BACK ON CARN BREA
On leaving the moor the hare headed as if to return to Tregonebris, but
in the dip below the stone-circle he suddenly changed his course and
made straight for Brea. He had that instant formed the resolve to forage
on the farm there and to harbour afterwards on his native hill. His
panic pace, even more the staring eyes turned ever behind him, bespoke
his nervous condition; but the farther he went the more composed he
grew, and he was almost his normal self by the time he reached his
destination.
There he roamed in search of food from pasture to pasture, wondering to
see the change that had come over them since his early leveret days.
Then the corn and the grass rose high above his head; he recalled how he
had stood on his hind legs and looked over the array of ears; now there
was not herbage enough to cover his pads. But despite the nakedness of
the enclosures he experienced no sense of strangeness: the bushes on the
hedges, the gates, the gaps and the linhay in the field beyond the old
mine-heaps were the same as ever. He remembered them all, even the hole
in the wall of the three-cornered enclosure; and through this, in the
small hours, he squeezed his way to the turnip-field that runs like a
narrow promontory into the waste. The sight of the turnips gladdened his
eyes, for he had gleaned little on the closely browsed grass-land and
was very hungry.
He at once pared the rind from one of the roots and began feasting on
the succulent pulp. The stars shone bright, the fleecy clouds moved
slowly, and the light wind scarcely breathed a sigh on the open waste
where some curlews were whistling. The hare took no notice of their
calls, but at the startled cry of a plover he at once sprang to the top
of the wall, to learn, if he could, what had disturbed it. He scanned
the face of the moor carefully without seeing any sign of a marauder, so
at length returned to the half-eaten root and consumed it without
further interruption.
The night was nearly gone before he withdrew, not following the way he
had come, but leaping the wall and crossing the corner of the moor to
the partly-upturned field. Here a plough in the furrow caught his eye
and caused him to swerve from his path. Yet suspicious as he was of the
plough he passed close to a bucket of mushrooms in the Five Acres, where
he stood on a mound to gaze at the silent homestead and at Carn Brea
before he set off for the hill. Then, as though the fading stars warned
him of the need to hurry, he went at so brisk a pace that the noise of
his pads on the bridle-track sounded quite distinct in the stillness of
the dawn. At the foot of the long slope he quickly laid his maze; he
threaded his way up and up past the Pilgrim’s Spring almost to the
chantry, and chose a seat amongst the bracken within a few yards of the
spot where he was born.
Five months had passed since he sat there, but he felt quite at home. As
the light grew, the outlook commanded a well-remembered prospect, albeit
the vegetation had greatly changed. His young eyes had beheld it fresh
and green; now all was sere and tinted with the colours of decay. Yet
the herbage thus blended so wondrously with the russet of his coat that
he was not to be distinguished from his surroundings. He seemed a part
of the rich mantle which draped the giant shoulders of the hill down to
the very verge of the farm, where all was grey and sombre save the
bright gold of the sycamore by the dairy window.
Presently the farmer crossed the yard to the shed for the oxen and drove
them along the lane to the half-ploughed field, followed by the watchful
gulls, which came flying in from the cliffs in such numbers that the
long furrow in the wake of the plough was soon white with their forms.
The hare was an interested spectator of all this movement; indeed
everything that moved claimed his notice; not a leaf of the sycamore
fell but it caught his eye. Stirred by association, old memories, too,
came flocking back; once more he was a tiny leveret listening to the
whispered monition of his mother, “Sit still, dears, till I come back”;
once more he was sitting beside his little sister hearkening to the
voices of the night that always died away before the footfall of their
mother broke the silence of the dawn and set their hearts aflutter with
delight. Then, though he strove to repress all sinister recollections,
he rehearsed the visit of the vixen; a glint of the pool on the distant
moor called up the horrors of the previous day.
But the most trifling incident diverted his attention; soon he was
occupied in watching a red admiral which had settled on a bramble leaf
and kept opening and shutting its gorgeous wings, as if for his
distraction.
So hour after hour passed in the warm light that bathed the hill and
touched with a velvety softness even the old chantry and the granite
boulders, till at length the sun sank behind the sea, leaving plain and
upland to the mystery of night and the glories of the full moon.
That day was the harbinger of a lovely St Martin’s summer, during which
the hare greatly enjoyed sitting on the hill and wandering over the
lowland. It would have been a perfect time but for the abundance of the
gossamers; they floated from every blade and spray and clung to his legs
and chest, even to his face, causing him much annoyance. He was very
nice as to his person; he could not rest unless his coat was free of
everything that adhered to it, and it was a tedious business getting rid
of the gossamer threads; indeed, it took him so long that he had to
return earlier than usual so as to finish the grooming before daybreak,
lest the movement of his pads and tongue, which served as brushes and
sponge, should betray him to his enemies.
The welcome after-summer lasted a full fortnight, and was abruptly
terminated by sea-fogs, that came rolling in from the Atlantic and
enveloped the land as with a dense pall. Much as the hare had disliked
the gossamer webs he disliked the fog still more, not only because it
shut out the view and the light of the sun and the moon, but—what was
much more serious—because it afforded cover to the foxes, who moved
about as fearlessly by day as by night.
These prowlers became a positive trouble; scarcely a day passed but at
least one went by; amongst them a big grey fox, whom he had never seen
before, but of whom he was to see more than he liked in the terrible
winter that followed. Yet close as these marauders approached the seats,
they never discovered the hare.
In fact, the time of chief danger was the night. He was abroad then, but
it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead, so that once he
almost ran into the farm cat in the mushroom field; two nights later he
brushed close past a badger that was stretching itself against the
upright of a cromlech. However, no harm ensued; for the hare leapt aside
and was lost to sight in the fog as effectually as if he had been
covered with a mass of cotton wool.
He got glimpses of other animals in his wanderings, though so vaguely
that he failed to identify them. Moreover in the strange conditions the
hare himself sometimes proved a terror to creatures he stumbled on,
causing a hedgehog to curl up in affright on the Five Acres, and scaring
a heron out of its senses on the moor beyond. The fog was as impervious
to scent as to sight, and he was on his victims before they heard him,
for the fog deadened all sound, of footfall, of bird cry, even of the
great foghorn on the Longships, which sounded like a penny trumpet.
But of all the ills attendant on those ceaseless mists, the one which
caused the hare most discomfort was the moisture that collected on the
herbage and dripped on his back as he sat in the form. Two days he
endured the misery; then he left the comfortable seat for the shelter of
the fallen masonry of the chantry, and sat cheek by jowl with an
enormous toad who resented his company till he got to understand and
like him.
[Illustration: _C. Reid._, _To face p. 84._
“GREY FOX.”]
On the fourth day, however, that the hare saw the great bank of fog come
moving landwards from the sea, to the joy of man and beast an easterly
wind set in which banished the fog and dried the sodden herbage,
rendering the form habitable again. It was a keen, biting wind, but the
hare felt no inconvenience. One sign of the cold snap was the red shawl
in which the farmer’s wife rode to market; another, quite as
unmistakable, was the advent of the woodcock, whom the hare found
sitting near the seat two days later. The stranger was unlike any bird
he had seen; it had rich brown plumage beautifully pencilled, a very
long bill, and soft black eyes which looked fearlessly into his. The
hare, unobservant though he usually was of such matters, could not help
seeing that it was very jaded and weary; and weary it might well be, for
it had but just accomplished its long flight from Heligoland.
Two days before it had harboured in its native forest by the Baltic,
awaiting the fall of night to begin its journey to the unfrozen West.
When the moon showed above the ghostly steppe, the bird had risen over
the snow-laden pine-tops and, mounting to a great height in company with
a score others, set out for the hospitable land beyond the seas. The
wind was favourable; bight, lagoon, and island marked the way, till the
glimmer given out by a lighthouse—a glimmer that grew brighter and
brighter—told that their mid-journey resting-place had been reached.
They hid till night; then they rose again and resumed their flight
beneath the starry vault.
No sound of earth reached the high region where they moved; their own
faint wing-beats alone broke the silence through which hour after hour
the wedge-shaped line pressed on till the vast silvery ocean that had
lain outspread beneath them gave place to a sombre plain relieved only
by the glow-worm light emitted by town and city far below.
Soon as remembered haunts were reached the little flock began to break
up: now one, now two, and after a long interval, four birds forsook the
line; others followed, so that when a second ocean showed on either side
the narrowing land, only three remained. But the little remnant still
sped on, nearer and nearer to their destination at the end of the
promontory. Two dropped into Golden Valley, and the remaining woodcock
reached Carn Brea alone. Little wonder, then, that he was very tired;
yet so soon did he recover from his fatigue that when dusk fell he rose
without an effort, and, skimming the slope, passed over Brea Farm and
the now empty turnip-field to the boggy feeding-ground beyond.
Daybreak found hare and woodcock back in their places on the hill; and
for three days they kept company there, or rather till the afternoon of
the third day, when the wind veered back to the old quarter, beating
with such violence on the face of Carn Brea that the hare could not
endure it, and stole to sheltered quarters on the southern flank of the
hill. There, with his back to a furze-bush, he sat watching the withered
grasses of the foothills swept by the hurricane and the low wrack driven
past close overhead. The wind fell at sundown, but rose again later and
blew with such vehemence that the hare, who was foraging at Boscawen-Un,
could scarcely make headway against it. Once he was actually brought to
a standstill, and when crossing Brahan Moor on his way back it was all
he could do to keep his feet. By the time he got to the form he was so
wearied out by the incessant buffeting that whilst listening to the
shriek and sob of the wind he fell asleep, and—a thing he rarely
did—dreamt.
In his dream he saw as if with his eyes, so vivid was the presentment, a
wood devastated by storm; at its foot—for the trees covered a long
declivity—a curving strand and a raging sea in which living things
struggled to reach the shore. Night changed suddenly to day: as suddenly
the scene changed from falling trees and breaking waves to wind-swept
foothills, up which, nose to ground, a brindled lurcher ran with
incredible swiftness—and the foothills were the foothills below him,
the lurcher was the farm dog from Boscawen-Un; the trail it followed was
his own trail. His wide-open eyes beheld every twist and turn of the
dog’s advance without suggesting danger, till the enemy was almost
within springing distance; then consciousness returned, and at a bound
the affrighted creature cleared the bush and fled up the hill. He soon
outdistanced his pursuer, fleet-footed though she was, reached the
crest, swerved and ran with the gale at his back till within sight of
Caer Bran. After coming so far he wished to satisfy himself that the dog
still pursued. The wind lashed his face and beat down his ears; it
threatened to blow him off the wall he stood on; but he held his ground
and looked along his trail.
So had he often stood when followed by foxes, but never once did he get
a glimpse of them: one and all recognised the uselessness of trying to
overtake him, and relinquished the chase. He was now to learn that a dog
will persist though success seems hopeless, for soon he saw the lurcher
coming on at a pace that filled him with consternation. At once he
became concerned for his safety, but not an instant was he at a loss
where to go.
A naked lane ran down the long slope to Boswarthen Farm, and the hare
struck into it in the hope that the gravelly track, holding little or no
scent, would render further pursuit difficult if not impossible. The
lane, which winds considerably, ends at a gate; under this he passed to
the fields, skirted the homestead, and finally reached Johanna’s Garden,
where, after confusing the trail, he lay down in a furrow between two
ridges of the upturned ground.
He had hopes of having defeated or disheartened his pursuer, yet it was
in a fever of anxiety that he watched the gate under which he himself
had crept.
His suspense was short, for soon to his horror a fox-like snout and long
red tongue showed beneath the lowest bar. The next instant the lissom
beast forced her way beneath it to the field. She at once picked up the
line and followed it to the far corner near the old seat where the hare
had leapt on the wall and walked along the rude coping-stones before
leaping back and squatting near the medlar. Carefully and not without
difficulty the lurcher followed the scent to the last of the stones,
naturally thought that the hare had gone on, and dropped to the oat
stubble, but finding no trace of scent, recognised her mistake. Then
back she leapt to the wall, with wondrous ease considering its height;
and though she could hardly keep her feet for the gale, she stood there
all excitement, scrutinising the ploughed ground with eager eyes. She
searched every furrow without descrying the hare; the leaves that
whirled about him baffled her.
Though she failed to find him, she was so convinced he was there that
she sprang to the ground and began questing, beginning at the lower end
and casting to and fro across the wind in the most leisurely fashion, as
if she knew there was no occasion for hurry. She had drawn about a third
of the field when the hare, seeing discovery was certain, slipped from
his hiding-place and, crouching very low, stole towards the wall. He
hoped to get away unobserved, but his hope was vain.
Just as he reached the ditch the lurcher espied him, and with a single
whine started in pursuit. Her pace down the stubble was tremendous; she
was not more than ten yards behind the hare at the badgers’ sett in the
hollow below. But on the opposing rise she lost ground. By the time she
came to the big pasture where she had picked up the line at dawn, the
quarry was out of sight. She was again running by scent.
Though the hare had won and maintained a lead of nearly a furlong, he
was beginning to feel the strain of the chase, and anxiously consulted
with himself about his safety. Two voices made themselves heard: the
homing instinct kept urging him to return to the hills; the voice of
self-preservation with even greater insistence whispered, “Seek the
moor, there alone safety lies”; so towards Hal Kimbra moor he held on
and on, till at last, from a bit of rising ground, he saw the bleak
waste stretching away before him. The fear of being sighted and coursed
on the level surface made him shrink from crossing it: his indecision,
however, was only momentary; on looking back and seeing no sign of his
enemy, he determined to commit himself, though not before foiling his
trail.
Between him and the lip of the moor lay a tract of marshy ground dotted
with rushes and coarse grasses. Here, with a view to checking his
pursuer, he leapt from tuft to hummock and from hummock to tuft until he
had confused his line. Then he continued on his way, heading for an
outlying turf-stack which stood between him and the pool. In the teeth
of the hurricane he made slow progress, but he reached it at length, and
glad of the shelter it afforded he sat down on the lee side, facing the
ground he had just traversed. Soon he saw the lurcher coming, and
watched her anxiously as she stood on the brow of the rising ground
scanning the moor. The moment she set foot on the marshy ground, where
she was lost to view, he quitted his shelter and made for the pool. Many
a time he had covered the intervening ground in a minute or two; but the
wind seemed bent on arresting his progress; in his exhausted state all
he could do battling against it was to make headway. At length he gained
the pool, and there his heart fell, for between him and his goal, the
islet, lay a stretch of raging water. He had not reckoned on that.
He was a miserable creature as he sat on the shore, looking now towards
the islet, now back over the moor. He could see no hope; death stared
him in the face in both directions; yet the instant he saw the lurcher
coming he decided to entrust himself to the pool. Strangely enough, he
did not wade in, but galloped a score yards along the strand and then
cast himself into the hissing water, striking the spray from the
surface. When he rose he struck out for his goal. He was hardly visible
even on the crests of the waves; he was completely lost to sight when
they broke over him; but he drew nearer and nearer to the islet, and
after a terrible struggle at last landed at the otters’ creek.
Great as was the hare’s distress, the love of life was greater. Even in
his extremity he was careful not to betray himself by any sudden
movement to his pursuer, now at the side of the pool. For fear of
detection, he stole from the water at a snail’s pace and, so slowly that
no eye on the shore would have been aware of any movement, sank down on
the sodden fern. There he lay hour after hour whilst his persistent
enemy circled the pool and ransacked the waste in search of him.
It seemed as if she could not wrench herself away. Once, indeed, she
withdrew; but when near the turf-stack she suddenly turned and came
back, though the gale raged more furiously than ever. On reaching the
pool, she entered the water and stood staring at the islet. The hare
observed her with feverish anxiety; he knew that his fate hung by a
thread, and scarcely breathed. To the dog the spray-washed rock gave no
sign of life whatever, yet it was long before she abandoned this last
hope and finally withdrew. A more crestfallen creature than she looked
it would be difficult to picture; her gait had lost all its briskness,
her limbs relaxed, her ears drooped. Her disappointment overwhelmed her;
for she had counted the quarry hers the moment she sighted it, and on
the moor had felt absolutely certain of it.
The hare watched the retreating form of his enemy till it became a speck
and finally disappeared from view. Then he rose, looked round to see
that no other enemy was in sight, shook his coat, rolled where the otter
had rolled, ensconced himself in the most sheltered spot his
inhospitable refuge afforded, and there remained till night. It was
pitch dark when he withdrew by way of the rocks he knew so well.