At half-past ten in the morning a covered motor-van stopped at the
bridge below the Dark Pool. From the driver's seat three men got down,
and at the sound of their footfalls deep notes came from the van.
Hearing the hounds, the two terriers--Biff and Bite'm--held by a girl
in jacket and short skirt of rough blue serge, yapped and strained
against the chain.
Motor-cars were drawn up on one side of the road. The men, women, and
children who had come to the meet of otter hounds stood by them and
talked or lounged against the stone parapets of the bridge. Some men
leaned on long ash poles, stained and polished with linseed oil and
shod with iron and notched from the top downwards with the number of
past kills, two notches crossed denoting a double-kill. The women
carried smaller and slenderer poles, either of ash or male bamboo.
There were blackthorn thumbsticks, hazel-wands, staves of ground-ash;
one boy held the handle of a carpet-sweeper, slightly warped. He had
poked the end in some nettles, lest the wooden screw be seen by other
boys. It had no notches.
Faces turned to the hound-van. Huntsman and his whipper-in each lifted
a rusty pin from the staples in the back of the van and lowered the
flap. Immediately hounds fell out and over each other, and to the road,
shaking themselves, whimpering, panting with pink tongues flacking,
happy to be free after the crush and heat of the journey from kennels.
They were admired and stroked, patted and spoken to by name; they
scratched themselves and rolled and licked each others necks; they sat
and looked up at the many faces--old Harper solemnly, with eyes sunk by
age, the younger hounds, still remembering their walking days, going to
seek their human friends, and sniff and nuzzle pockets where biscuits,
cake, and sandwiches were stored. The kennel-boy and whip called them
by name and flicked gently near the more restless with his whip:
Barbrook and Bellman, Boisterous and Chorister, Dewdrop, Sailoress,
Coraline, and Waterwitch; Armlet, who lay down to sleep, Playboy
and Actor, Render and Fencer; Hemlock the one eyed, with Bluemaid,
Hurricane, Harper, and Pitiful, the veterans; Darnel and Grinder, who
sat behind Sandboy. Then two young hounds of the same litter, Dabster
and Dauntless, sons of Dewdrop and Deadlock.
And there Deadlock, his black head scarred with old fights, sat on his
haunches, apart and morose, watching for the yellow waistcoat of the
Master. His right ear showed the mark made by the teeth of Tarka's
mother two years before, when he had thrust his head into the hollow
of the fallen tree. The swung thong of the whip idly flicked near
Deadlock; he moved his head slightly and his eyes; from upper and lower
teeth the lips were drawn, and, looking at the kennel-boy's legs,
Deadlock growled. The hound hated him.
People were watching. The whipper-in felt that the hound was making him
ridiculous, and flicked Deadlock with the lash, speaking sharply to
him. The hound's growls grew more menacing. Between his teeth the hound
yarred, the dark pupils of his eyes becoming fixed in their stare. Then
seeing Dabster trotting off to the bridge the whipper-in gladly went
after him. Deadlock looked away, ignoring all eyes.
Other cars descended the hill above the bridge and stopped on the left
of the road. For a week in the early summer of each year, known as the
Joint Week, a neighbouring Hunt visited the country of the Two Rivers,
bringing their own hounds with them, so that the home pack might rest
every other day of the six hunting days. Other otter-hunters came from
their rivers which flowed into the seas of Britain west and south and
east. Their uniforms were coloured as the dragonflies over the river.
There were grey pot-hats, dark blue jackets and stockings, and white
breeches of the Cheriton; the grey hats and breeches and stockings and
red coats of the Culmstock; the cream-collared bright blue coats and
stockings and cream breeches of the Crowhurst from Surrey, Kent, and
Sussex; men of the Dartmoor, all in navy-blue, from pad-pinned cap
to black brogues, except for white stock round the throat; the green
double-peaked caps, green coats, scarlet ties, white breeches, and
green stockings of the Courtenay Tracey from Wessex. A man like a great
seal, jovial and gruff among laughing friends, wore the gayest uniform,
in the judgment of two ragged children. It blazed and winked in the
sunlight, scarlet and blue and brass.
Shortly after half-past ten o'clock eleven and a half couples of hounds
and two terriers, nearly throttling themselves in eagerness to press
forward, were trotting behind the huntsman through the farmyard to the
river. The huntsman repeated a cooing chant at the back of his nose
of _C-o-o-o-o-orn-yer! Co-o-o-o-orn-yer! W-wor! W-wor!_ with names of
hounds. They trotted with waving sterns, orderly and happy, enjoying
the sounds, which to them were promise of sport and fun if only they
kept together and ignored the scent of duck, cat, offal, mouse, and
cottage-infant's jammy crust. They pattered through the farmyard in
best behaviour; they loved the huntsman, who fed them and pulled
thorns out of their feet and never whipped them, although he sometimes
dropped unpleasant medicine at the back of their tongues, and held
their muzzles, and stroked their throats until they could hold it there
no longer, but had to swallow. The _W-wor! W-wor!_ and other cooing
dog-talk was understood perfectly; they caused even Deadlock to forget
to growl when young Dabster, avoiding a kitten, bumped into him. For
the two strongest feelings in Deadlock, apart from those of his private
kennel life, were blood-thirst for otters and his regard for the
huntsman.
They jumped down the bank into the river, leaping across the shallows
to the left bank, and working upstream to the occasional toot of the
horn. Almost at once Deadlock whimpered and bounded ahead. Tarka had
touched there, on the shillets, six hours before.
They came to the groove in the right bank, between two hazel stoles,
where Tarka had climbed out to cross the meadows to the weir, for the
river-course was like a horseshoe. The grasses still held enough scent
for the hounds to own, and they followed the trail to the wood that
grew steeply up from the water. A crow, that had been waiting on the
weir-sill for beetles and little fish to pass in the gentle film of
water near its feet, heard them as they splashed up the leat and flew
to the top of a tall tree to watch hidden in the leaves. The crow had
seen Tarka as he swam from the leat into the Dark Pool at five o'clock
in the morning. Then he had loudly cawed, calling his mate to annoy the
otter; now he kept quiet. Hounds swam up the pool.
A furlong above the weir was a ford, where, in summer, horse-drawn
butts go for the gravel heaped up by winter floods. By the ford was a
tree, and under the roots of the tree was a holt. Deadlock, Render, and
Fencer swam to the tree, whimpering, splashing, scratching and tearing
at roots with their teeth. Soon the pack was trying to break into the
entrance. They did not obey voice, horn, and whip at once, but had
to be urged away by taps of whip-handles on ribs, and by individual
commands. _Go'r'n leave it! Go'r'n leave it!_ cried one of the honorary
whips in a yarring voice, to Deadlock and Render who remained. A little
shivering sharp-nosed terrier, uncollared, peered with cock-ears and
whined on the bank above. The entrance of the holt was under water, and
Biff's collar was slipped round her neck again.
The honorary whip, a retired senior officer of the army, prodded with
his pole among the roots, and finding soft earth tried to force the
pole to the back of the holt. The water moved away in a yellow muddy
wound. He worked until he was hot. He stopped, pushed his hat back from
his forehead, and rubbed it with his goatskin glove. "Where's that chap
with the bar?" Below the holt, at intervals of ten to fifteen yards,
men were gazing into the sun-dappled water of the Dark Pool. Voices
sounded high above, where on the road cut in the rock many of the cars
were waiting.
A man came hastening down the cart-track with the iron digging bar. A
hole was worked in the ground over the holt, while a sportsman in the
Cheriton uniform banged the turf with the length of his pole. The hole
was made deeper, the bar worked backwards and forwards, and plunged
hard down.
The Master, leaning his chin upon his hands clasping the top of his
pole, saw a chain of bubbles rise a yard from the bank, and steadily
lengthen aslant the river. Sweeping off his grey hat, he scooped the
air with it, crying _Tally-ho!_ Hounds poured down the track and
splashed into the river, giving tongue and stirring up the gravel silt.
Through shadows of trees lying on the water the lit dust drifted. Many
hounds swam mute, striving hard to take the lead, urged by the cries
and gestures in front of them.
The chain drew out from one bank to another, in stretches of fifty and
sixty yards, until by the sill of the weir a ripple was made by a brown
head that sank immediately; but was viewed.
_Yoi-yoi-yoi-yoi! Ov-ov-ov-ov-ov-ov-over! Tally-ho! He's gone down the
leat!_
* * * * *
The dark green weeds were bended and swayed silently by the slow glide
of the water. The leat was deep, with a dark brown bed. It had been dug
to carry water to the elm wheels of the two mills by the bridge a mile
below. Now the larger wheel had been replaced by a turbine, which used
less water. Leaves rotted on the leat's bed, the water brimmed almost
into the meadow. Tarka swam through the dark green swaying weed, and
over the dark brown bed. When he swung up to breathe his nose showed in
the ripple like a dead leaf turned up in the current, and settling down
again. He swam under the crinkled top-scum by the heavy oaken fender,
which was raised to let the water through. A trout darted by him as he
passed under the fender, and he caught it with a sudden turn of his
body.
Trees made the leat shadowy; ferns hung over it; the taloned brambles
stretched down to the water. It flowed in the low ground of the valley,
bending like the river below it. It left the meadows, the tall grasses,
and the reddening sorrel, and flowed through a jungle of rushes and
grasses, briars and hazel bushes, where the webs of spiders were loaded
with bees, flies, and grasshoppers. Only a weasel could run on the
banks. The blue flowers of borage and comfrey grew in the jungle, where
the buds of the dog-rose were opening.
Sometimes a swift, cutting the air with alternate strokes of its narrow
black wings, dashed a ripple as it sipped and sped on. Willow wrens
flitted in the ash-sprays lower down, taking insects on the leaves. A
chiffchaff sang its two-note song. By a briar raking the water the
otter's head was raised; he listened and swam to the bank. Hounds
spoke remotely; he knew Deadlock's tongue among them. He climbed out
of the leat, the trout still in his mouth, and pushed through the
undergrowth, among nettles and marsh-wort, and over soft damp ground.
Robins ticked at him, wrens stittered. Burrs and seeds tried to hook to
his hair, finding no hold. Warble flies tried to alight on his back
and suck his blood; the rushes brushed them off. He ran in a loop back
to the leat, and slipped into the water above the hounds, who had gone
down. He swam up for a quarter of a mile, then rested by an alder root
and listened to the pack running over his land-trail. He looked round
for a stone whereon to eat the fish, but hearing Deadlock's tongue, he
lay still.
From the wooded hillside above the distant bank of the river came the
knock of axes on the trunk of an oak tree, the shouts of woodmen, a
sudden crack, the hissing rush and thud of breaking branches, and then
quietness, until began the steady knocks of boughs being lopped. After
a while Tarka did not hear these sounds--he was listening in another
direction. He scarcely heard the shooting buzz of sun-frisked flies
over the leat. He felt no fear; all his energy was in listening.
_Chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff_ sang the bird among the ash
trees. And soon the voices of men, the tearing of brambles against
coats, boots trampling and snapping the hollow green stalks of hog-weed
and hemlock. Tarka saw their heads and shoulders against the sky, and
swam on up the leat.
His scent was washed down by the water, and the hounds followed him.
He crept out on the other bank, on soft ground littered with dead
leaves, which lay under crooked oak trees. He ran swiftly up the slope
and entered a larch plantation, where the sky was shut out. The narrow
lines of thin straight boles stood in a duskiness as of midsummer
night. All sound was shut out; nothing grew under the trees. A wood owl
peered down at him as he ran among the brittle fallen twigs; it peered
over its back and softly hooted to its mate. The plantation was silent
again.
Tarka sat by a bole in the middle of the Dark Hams Wood, listening
through the remote sough of wind in the branches to the faint cries
below. The smell of the sap was strong in his nostrils. He dropped the
fish. Sometimes he heard the querulous scream of a jay, and the clap of
pigeon-wings as the birds settled in the tree-tops.
For nearly twenty minutes he waited by the tree, and then the hunting
cries swelled in the narrow groves of the wood. The owl flapped off
its branch, and Tarka ran down the leat again, passing the hounds nine
lines of trees away from them. Sunlight dazzled him when he ran out of
the plantation. Then he saw many men and women before him.
_Tally Ho!_
Tarka ran round them and dived into the leat. When first he had swum
down, the water had brimmed to the meadow, floating the green plants
in its slow-gliding current; now the bank glistened with a sinking
watermark, and only the tags of the starwort were waving. Trout darted
before him as he swam against the water flowing faster. Often his head
showed as he walked half out of water beside the starwort. He reached
the square oaken fender, where only a rillet trickled. It rested on the
bed of the leat, penning the water above.
_Tally Ho!_
Tarka turned and went down the leat again. He reached water deep
enough to cover him before he met the hounds who, hunting by the sense
of smell, did not see him moving as a dark brown shadow through the
channels in the weeds. Hounds passed him, for the wash--or scent on the
water--was still coming down.
Tarka swam down to the mill end of the leat, which was dark with the
brown stains of stagnant life on its muddy bed. Trees kept the sun from
it. A runner, or streamlet, from other woods joined it at this end, and
waited in the pool to pass through the grating to the mills. Tarka swam
under the culvert of the runner, but finding shallow water he returned
and looked for a hole or drain in the banks. Shafts of sunlight pierced
the leaves and dappled the water. A broad shade lay before the grating,
where oak planks, newly sawn, were stacked over the water. The ringing
rasp of a circular saw cutting hard wood suddenly rang under the trees,
overbearing the shaken rumble of millstones grinding corn. Specks of
wood settled on the water beyond the shade, where Tarka rested, staying
himself by a paw on a rusty nail just above the water level.
He waited and listened. The sawdust drifted past him, and was sucked
away between the iron bars of the grating. The noise of the saw ceased.
He heard the hounds again, coming down the leat. A voice just over his
head cried, _One o'clock!_ Footfalls hurried away from the saw. The
hatch was closed, the trundling wheel slowed into stillness. Tarka
heard the twittering of swallows; but he was listening for the sound
of the horn. Deadlock speaking! Up the leat waterside plants were
crackling as feet trod them down. Voices of the whips, one harsh and
rating, were coming nearer. Heads and shoulders moved over the culvert.
When the leading hound swam into the pool, throwing his tongue, Tarka
dived and found a way through the grating, where one iron bar was
missing--a space just wide enough for an otter. He drew himself on to
the hatch and walked slowly up the wet and slippery wooden troughs to
the top of the wheel. He quatted low and watched the grating. Hounds
swam along it and Deadlock pushed his black head in the space of the
missing bar. His flews pressed the iron and stopped him. He bayed into
the cavern where the ancient water-wheel dripped, beside the curved
iron conduit of the modern water-turbine. The place was gloomy; but in
a corner, framed in a triangle of sunlight, three ferns hung out of the
mortar--spleenwort, wall-rue, and male fern. Five young wagtails filled
a nest built on the roots of the male fern; the nestlings crouched down
in fear of the baying.
Drops from the elmwood troughs dripped into the plash hollowed in the
rock under the wheel. Tarka sat on the topmost trough, his rudder
hanging over the rim of the wheel. He heard the shrill yapping of
terriers on leash; the shuffle of feet on the road over the culvert;
the murmur of voices. Poles were pushed among the layers of planks;
feet of hounds pounded the deep water as they swam under the timber
baulks. He listened to their whimpers; smelt their breath. After a
time the noises receded, and he heard _chik-ik, chik-ik_--the cries
of the parent wagtails, waiting on the roof with beakfuls of river
flies. Tarka licked his paws and settled more comfortably in the sodden
elmwood trough. Sometimes his eyes closed, but he did not sleep.
At two o'clock he heard voices in the gloomy wheelhouse. The men were
returning to work after dinner. The hatch was lifted. Water gushed
in and over the trough. The wheel shuddered and moved. Water gushed
in and over each trough as it was lowered on the rim, and the wheel
began its heavy splashing trundle. Tarka was borne down into darkness
and flung on the rock. Under the troughs he crept, to the shallow
stream that was beginning to flow through a lower culvert to the river.
Sunlight dazed him. The bridge was ten yards below.
The parapet before and above him was a smooth line across the sky,
except for a wagtail's pied body, the tops of three polypody ferns, the
head and shoulders of an old grey-bearded man in a blue coat, and a
black empty beer-bottle.
_Tally-ho!_