be seen. A field-vole rustled by over the leaves; the cub made a
futile effort to capture it, stood for an instant listening to its
movements, then thrust his nose into the herbage in another vigorous but
vain attempt; the vole, like the rabbits, had sought refuge underground.
An owl, that had frightened the cub about five months before when first
he ventured outside his home, rose from the hedge, and flew slowly down
the valley with a little squealing creature in her talons; she, at any
rate, had not hunted in vain.
At last Vulp struck a fresh line of scent which, though particularly
strong and uninviting, he took to be that of a weasel. It was mingled
with the faint odour of a field-vole that, doubtless, had been pursued
and carried away by its persistent enemy. The cub followed the trail,
hoping to secure both hunter and victim, but it soon led him to a hole
in the hedgerow, and there abruptly ceased. He was about to turn from
the spot, when the eyes of the supposed weasel suddenly gleamed at the
mouth of the hole, but disappeared when the presence of the cub was
recognised. The fox, retreating to a convenient post of observation
behind a tuft of grass, settled down to await his opportunity. A few
minutes elapsed, and the pursued creature came once more in sight. It
appeared like a shadow against the sky, lifted its nose inquiringly,
quitted the burrow, sat bolt upright for a moment, then, reassured,
proceeded towards the covert on the opposite side of the path. With a
single bound, the cub cleared the grass-tuft, reached out at his prey,
missed his grip, bowled the animal over, and, turning rapidly, caught it
across the loins instead of by the throat. Unfortunately for himself,
the fox had made a slight miscalculation. With a scream of rage and
pain, the polecat--for such the creature proved to be--turned on the
aggressor, and instantly fastened its formidable teeth, like a steel
trap, on his muzzle. Vulp had been taught that his fangs, also, were a
trap from which there should be no escape, and so he held on firmly,
trying meanwhile to shake the life from his victim. He pressed the
polecat to the ground, and frantically endeavoured to disengage its hold
by thrusting his fore-paws beneath its muzzle; but every effort alike
was useless. A scalding, acrid fluid emitted by the polecat caused the
lips and one of the eyes of the cub to smart unbearably, and the
offensive odour of the fluid grew stronger and stronger, till it became
almost suffocating. At last the polecat convulsively trembled as its
ribs and spine were crushed in the fox's tightening jaws, its teeth
relaxed their hold, and the fight was over.
Sickened by the pungent smell, and with muzzle, lips, and right eye
burning horribly from his wounds and the irritant poison, Vulp hastily
dropped his prey, and ignominiously bolted from the scene of the
encounter. Soon, however, he stopped; the pain in his eye seemed beyond
endurance. He tried to rub away the noxious fluid with his paws, but his
frantic efforts only increased the irritation by conveying the poison to
his other eye and to his wounds. He rolled and sneezed and grunted in
torment; he drew his muzzle and cheeks to and fro on the ground,
wrestling with the great Earth-Mother for help in direst agony. He could
not open his eyes; he stumbled blindly against a tree-trunk, and at last
became entangled in the prickly undergrowth. This was Nature's method
of succour--she forced her wildling to remain quiet, in helpless
exhaustion, till the pain subsided and life could once again be endured.
Panting and sick, the cub lay outstretched among the thorns, while the
tears flowed from his eyes and the froth hung on his lips. Presently,
however, relieved by the copious discharge, he recovered his senses,
and, miserably cowed, with head and brush hanging low, returned before
dawn to the covert. But the vixen in fury drove the cub away; the scent
still clung to him, and rendered him obnoxious even to his mother. In
shame he retired to a dense "double" hedge of hawthorn, where he hid
throughout the day, till he could summon sufficient courage at dusk to
hunt for some dainty morsel wherewith to tempt his sickened appetite.
But before taking up his position above the entrance to a rabbit warren,
he drank at the brook, dipped his tainted fore-paws in the running
water, and, sitting by the margin, removed from his face, as far as
possible, the traces left by the previous night's conflict. Repeatedly,
at all hours of the day and the night, he licked his paws and with them
washed his wounded muzzle and inflamed eyes; but so obstinately did the
offensive odour cling to him that a fortnight elapsed before the last
vestige of the nuisance disappeared. Meanwhile, he narrowly escaped the
mange; and, to add to the discomfort of his wounds, he experienced, now
that his mother's aid was lacking, some difficulty in obtaining
sufficient fresh food.
At length he recovered, and new, downy hair clothed the wounds and the
scratches on his muzzle and throat. Sleek and strong once more, he was
welcomed as a penitent prodigal by the relenting vixen, and, having in
the period of his solitary wanderings learned much about the habits of
the woodland folk, was doubtless able to assist his mother in the future
training of the vixen-cubs.
In that luckless fortnight he had acquired a taste for young pheasants,
had picked up a few fat pigeon-squabs belonging to the last broods of
the year, and had sampled sundry articles of diet--frogs, slugs, snails,
a young hedgehog or two, and a squirrel that, overcome with
inquisitiveness, descended from the tree-tops to inspect the young fox
as he dozed among the bilberries carpeting the forest floor.
Another incident occurred, to which, at the time, the cub attached
considerable importance. He had killed what seemed to be a large, heavy
rabbit, which, though evidently possessed of a healthy appetite, was
almost scentless, and differed in taste from any he had hitherto
captured. He was not particularly hungry, so he buried the insipid
flesh, and resolved never to destroy another rabbit that did not yield a
full, strong scent. Shortly afterwards, when, under the eye of the
bright August moon, Vulp and the vixen were hunting in the wheat-fields,
he detected a similarly weak scent along the hedgerow, and learned from
his wise mother it was that of a doe-hare about to give birth to her
young, and therefore hardly worth the trouble of following. The vixen
further explained that, except when other food was scarce, creatures
occupied, or about to be occupied, with maternal cares--even the lark in
the furrow and the willow-warbler in the hole by the brook--were far
less palatable than at other times. The cub was also told how, just
before he came into the world, the hounds had chased his mother from the
thicket, and how old Reveller, the leader of the pack, had headed the
reckless puppies, and, rating them for their discourtesy, had led them
away to scour another part of the covert.
With the advance of autumn, a great change passed over the countryside.
The young fox now found it necessary to choose his paths with care as he
wandered through the darkness, lest the rabbits should be warned of his
approach by the crisp rustle of his "pads" on the leaves that had fallen
in showers on the grass. Hitherto he had associated the presence of man
with that of something good for food. An occasional dead rabbit was
still to be found near the old "earth," and, strange to relate, the
man-scent leading to the place was never fresher or staler than that of
the rabbit. In another spot--a wood-clearing not far from the keeper's
lodge--the strong scent of pheasants always seemed to indicate that the
birds had ventured thither in numbers to feed, and there, too, the
man-scent was strong on the grass. The tracks of innumerable little
creatures intersected the clearing in all directions, and, if but for
the sport of watching the pheasants, the pigeons, the sparrows, and the
voles playing and quarrelling in the undergrowth or partaking of the
food provided by the keeper, the fox loved to lurk in the gorse near by.
He evinced little real alarm even at the sight of man, though he felt a
misgiving and instinctively knew that he must hide or keep at a distance
till the curiously shaped monster had gone. The vixen warned him
repeatedly; and she herself, after giving the signal "Hide!" would slink
away, and wander for miles before returning to her family, if only the
measured footfall of a poacher or a farm labourer sounded faintly
through the covert.
But soon the young fox learned, in a way not to be misunderstood, that
the presence of man meant undoubted danger. One day in October, as he
was intently watching the movements of a sportsman in the copse, a big
cock pheasant rose with a great clatter from the brambles, a loud report
rang through the covert, and a shaggy brown and white spaniel dashed
yelping into the bushes. Darting impetuously from his lair, the cub
easily out-distanced the dog, and quickly found refuge in an adjoining
thicket, where he remained in safety during the rest of the day. Night
brought him another adventure. While crossing a pasture towards a wooded
belt on the hillside, he discovered, to his surprise, that a man was
creeping stealthily towards him through the shadows. A moment later, a
great lurcher came bounding over the field. The fox turned, made for the
hedgerow, and gained the friendly shelter of the hawthorns just as the
dog crashed into the ditch. The frightened creature now ran along the
opposite side of the hedge in a straight line towards the wood, and for
a second time narrowly escaped the lurcher's teeth; but, by keeping
close to the ditch and among the prickly bushes on the top of the
hedge-bank, he at last succeeded in baffling his long-legged foe and
reached the wood unharmed.
Vulp had thus awakened to the dangers which, during winter and the
earliest days of spring, were always to beset him. But the apprehensions
caused by his little affair with the spaniel, and even by his narrow
escape from the lurcher, were trifling compared with the dread and
distress of being driven for hours before the hounds. And so full of
perils was the first winter of his life that nothing but a combination
of sheer luck with great endurance could then have sufficed to save him
from destruction. Quickly, one after the other, the young vixens were
missing from the thickets; soon afterwards, three of the cubs belonging
to the litter that had been reared in the artificial "earth"
disappeared; and an old fox, the sire of that litter, was killed after a
long, wearisome chase almost to the cliffs on the distant coast.
One dark and dismal night in December, Vulp, on returning to the home
thickets, failed to find his dam. Her trail was fresh; she had evidently
escaped the day's hunt; but all his efforts to follow her met with no
sort of success. Nature had brought about a separation; in the company
of an adult fox, whose scent lay also on the woodland path, the vixen
had departed from her haunts. The fox-cub remained, however, among the
woodlands where he had learned his earliest lessons, and, for another
year, hunted and was hunted--a vagrant bachelor.
IV.
A CRY OF THE NIGHT.
One starlit night, when in early winter the snow lay thick on the
ground, Vulp heard the hunting call of a vixen prowling through the
pines. A similar call had often reached his ears. Not long after his dam
deserted him, the cry had come from a furze-brake on a neighbouring
hill-top, and, hastening thither, he had wandered long and wearily,
recognising, though with misgiving, his mother's voice. But the exact
meaning of the call, not being a matter for his mother's teaching, was
unknown to him at the time. Now, however, he was a strong, well fed,
fully developed fox, able to hold his own against all rivals, and the
cry possessed for him a strange, new significance: "The night is white;
man is asleep; I hunt alone!" Almost like a big brown leaf he seemed to
drift across the moonlit snow, nearer and nearer to the pines. He paused
for a moment to sniff the trail; then, with a joyous "yap" of greeting,
he bounded over the hedge, reached the aisles of the wood, and
gambolled--again like a big, wind-blown leaf--about the sleek, handsome
creature whose call he had heard. The happy pair trotted off to hunt the
thickets, till, just before dawn, Vulp, eager to show his skill and
training, surprised two young rabbits sitting beneath a snow-laden
tangle of briar and gorse, and gallantly shared the spoil with his
woodland bride. They feasted long and heartily, afterwards journeying to
the banks of a rill, that, like a black ribbon, flowed through the glen;
and there, crouching together at the margin, they lapped the water with
eager, thirsty tongues.
Presently, happening to glance behind along the line of the trail, Vulp
caught sight of another fox, a rival for the vixen's affections,
crouching in some bracken scarcely a dozen yards away. With a low grunt
of rage, he dashed into the fern, but the watchful stranger simply
moved aside, and frisked towards the vixen as she still crouched at the
edge of the stream. In response to this insulting defiance, Vulp hurled
himself on the intruder, and bowled him over into the snow. The fight
was fast and furious; now one gained the advantage, then the other. The
grass beneath them became gradually bared of snow by their frantic
struggles, and marked here and there by a bunch of fur or a spot of
blood. At last the rival fox, his cheek torn badly beneath the eye,
showed signs of exhaustion; his breath came in quick, loud gasps; and
Vulp, pressing the attack, forced him to flee for life to a thicket on
the brow of the slope. There he dwelt and nursed his wounds, till, when
the snow melted, the huntsman's "In-hoick, in-hoick, loo-loo-in-hoick!"
resounded in the coverts, and he was routed from his lair for a last,
half-hearted chase, that ended as Melody pulled him down at a ford of
the river below the woods.