Tarka became one with the river, finding his course among the slimy
stones so that his back was always covered. He rose beside the middle
pier, whose cutwater was hidden by a faggot of flood sticks. Under the
sticks was dimness, streaked and blurred with sunlight. Tarka hid and
listened.
His paws rested on a sunken branch. The water moved down, clouded with
the mud-stirrings of the leat. He lay so still that the trout returned
to their stances beside the stone sterlings.
_B'hoys, b'hoys! Com' on, ol' fellars! Leu in, ol' fellars. Com' on,
all 'v yer!_
The stain spread into the pool below the bridge. Hounds whimpered and
marked at the stick-pile. Their many tongues smote all other sounds
from Tarka's ears. He knew they could not reach him in his retreat,
and so he stayed there even when a pole, thrust into the heap, rubbed
against his flank. Then over his head the sticks began to crack and
creak, as a man climbed upon them. The man jumped with both feet
together on the heap. Tarka sank and turned downstream. Cries from the
lower parapet; thudding of boots above. The chain of bubbles drew out
downstream.
Tarka swam to the left bank, where he touched and breathed. He heard,
in the half-second his head was out of water, the noise that had
terrified him as a cub--the noise as of an iron-shod centipede crossing
the shallows. Way down the river was stopped by a line of upright
figures, standing a yard apart and stirring the water with poles. Tarka
heard the noise under water, but he swam down until he saw before him
the bright-bubbled barrier. He swung round and swam upstream as fast as
three-and-a-half webbed feet could push him.
He swam under the heap of sticks again, enduring the massed tongues
of marking hounds until the creaking and thudding over his head drove
him to open water again. He swam under an arch, turned by the lower
sterling, and swam up another arch, to a backwater secluded from the
main stream by the ridge of shillets made by the cross-leaping waters
of the runner in flood. An ash tree grew over the backwater, but Tarka
could find no holding in its roots. He swam past the legs of swimming
hounds and went down again.
_Tally Ho!_
He swam through the plying poles of the stickle, and ran over the
shallow, reaching safe water before the pack came down. He was young
and fast and strong. Hounds were scattered behind him, some swimming,
others plunging through the shallows below the banks, stooping to the
scent washed on scour and shillet, and throwing their tongues. He could
not see them, when swimming under water, until they were nearly over
him. He swam downstream, never turning back, touching first one bank to
breathe, and then swimming aslant to the other. Once in the straight
mile of river under the Town on the Hill, he emerged by a shallow
almost by Deadlock's feet; instantly he turned back. Farther down, by a
jungle of balsam, whose top drought-roots were like the red toes of a
bird, he left the river and ran on the bank, under trees. He had gone
thirty yards on the hot land when Render and Deadlock crashed through
the jungle of hollow sap-filled stalks after him. Although his legs
were short--it was difficult to see them when he ran--he moved faster
than any of the men hunting him could run. He left the land a hundred
yards above Taddiport Bridge, by a bank where shards of Roman tiles
were jutting.
Below the bridge was a ridge of shillets, long and wide as the broken
hull of a sailing ship. Alders and willows grew here, and tall grasses
that hid the old dry twigs and reeds on the lower branches of the
trees. Floods had heaped up the island. The wet marks of Tarka's feet
and rudder soon dried on the worn flakes of rock; but not before the
larger pads of hounds, making the loose shillets clatter, had covered
them.
_Leu-in! Leu-in, b'hoys. Ov-ov-ov-ov-over!_
Tarka's feet were dry when he took again to water, after trying to rid
himself of scent on the stones so hot in the sun. He passed plants of
water-hemlock and dropwort, tall as a man, growing among the stones,
some sprawling with their weight of sap. He swam on down the river,
passing Servis Wood, over which a buzzard, pestered by rooks, was
wailing in the sky. The rooks left it to see what the hounds were
doing, and wheeled silently over the river. Their shadows fled through
the water, more visible than the otter.
A thousand yards from Taddiport Bridge, Tarka passed the brook up
which he had travelled with his mother on the way to the Clay Pits. He
swam under a railway bridge, below which the river hurried in a course
narrow and shaded. An island of elm trees divided the river bed; the
right fork was dry--hawkweed, ragwort, and St. John's wort, plants of
the land, were growing there. Tarka swam to the tail of the island,
and climbed up the dry bank. The place was cool and shady, and filled
with the stench arising from the broad leaves and white flowers of wild
garlic growing under the trees. Tarka trod into a thick patch, and
quatted low.
Hounds passed him. He listened to them baying in the narrow channel
below the island.
Deadlock clambered up the dry bank, ran a few yards among the grasses,
threw up his head, sniffed, and turned away. Tarka held his breath.
Other hounds followed, to sniff and run down the bank again. Tarka
listened to them working among the roots under the island bank,
and across the river. He heard the chaunting voices of huntsman
and whippers-in; the noises of motor-cars moving slowly along the
hard-rutted trackway, the old canal-bed, above the right bank of the
river; the voices of men and women getting out of the motor-cars; and
soon afterwards, the scrape of boots on the steep rubble path down to
the dry, stony bed.
Tarka had been lying among the cool and stinking garlic plants of Elm
Island for nearly five minutes when he heard gasping and wheezing
noises at the top of the island. The two terriers, Bite'm and Biff,
were pulling at their chains, held by the kennel-boy. Their tongues
hung long and limp, after the two-mile tug from the mills over
sun-baked turf, dusty trackway, and hot stones, to Elm Island. Just
before, while tugging down the path, Bite'm had fainted with the heat.
A lapping sprawl in the river had refreshed the couple, and now they
strove against the collars pressing into their windpipes.
Tarka started up when they were a yard from where he lay. The
kennel-boy dropped the chain when he saw him. Tarka ran towards the
river, but at the sheer edge of the island he saw men on the stones
six feet below. He ran along the edge, quickening at the shout of the
kennel-boy, and had almost reached the island's tail when Bite'm pinned
him in the shoulder. Tissing through his open mouth, Tarka rolled and
fought with the terriers. Their teeth clashed. Tarka's moves were low
and smooth; he bit Bite'm again and again, but the terrier hung on.
Biff tried to bite him across the neck, but Tarka writhed away. The
three rolled and snarled, scratching and snapping, falling apart and
returning with instant swiftness. Ears were torn and hair ripped out.
Hounds heard them, and ran baying under the island cliff to find a way
up. The kennel-boy tried to stamp on and recover the end of the chain,
for he knew that in a worry all three might be killed. White terriers
and brown otter rolled nearer the edge, and fell over.
The fall shook off Bite'm. Tarka ran under the legs of Dabster, and
although Bluemaid snapped at his flank he got into the water and sank
away.
_Tally Ho! Tally Ho! Yaa-aa-ee on to'm!_
By the bank, fifty yards below Elm Island, stood the Master, looking
into water six inches deep. A fern frond, knocked off the bank
upstream, came down turning like a little green dragon in the clear
water. It passed. Then came an ash-spray, that clung around the pole
he leaned on. Its leaves bent to the current, it stayed, it swung
away, and drifted on. A dead stick rode after it, and a fly feebly
struggling--and then the lovely sight of an otter spreading himself
over the stones, moving with the stream, slowly, just touching with his
feet, smooth as oil under the water. A twenty-pound dog, thought the
Master, remaining quiet by the shallow water, listening to the music of
his hounds. There was a stickle below Rothern Bridge.
The hounds splashed past him, stooping to the scent. Tarka's head
showed, and vanished. He swam under Rothern Bridge, whose three stone
arches, bearing heavy motor-transport beyond their old age, showed the
cracks of suffering that the ferns were filling green. A sycamore grew
out of its lower parapet. Deeper water under the bridge; the frail
bubble-chain lay on it. A cry above the bridge; a line of coarser
bubbles breaking across the stickle, where six men and two women stood
in the river.
Tarka's head looked up and saw them. He lay in the deep water. He
turned his head, and watched hounds swimming down through the arch. He
dived and swam up; was hunted to shallow water again, and returned,
making for the stickle. The water was threshed in a line from
shillet-bank to shillet-bank, but he did not turn back. As he tried to
pass between a man in red and a man in blue, two pole-ends were pushed
under his belly in an attempt to hoick him back. But Tarka slipped off
the shillet-burnished iron and broke the stickle. The whips ran on the
bank, cheering on the hounds.
_Get on to 'm! Hark to Deadlock! Leu-on! Leu-on! Leu-on!_
* * * * *
A quarter of a mile below Rothern Bridge the river slows into the lower
loop of a great S. It deepens until half-way, where the S is cut by
the weir holding back the waters of the long Beam Pool. Canal Bridge
crosses the river at the top of the S.
Where the river begins to slow, at the beginning of the pool, its left
bank is bound by the open roots of oak, ash, alder, and sycamore. To
hunted otters these trees offered holding as secure as any in the
country of the Two Rivers. Harper, the aged hound--he was fourteen
years old--knew every holt in the riverside trees of Knackershill
Copse, and although he had marked at all of them, only once had he
cracked the rib of an otter found in the pool. Leeches infested the
unclear water.
Tarka reached the top of the pool. Swimming in the shade, his unseen
course betrayed by the line of bubbles-a-vent, he came to the roots of
the sycamore tree, where he had slept for two days during his wandering
after the death of Greymuzzle. He swam under the outer roots, and was
climbing in a dim light to a dry upper ledge when a tongue licked his
head, and teeth playfully nipped his ear. Two pale yellow eyes moved
over him. He had awakened the cub Tarquol.
Tarka turned round and round, settled and curled, and closed his eyes.
Tarquol's nostrils moved, pointing at Tarka's back. His small head
stretched nearer, the nostrils working. He sniffed Tarka's hair from
rudder to neck, and his nose remained at the neck. It was a strange
smell, and he sniffed carefully, not wanting to touch the fur with
his nostrils. Tarka drew in a deep breath, which he let out in a long
sigh. Then he swallowed the water in his mouth, settled his ear more
comfortably on his paw, and slept; and awoke again.
Tarquol, the hairs of his neck raised, was listening at the back of the
ledge. He was still as a root. The ground was shaking.
_Go in on 'm, old fellars! Wind him, my lads! B'hoys! B'hoys! Come on,
b'hoys, get on to 'm._
The otters heard the whimpers of hounds peering from the top of
the bank, afraid of the fall into the river. They watched the dim
root-opening level with the water. Footfalls sounded in the roots
by their heads; they could feel them through their feet. Then the
water-level rose up and shook with a splash, as Deadlock was tipped
into the river. They saw his head thrust in at the opening, heard his
gruff breathing, and then his belving tongue. Other hounds whimpered
and splashed into the river.
_Pull him out, old fellars! Leu-in there, leu-in, leu-in!_
Heavy thuds shook down bits of earth on the otters' heads and backs.
The iron-bar, with its ball-handle, started to break through the top of
the holt. Tarquol tissed, moving to and fro on the ledge in his fear of
the unknown. Often he looked at the opening, wanting to escape. The bar
was pounding a root.
Tarka quatted on the ledge; he knew that Deadlock would follow him
wherever he swam in water. Tarquol, twisting and weaving his head,
ran down on roots to the water, dragging his rudder for a dive; but
a whitish light alarmed him and he ran up to the ledge again. The
whitish light was reflected from the breeches of a wading man. A voice
sounded near and hollow. Then a pole pushed through the opening between
two roots. Its end was thrown about, nearly striking Tarquol's head. It
was pulled out again, and the whitish light moved away. The pounding of
the bar stopped. Tarka heard the whining of Bite'm.
Hands held and guided the terrier past the outside root. Tarquol tissed
again as the dim light darkened with the shape of the enemy, whose
scent was on the hair of Tarka's neck. Bite'm whined and yapped, trying
to struggle up to the otters. His hind feet slipped off the roots, and
he fell into the water below. _Plomp, plomp, plomp_, as he trod water,
trying to scramble up the side.
Again the opening grew dark with arms holding and guiding another
terrier, and Biff began to climb. _Wough! wough! wough!_ Soon she
fell into the water. The terriers were called off. Tarka settled more
easily, but Tarquol could not rest. Hounds and terriers were gone, but
still the voices of men were heard. The sound was low and regular, and
Tarka's eyes closed. Tarquol quatted beside him, and for many minutes
neither moved. Then the murmur of voices ceased with footfalls along
the bank, coming nearer, and stopping above. A man climbed down the
bank and slid feet first into the water; the chalky light was reflected
in at the opening. An arm was thrust in, and the wrist-jerk sent a
handful of small pieces of rock into the holt. The pieces hissed when
they met the water, and gave off streams of bubbles. The otters gazed
down at them. The man moved away from the holt, and his friends hauled
him to the top of the bank.
Silence, except for the hissing and bubbling in the holt. The otters
were immobile in curiosity. Neither Tarka nor Tarquol thought of the
strange bubbling as an act of the man. Often they had seen bubbles
arising from the holes of eels and ragworms in mud. Sometimes in
solitary underwater play they had blown bubbles, and tried to bite them
before they broke at the surface. Tarka and Tarquol moved lower along
a root to be nearer the strange bubbles. Tarka was lower than the cub,
near the water, when he started and sprang as though trapped, gave a
retching cough, and tumbled into the water. Tarquol tissed with fright,
gaped when he breathed the acetylene gas, and followed Tarka out of the
holt. He saw Tarka's chain rising bright before him. He turned upstream
and was alone.
Seventy yards from the holt he rose under the bank to rest, and heard
the baying of hounds. He dived again and went on upstream at his
greatest speed. At his next vent he knew that the terrible beasts were
following him. He swam out of the pool, turned back again, saw their
heads in the water from bank to bank, became scared, and left the river.
Galloping across the meadow faster than he had ever run in his life,
with the hunting cries behind him and the thudding hooves of bullocks
cantering away from hounds on his left, Tarquol came to sheds where
farm machines were stored, and going through a yard, he ran through a
gap in a hedge into a garden, where an old man was picking off the tops
of his broad beans in a row, muttering about the black-fly on them.
Tarquol passed him so near and so swiftly that the granfer's short clay
pipe dropped from between his gums. He muttered in the sunshine and
pondered nearly a minute. Hardly had he stooped to pick up his pipe
when a great black and white hound crashed through the hedge and ran
over his tetties and sun-dried shallots, followed by three more hounds,
and after them a couple, and then his garden was filled with them.
_Git'oom!_
The hounds were gone, leaving him staring at his broken
beans.
Tarquol had run round the walls of the cottage and into a farmyard,
scattering fowls in terror before him. One of the hens, who was broody,
ran at him and leapt at his back, pecking and flapping. Tarquol kicked
a little dust behind his straight rudder. At full speed he ran into
a pigsty, where a sow was lying on her side with a farrow of eleven
tugging at her. Seeing him, they stopped tugging, stared together,
squeaked together, and scampered away into corners. The sow, too fat
to get up quickly, tried to bite Tarquol as he rippled from corner to
corner. The baying of the pack grew terribly loud, and still Tarquol
darted about the sty, seeking a way of escape. The sow, after many
grunts, flung herself on her trotters and bundled her flabby mass to
the door, unlocked her dirty teeth to bite Deadlock, who had just
arrived. Squealing with rage, her bristly, mud-caked ears flapping on
her chaps, she chased him out of the sty, followed him back into the
yard, and scattered the rest of the pack.
Tarquol had run out behind the sow. He gained three hundred yards
before hounds found his line again. He ran with the sun behind him for
two hundred yards over grass, then he turned and went through a thorn
hedge, climbed the railway embankment, and ran up over Furzenbeam Hill,
leaving an irregular trail. He ran for three miles on land, hiding
among the dry spikes of gorse, and under branches. Sometimes he mewed
in his misery.
Hounds ran far ahead of the men and women. Eventually the pack--with
the exception of Pitiful, who was lost--hunted him back to the railway
line, to where he was crouching low in the thorn hedge. A bird with
a loud rasping voice, and a beak like a bent iron nail, clacked
and chattered on a briar rising out of the hedge. It was a bird of
property, or red-backed shrike, and Tarquol was quatting by its larder
of bumble-bees, grasshoppers, and young harvest mice impaled on thorns.
The mice were dead, but the bees still moved their legs.
Tarquol ran out of the thorns just before Render's muzzle pushed into
his hiding place; but hounds leapt the low hedge and overtook him,
before he had gone very far on his short, tired legs. Deadlock seized
him and shook him and threw him into the air. Tarquol sprang up as
soon as he fell, snapping and writhing as more jaws bit on his body,
crushed his head, cracked his ribs, his paws, and his rudder. Among
the brilliant hawkbits--little sunflowers of the meadow--he was picked
up and dropped again, trodden on and wrenched and broken, while the
screaming cheers and whoops of sportsmen mingled with the growling
rumble of hounds at worry. Tarquol fought them until he was blinded,
and his jaws were smashed.