CHASED BY POLECATS
The sun had sunk below the hill, and Golden Valley lay in shadow and
repose. Zekiah, the miller, his work done at last, sat smoking his pipe
on the bench by the door; the mill-wheel was at rest, and the stream was
slowly refilling the nearly emptied pond where, from time to time, a
wave in the shallows betrayed the movement of a trout. Overhead a few
swifts yet wheeled: but yellow-hammer, whinchat, blackcap, whitethroat,
and long-tailed tit had sought roosting-places in the furze, and the
magpie that haunted the mill had withdrawn to his perch in the hawthorn.
For them the hour for rest had come; the moment when nocturnal creatures
quit their retreat drew near. The bat was on the point of leaving the
crevice under the eaves; the owl in the ivied scarp, the vixen in the
earth overlooking the fowling-pool watched the shadows deepen, and still
more impatient was the leveret, who already after a two nights’ absence
was longing for a feast of clover. With the peeping of the stars he
sprang from the form, leapt the stream at the inflow, and gaining the
crest of the hill, made over the upland almost straight as a crow flies
for his destination.
He was in the highest of spirits; the nearer he came to the field the
more determined he was to show fight to the rabbits should they combine
to drive him from it. The thought never entered his head that any other
creatures would intervene between him and his feast, much less that
before he could reach the feeding-ground he would be turned into a
terror-stricken fugitive; yet so it proved.
On, on he sped until he reached the pasture adjoining the clover; he was
within a stone’s throw of the gate when he heard the patter of feet on
the other side of the hedge; his curiosity was aroused, and he stood
still to see the creatures pass the gap a dozen yards to his rear. He
expected to view a troop of rats, of which he had met many in the
standing corn; to his horror it proved to be a family of polecats,
moving so slowly in single file that, though there were only six in all,
he thought the procession would never come to an end. All peered through
the gap; the last actually stopped and scrutinised the leveret, but
concluding that he was one of the many stones that littered the ground,
galloped off after the others. It was a narrow escape, for had the
leveret raised head or ears he must have been recognised and have drawn
the bloodthirsty crew upon him.
The sight of the polecats had so frightened him that he was incapable of
movement; it was some minutes before he had sufficiently recovered to
continue on his way. Near the gate he stopped and looked back, and once
more after entering the field, but without seeing a sign of the enemy.
Then he cast his eyes vaguely over the field, the goal of his longing.
Not a rabbit was to be seen; the patch of uncut clover looked most
tempting. Did he hasten to nibble the succulent leaves? Not at all: he
never went near them; he moved away, urged by the impulse to put as
great a distance as possible between himself and the polecats, for he
felt sure they would follow his trail. All at once he broke into a
panic-stricken flight, and kept it up as far as the barley-field, which
had been cut in his absence. On the hedge by the tit’s deserted nest he
stood and listened with ears erect. He expected to hear the whimpering
chorus that he had once heard in the valley below, the cry that would
confirm his fears. But there was no sound, not even a slight rustling of
the medlar leaves. The silence, however, brought him no comfort. It
could not dispel the dread which kept him wandering aimlessly about the
oatfield like a thing awaiting its doom; so that he must have wasted
half an hour before leaving by the gate at the lower corner and
galloping across the long meadow where some bullocks glared at him as he
sped past. In the small enclosure beyond he stopped to nibble one of the
turnips growing there, but so nervous was he that the pigeon drinking at
the woodland pool does not raise its head more often than he. His eyes
are directed to the spot on the hedge where he had passed; for he is
sure that the polecats before now have struck his trail.
His apprehension proved correct. The polecats had happened on his line
amongst the furze above the mill-pool, and run it in the right direction
from the first. More than once the mother, conscious of the wide circuit
made by a hare, was on the point of abandoning the trail; but the sight
of her kittens revelling in the scent got the better of her judgment and
induced her to keep on. She led her young at the utmost speed they were
capable of maintaining, arresting her steps only to scan each field she
came to, in the hope of seeing and being seen by the hare, who she knew
would be paralysed at the sight of her. She never dreamt that the hare
had already seen her and was under the spell of her influence; though
the knowledge could not have hastened the pursuit, inasmuch as the
kittens were hurrying on as fast as their legs could carry them.
The distance that separated the hunters from the quarry was not great.
When they entered the clover the leveret was only just leaving the oats;
when they were crossing the barley stubble he was still nibbling the
turnips; but he gained after that. For while the polecats were busy
working out the tortuous line in the oats he forged ahead and gained
High Down, where he busied himself in laying a most intricate maze. He
moved hither and thither criss-crossing the trail incessantly, knowing
that his life depended on its intricacy. It was well that he was
thoroughly absorbed in his task, for had he stopped and listened he
could hardly have failed to hear the shrill cry of his pursuers as they
bounded across the long meadow. On gaining the hedge-top they stood
scrutinising the rows of turnips as if they expected to see the game
there; and very odd they looked standing side by side on their hind
legs, their eyes shining like glow-worms. But the quarry was nowhere to
be seen, so presently mother and kittens leapt to the ground and resumed
the full cry, which they kept up over the undulating field beyond, round
the edge of the swamp, and below the pair of haggard thorns between
which the pack passed.
Meanwhile the leveret, his task well done, was on the point of leaving
the downs. He was perhaps a score yards from the gate when the cry he
had been so long expecting fell on his ears and rendered him all but
helpless. Some hares would have lain down and awaited their fate; others
would have squealed and hastened it; but the leveret’s courage was high,
and, stifling the cry which sought for utterance, he battled as best he
could against the paralysing weakness that assailed him, and dragged
himself yard by yard towards the gate. Suddenly the cry ceased: the
polecats had come on the maze, and in silence devoted themselves to the
business of unravelling it. With the cessation of the blood-curdling
chorus the leveret’s power gradually returned; he drew farther and
farther away, seemingly all uncertain as to his goal. At one moment he
headed for the form on the hedge; at another for the mound where he had
sat once or twice when the wind was northerly; but in the end he set his
face for the form by the pool, and to this direction he kept. The
polecats, maddened by the delay, had been displaying a feverish energy
in their attempt to discover the true line. Each worked independently of
the other, and not a kitten looked to the mother for guidance. Theirs
was indeed a difficult task: no pack of harriers would have accomplished
it without aid of man; yet the wildlings, with a persistence that would
not be denied, after two hours’ search succeeded in recovering the line
by which the leveret had left the field.
Strangely enough the discovery was made by the smallest of the litter,
who, after raising the cry of “found,” sat on his haunches and gazed
about him, as if he expected to view the game. He continued to sit even
after his mother had taken up the trail, but presently fell into his
place at the end of the long file and joined in the full-tongued chorus.
Increased speed now marked the pursuit. The pack was running for blood,
and running as they knew against time, for night was yielding to the
grey dawn. Already the cocks were crowing, and soon a farm boy was heard
calling the cows. At other times the polecats would have stopped,
perhaps slunk away to cover; now they gave no heed, no more indeed than
to the ruddy sky that told of the coming sun. True that, save for the
occasional cry of a kitten, they had ceased their whimperings; otherwise
they behaved as if it were the dead of night, going from corner to
corner of even the biggest fields, and when at last they came to the
mill-lane, following it with a daring that wild creatures rarely
display.
The miller’s wife caught sight of the polecat as it leapt from the wall,
and then watched the spring of kitten after kitten till she was almost
tongue-tied with amazement. At last she screamed out: “Zekiah, Zekiah,
there’s a passel of fitchers under the window; they’re running
something, I’m sure they are. Wust ’ee, jump out and mob them, thee
lie-abed, they’ll take no notice of a woman.” Whereupon the miller
sprang out of bed, thrust his head through the open window, and shouted:
“Ah, you bold, imprent varmints, ah! . . . you stinking old night-trade.
Be off wi’ ’ee. Ah! ah! ah!”
Heedless of the rating, the pack made for the bank of the pool and found
another maze awaiting them there. This discouraged the kittens, as their
movements showed. But their mother knew that this maze was the hare’s
last ruse, that he was squatting near; and surely she must have
communicated this knowledge to her young, or why should they have
suddenly thrown off their lethargy and displayed the almost fiendish
activity they did? In an instant the bank was alive with their
undulating forms. They darted in and out amongst the sedge; they swam
the ditch and twisted about amongst the stems of the withies; again and
again they gathered at the spot where the Squire had first stood to
fish; for from there the leveret, by a long leap, had gained the pool
and swum to the opposite bank. It was the sheet of water that had
decided him to make for the form amidst the rushes, and there he was
sitting, motionless and helpless.
Luckily he could see nothing of the black, restless creatures, not even
their arched backs or raised heads; but the smell of their rank bodies
polluted the air, so he knew they were there defiling with their
presence the sweet tranquillity of the scene. The absence of all trace
of scent near the water, however, baffled the polecats. They could not
trace the hare beyond the take-off place, and the clouded water where he
had stirred the mud in the shallows contained no message for them.
The growing light was beginning to cause uneasiness to the band;
nevertheless one of them proceeded to draw the farther bank; it was the
tiny fellow who had recovered the line on High Down. Twice he approached
the edge of the pool as if he intended to swim to the other side, but
withdrew, made along the bank, crossed at the inflow and at once began
questing amongst the rushes. Nearer and nearer he came to the helpless
prey, was indeed close on it when the magpie, returning to the thorn by
the withies, espied him and forthwith set up the most irritating and
persistent chatter. The polecat was greatly disconcerted by the mobbing
of the bird, and presently, unable to endure the insults longer, leapt
at it where it fluttered just beyond his reach. Maddened by failure he
kept on springing at the black-and-white pest till he came to the hatch,
up which he climbed to the cross-piece and, careless of both hare and
bird, sat there listening to the miller, who was now abroad.
The footfall of the miller and the noise he made in pulling the faggots
out of the furze-rick caused the polecat little disquietude; but the
moment Zekiah began whistling “Pop goes the Weasel,” he leapt to the
sward and bounded after his mother, already in full retreat with the
rest of the litter, towards a deserted quarry where she had decided to
pass the rest of the day.