FROM PILLAR TO POST
With its overcast sky and sombre landscape November opened true to its
character of the black month. The clouds seemed to have conspired to
shut out the sun; only at rare intervals did the patient orb find a
rift, but when it did its rays lit up with intense vividness the spot
they fell on: Brea farmhouse, a bit of the moor beyond, Sennen Church
tower, a patch of ocean, the welter of surf about the Wolf. To all of
these, as the shafts of light illuminated them, the eyes of the hare
were irresistibly drawn. A week of gloom and gleam was succeeded by a
day of startling clearness, with lowland pencilled out distinctly as on
a map, a day when the sea came so near that far-off sails and even the
unobtrusive isles of Scilly made their presence felt. This phenomenon
boded rain, and one morning soon after dawn it fell, gently at first,
violently on succeeding days, with a gradual, decided shifting of the
wind from the north-west to the north-east, whence at nightfall it blew
with wintry coldness.
Had it been a dry wind the hare would have enjoyed its keenness, but it
brought showers of sleet which wetted him through and through, making
his days miserable. At night also these showers greatly inconvenienced
him, inasmuch as he had to be continually shaking himself or galloping
to and fro on the moorland tracks to keep his coat dry when he should
have been at his pasture. He disliked the sleet more than the rain, and
the hail more than the sleet, for the stones beat in his face and eyes;
worse still, they lashed his ears and made them burn as he sat in the
form, when his body shivered with cold from the dampness of the
underfur.
During this inclement time he continued to use the seat on Chapel Carn
Brea, the retreat under the drooping fronds drawing him as did no other.
True, he could have found shelter beneath the chantry, but since lying
there he had seen Grey Fox brush close by the opening which was the only
way out; from that moment he abandoned all idea of repairing thither
again, for fear of being cornered. He did give a thought to the cave in
Brahan Croft, but could not bring himself to sit there; to the hut by
the fowling-pool and to the linhay on Brea Farm, which presented
themselves to his mind, he had still greater objection; whilst the
rabbits’ holes which proffered their shelter were altogether beneath his
dignity, and indeed against his nature, to which no other roof but the
sky was acceptable.
At last he had to abandon Chapel Carn Brea, on account of the water
which lodged in the form and rendered it untenantable.
It was in pouring rain that the hare ransacked the country in search of
new quarters, which he at last found in a plantation on the western
slope of Sancreed Beacon. On reaching it, he remained awhile on the
outskirts hesitating to commit himself to such a strange place, for so
the wood with its array of trees seemed to him after the naked hills and
barren moorland he was alone used to. Presently, with tremulous steps,
he moved in and looked about him for a suitable seat. In selecting it he
showed that he had his wits about him, for the spot he chose was as free
from the drippings of the pines as any within his ken. After scratching
a slight hollow amongst the fallen needles, he sat with his face to the
hill taking in his surroundings. No undergrowth impeded his view,
nothing save the stems and a tree or two blown down by the gale.
He soon felt at home, for the spirit of the place soothed him and
banished the sense of strangeness. At first the fall of a pine-cone
would startle him; by and by he took no more notice of it than he had of
the popping of the furze-pods in the heat of August. He loved to listen
to the soughing of the wind in the lofty tops, where the goldcrests were
to be seen flitting to and fro. He believed them to be his only
neighbours, till one night, just as he had risen, an owl came to the
mouth of the hole in the next tree and called. The cry caused him to
start, but at sight of the bird he regained his composure and finished
stretching himself; in future if he happened to be by when the owl
hooted, he did not even trouble to look up. One day was monotonously
like another, so much so that the visit of a woodpecker, or the arrival
of a wood-pigeon, was quite an event. Small wonder then that the hare,
with his hermit-like tastes, felt happy in this peaceful solitude, and
soon abandoned all thought of the intruders his imagination had conjured
up.
Yet, before many more dawns had broken, the wood was visited by a
pine-marten, a dangerous marauder, who resembled the hare in this
respect that she too was the sole survivor of her kind. She came early;
the stars had hardly begun to pale when, with scarcely a rustle to
announce her coming, the hare saw her making as straight towards him as
the trees permitted. Indeed, she threatened to overrun him, but stopped
a dozen yards away near a patch of gaudy orange-red fungus, and sat
scratching an ear till a shout from the glebe farm suddenly arrested her
attention. At the sound she stood erect and listened with ears acock.
She was an elegant creature with a bushy tail, resembling, save for her
dark-brown colouring, a dwarf fox; and, like reynard himself, the moment
she was satisfied that the shout, twice repeated, was not the hue and
cry that had pursued her again and again, she relaxed her tense attitude
and fell to play. She ran with bewitching grace and activity along the
trunk and branches of a fallen tree, rested at the end of the longest
branch, and, after brushing a feather from her muzzle, renewed her
frolics, as if for the hare’s entertainment. Then back she jumped to the
ground, sprang to the nearest bole, climbed up and up, was plainly
visible at the dome against the now reddening sky, and finally lay at
full length on a horizontal branch scanning the scene below. Her quick
eyes were everywhere—now on the jackdaws astir on the church tower, now
on a labourer faring to work, now, as the light grew, on the vessels
wind-bound under St Michael’s Mount, and presently on the sun when its
bright face showed above the Lizard and laid a golden pathway across the
waters of the bay. Soon the rays fired the pine-tops, and turned to
brightest crimson the tongue of the marten as she licked her glossy
forelegs and buff-coloured breast. When she had finished grooming
herself she lay awhile with her head between her paws, blinking and
enjoying the genial warmth that dried her coat, and at last sought the
deserted hawk’s nest in the fork, where she had often curled up during
her forays.
Her fastness was in the Land’s End cliffs. Never was castle wall so
stately or so majestic as the mural face of the precipice that furnished
her a refuge some thirty feet above the Atlantic, whose roar was her
lullaby.
[Illustration: _R. H. Preston & Sons._, _To face p. 100._
MOUNT’S BAY FROM THE BEACON.]
There she slept away most of the hours between grey dawn and night.
Awakened either by the scream of homing seafowl or by the level rays
penetrating her lair, she watched through the narrow portal of her
retreat the sun set, the glow die out of the west, and darkness spread
over the face of the waters, before sallying forth to execute the raid
she had planned. She was the wiliest of marauders, pilfering here
to-night, elsewhere to-morrow, and, save that she avoided
Boscawen-Un—the lurcher’s home—ranging in all directions. She took
toll of seafowl on the dizzy ledge, she robbed the farmers’ henroosts
and beehives, she stripped the squire’s strawberry beds and plundered
the crabber’s bait, hang it where he might. Few places were inaccessible
to her; she was as much at home on the crags of the Kites’ Carn as on
the loftiest pine of Sancreed Beacon.
It was a wonder that those quick eyes of hers had not descried the hare,
but probably that was owing to the shouts which distracted her attention
just as her gaze was being directed towards the spot where he sat
motionless. As for the hare his eyes never left the strange creature.
Her character he had read at sight. He read it in the feather on the
muzzle, the blood-stain on the whiskers, and above all in the
apprehension she showed on hearing the shout. To his view that was an
infallible sign of a felon. He was glad when she ascended the tree and
the length of the long stem separated them, for he believed that the
marten had seen him and might have pounced on him at any moment. As he
was far from being assured that she would not attempt to get at him
before the day was out, he made a point of keeping awake and on the
look-out for sign of movement in the eyrie between him and the blue
vault.
Higher and higher rose the sun, flooding the hill with light, warming
the resinous trees and filling the wood with their fragrance. But for
the cold nip in the air it might almost have been a summer’s day. One
less suggestive of evil happening could not be; yet the first act of a
tragedy of which the wood was to be the theatre was being enacted less
than a furlong away, where two weasels were pressing a rabbit from
gallery to gallery of its burrow. No hope for the defenceless thing lay
there, still less in the wood across which it presently came loping with
fateful laboured movement. A look of entreaty appeared in the rabbit’s
starting eyes when it saw the hare, but the doomed creature did not
stop. On, on it struggled, followed still by the murderers, the two
puny, lithe, fiendish-looking weasels.
The sight of these bloodthirsty miscreants stirred the hare to fury;
scarcely had they passed when he rose and stamped with his hind feet:
surely not to warn his own kind, it could not be that; it was his
protest, his poor, ineffectual protest, against the outrage.
Intent on their quarry, the weasels gave no heed, but the owl looked out
of its hole to learn what ailed its exemplary neighbour, and the marten
peered over the edge of the nest to ascertain, if possible, the cause of
the disturbance. She saw nothing of rabbit or weasels, for the trees hid
them from sight, but she had an uninterrupted view of the hare, and at
once was all excitement at the prospect of an unexpected feast. Though
she had tasted hare once and only once, the memory of the delicious
flavour remained, and she had often longed to taste it again. So eager
was she that she could not take her eyes from off this unlooked-for
prize; even the death-squeal of the rabbit which presently rent the air
did not distract her gaze. After a while she lay down again, but not to
sleep. She spent the rest of the day planning the capture of the hare,
interrupting her deliberations only to rise every now and then to assure
herself that the quarry was still below.
Far different had been the effect of that despairing cry on the hare. It
left him disquieted and unnerved, with but one desire, to get away at
the earliest possible moment from the wood and the murderer up above
whom he had surprised in the act of looking down at him. Short as the
day was, he thought that it would never end; and the moment the sun
dipped below the plain he stole away noiselessly as a ghost, ascended
the opposite hill, made along the high ridge, passed the earthworks,
crossed the old camp on Bartinney and came to the chantry, where he
stood awhile with his face towards the sunset. He seemed to be watching
the expiring effort of day, but he was really considering where he
should forage, above all where he should sit, on the morrow. He had no
wish to sit on the hill; he wanted to get farther away from the wood
than that; farther from its horrid association with blood. He thought of
the island; he thought of a place that had once taken his fancy on the
cliffs; he thought of Sennen Dunes, and in the end decided to seek a
form there. The moment he had made up his mind he glanced along his
trail, and, descending the hill, set out across the lowland.
That back look told that he had the pine-marten in mind; and well he
might, for she was no mean enemy. She had watched the hare leave the
wood, but so great was her dread of man that she feared to follow till
the dusk deepened. As soon as she dared, however, she came down from the
tree and took to the trail, following it up the long slope and along the
heights past the Liddens to the chantry, where, with her breath coming
quickly, she stood eagerly scrutinising the hillside and the flooded
lowland all agleam in the moonlight. Her coat was wet from the heavy
dew, but she was too preoccupied to shake it; all her senses were in her
eyes searching in vain for the quarry now far away in the midst of that
water-logged moor. When she saw no sign, her heart sank; she was at a
loss to know what to do. She was very loath to abandon the quest, but
the dread of a blank night if she persisted weighed with her, so she
presently forsook the trail on which she had stood and disappeared into
the night.
Meanwhile the hare, who had reached the moorland farmstead he had made
for, passed from one small enclosure to another, picking what little
herbage he could find. With the help of the furze-shoots he managed to
get his fill before leaving to roam for hours over the snipe-haunted
waste. Hither and thither he journeyed, seemingly without any other
object than to pass the hours away, going farther and farther from his
goal, to which, however, he turned at the first crow of the crofter’s
cock, so that the somewhat stormy dawn found him ensconced in a shallow
pit on the brink of the dunes. He had chosen wisely; the sand was dry,
and the thick marram-grass screened him from the keen wind which tore
the spindrift from the rollers that tripped and foundered on the strand.
Yet, comfortable though he was, his mind was ill at ease; he was haunted
by the tragedy of the pinewood. He did all he could to deaden memory of
the scream, but the cries of the gulls kept it alive till a peregrine
shot into view and drove them to the cliffs: then it faded and left him
at peace. Even now he dreaded falling asleep, for fear of being visited
by nightmare; he fought against his drowsiness, but in vain; he had
dropped off before the gulls returned. Neither marten nor weasel
harassed his peaceful slumbers, rendered delectable by a vision of the
strand up and down which he was speeding like the wind, not alone, but
in company with mother and sister. It was a very vivid dream; he felt
the breeze in his face, the shells under his feet; his happiness was
complete. He was sorry to awake, but the presence of the beach cheered
his disappointment as he looked forward to a good gallop on the smooth
sand left exposed by the ebb. At earliest nightfall he left the form and
in part realised his dream, tearing up and down the level foreshore and
spurning the sand as he went. It looked as though he would never tire,
his sinews seemed to be of steel; but at length he withdrew and betook
himself to the feeding-ground.
Dawn after dawn he returned to the dunes. Dusk after dusk he enjoyed his
gallop, till one night he discovered the cat and two kittens crouching
beside the path he always left by. Then, rather than run the risk of
capture, he decided to forsake the delightful spot and return to the
hill. True to his resolve, he was at Carn Brea on the morrow, and to his
joy found the seat much drier than he expected. Better, however, had he
gone anywhere else, for as things chanced he was to be the harassed
spectator of a terrible affray between his two most dreaded enemies, the
final scene in the drama that began to unfold itself soon after he was
ensconced.
The dawn was clear despite the grey sky, with only a belt of mist here
and there on the lowland to interrupt his watch for the night-prowlers
returning to their lair. The scanning of the moor was his constant
practice, because of the haunting dread he had of being stumbled on by
homing fox or fitchet; in fact, he never settled down with a feeling of
real security until day had fully declared itself and driven all his
persecutors to their retreats. Not a living thing showed at first;
presently however his gaze was arrested by some animal that issued
wraith-like from a patch of mist, and after crossing a wide strip of
moor entered the croft bordering the “linhay” field. There he could see
it as it threaded the stunted furze, though not plainly enough to make
quite sure that it was a fox as he suspected. All doubt was removed when
the creature, after being hidden by intervening bank and overgrown
ditch, crossed the boundary wall and began stealing up the hill straight
for the form. It was Grey Fox himself. It looked now as if the hare’s
forebodings were at last to be verified, but it was not so, for the
brute entered the clump of tall furze midway up the slope and remained
there.
The hare concluded that the fox had kennelled; he even judged him to be
already asleep, so weary and exhausted did he look. But Grey Fox never
thought of curling himself up; he was far too anxious for that; he was
eagerly surveying the plain for sight of the enemy who had been pursuing
him from farm to farm and moor to moor since midnight. He looked long
without seeing aught, but he dared not compose himself to sleep. Instead
he withdrew to the little grassy space behind the furze, where he kept
walking up and down under the eyes of the hare, like a wild beast in a
cage. “Strange behaviour this,” thought the hare. “There’s something
very wrong with Grey Fox this morning. See how his flanks heave! what a
mist his breath makes!” Presently the gaunt creature ceased pacing and
lay down at full length, but after a few seconds he got up again and
went back to the furze.
There he again watches the plain, where a speck scarcely discernible
grows larger and larger, and tells him that the lurcher has recovered
the trail she had temporarily lost, the trail he himself had left, and
that the lifelong feud is on the point of settlement, for Grey Fox has
made up his mind to have it out with his enemy. By this time the hare
too has seen the dog, and whilst following her progress in the furze,
wonders that the fox does not retreat whilst there is time. So excited
does he become that he fain would warn the fox, but dares not; though
more than once he is on the point of stamping his feet, he refrains.
Meanwhile, the lurcher shows on the boundary wall, on which she stands
and surveys the face of the hill. Her breath too comes quick, like jets
of steam. She is wondering, as she gets no glimpse of the game, whether
it is worth her while to go any farther, for twice before during the
hare’s absence from the hill she has hunted Grey Fox half the night,
only to drive him to ground on the north side of Bartinney, where at
this moment she thinks he is probably curled up in his inmost den, far
beyond her reach. But such is her keenness that she cannot resist the
burning, alluring trail, and leaping from the wall, she makes her way up
the hill and enters the furze, where Grey Fox awaits her.
Without growl or snarl the fight begins. Except the violent shaking of
the bushes, there is no outward indication of the terrible struggle that
goes on. For a long while the hare, watching excitedly, sees nothing of
the combatants save the white tip of the fox’s brush, but anon they come
into the open, where not a spray shuts out the view. They seem equally
matched, because though Grey Fox leaps, now this way, now that, as if
yielding to the lurcher’s determined onslaught, he is not giving way: it
is but his method of preventing the enemy from fastening on his throat.
The quickness of his movements is wonderful, nor does he forget to use
his jaws. See how he snaps! The strange noise is the clashing of his
teeth when they fail to get home. The struggle is too furious to last:
before the lapse of half an hour the life-long enemies lie exhausted on
the ground, face to face with each other, their laboured breathing
audible to the hare.
The fox when he recovers has no more wish to renew the fight than he had
to begin it, but the lurcher’s one thought is to destroy the hateful
wild thing before her, or die in the attempt. Again they fight; only for
a short while now; limb and wind are unequal to further effort; their
exhaustion is complete. At last the lurcher recognises that to kill the
fox is a task beyond her powers. After a time she staggers to her feet
and looks into the eyes of Grey Fox, who has also risen. The meaning of
the looks they exchange no pen can tell, unless it is that the curled
lips and bare teeth bespeak undying hate. Then the lurcher withdraws,
leaving the fox to himself. Reynard’s ears are pricked, he is listening
to the retreating footfall, and when the sound dies away he drags
himself into the bushes.
There, screened from the light of the sun and the eyes of all observers,
he sat and licked his wounds, interrupting the process only to rise and
reconnoitre through an opening in one of the bushes. Though he saw
nothing of the dog, the fears which urged him to withdraw became at last
so insistent that he actually crept out in the broad sunshine and made
for the earth. At once the hare was on the alert. His apprehension,
however, subsided on seeing the crippled condition of his enemy, who was
limping on three legs and had to pick his path. Soon the fox swerved to
avoid a patch of broken ground within twenty yards of the form, and now
he must pass close to its occupant. Discovery is certain, is imminent.
The hare’s scent betrayed his near neighbourhood; his conspicuous eye
betrayed his person. Did the fox, ravenous though he was, attempt the
capture of the prey? Not at all, he knew the futility of trying in his
disabled condition. The situation was one that called for the exhibition
of his powers of make-believe. His aim was to convince the hare that he
had not seen him, and to this all his cunning was directed; he checked
the working of his nostrils excited by the scent, he averted his glance
and looking straight before his long nose, which was badly scarred, held
on as though ignorant of the hare’s presence, with the demeanour of a
creature overwhelmed by misfortune. But the hare, every whit as crafty
as he, had caught the glint of his eye, had observed the sudden arrest
of the nostrils, had read his mind through and through, and before Grey
Fox was abreast of the chantry had already made arrangements not to be
at home when he called. An indescribable look came into the hare’s
usually impassive eyes as he thought of the disappointment that awaited
reynard, on whose mask as he crossed the ridge played an expression of
satisfaction at the prize that would be his before the moon was very
much older. The prospect of the delicious feast forced the memory of the
fight into the background; for the rest of the way he ran on four legs,
and it was of the hare, not of the lurcher, he was thinking when later
he fell asleep curled up in the innermost recess of his earth.
Meanwhile the hare, who had resolved to abandon the hill for a while,
sat thinking over the question of a new seat. His mind once more ran
over all the old forms, but in the end rejected every one of them for
the untried retreat in the cliffs to which he had been on the point of
going before.
That night he spent on the moorland, where—a most unusual thing—he did
not encounter a single trail or hear a disturbing cry, though after his
gallops he always stopped to listen. He looked the picture of attention,
standing on knoll or barrow with his great ears raised to their full
height to catch the voices of the wild. A few seconds only did he bestow
on this duty; he was in too high spirits to give more. His exuberant
energies called for vigorous exercise, and when he was not spinning
along or hearkening, he skipped and frisked about like a frolicsome kid.
He travelled miles and miles, “going all ways,” so that midnight had
long passed when he set foot on the strip of waste overlooking the sea.
There he nibbled the herbage and ate all the blackberries he could find,
shrivelled though they were. Rearing on his hind legs he stripped every
bramble patch before crossing to the cliffs, where he dropped from
terrace to terrace till he came to the spot at which he intended to sit.
But then a steep slope that still more took his fancy opened to his
view. Though eager to reach it, he paused at the edge of the chasm that
separated him from it; the turmoil of the water in the gully and the
raging of the surge in the great cave to which the gully led
disconcerted and checked him. After a moment’s hesitation, however, he
leapt the opening, gained the slope, and sat on a cushion of thrift
overlapping the lip of the under-cliff. Within the ambit of his
wanderings he could not have selected a more secluded spot. Man had
never set foot there; save for the old fisherman who rested on his oars
to gaze at the primroses, sea-pinks, and foxgloves that in their season
decked this hanging garden, no human eye had seen its beauty. Even now
the solitary furze-bush amongst the naked rods of the foxgloves was gay
with blossom, for the slope fronted south and caught the sun. Sitting
there the hare observed every living thing within his ken. He watched
the gannets that sent the spray flying as they dived into a school of
pilchards; he was interested in the cormorants that stood on the rock
below and dried their outstretched wings; even the little companies of
mullet did not escape him, when they came scurrying past the point and
coasted round the tiny bay; and by such sights his attention was drawn,
his curiosity excited, as he enjoyed the warmth of the sun that
brightened the austerity of the cliff and sparkled on the wintry sea.
December found the hare using this retreat. All went well with him till
one day in leaping the chasm he landed a little short and nearly fell
back into the sea, but by great good fortune his hind feet, striking
blindly for support, found foothold on a ledge. That saved him. The
mishap was the result of carelessness, and afterwards, being cautious as
to the place from which he took off, he cleared the opening with several
inches to spare.
But he was never free from fear. One morning he had returned very early
whilst the stars were yet bright; the cluster above the headland
sparkled like a diadem. Towards this the eyes of the hare were directed,
when one of the constellation was suddenly shut out by some dark object
which was at first unrecognisable; by and by it turned; it was the
pine-marten. The creature went as suddenly as she came, but soon
reappeared on a narrow shelf of the headland, where she stood looking
down at a chough some twelve feet below. Rapid in decision, the marten
dropped with the intention of seizing and disabling the bird before it
could take wing. The chough, however, was too quick and flew off, so the
marten fell on the rocks, and failing to get the grip for which she
strove frantically, tumbled head over heels into the boiling sea forty
feet below. The hare thought that he had seen the last of this nimble
enemy. He was soon to be undeceived, for presently to his surprise her
mask, then her whole body showed above the edge of the chasm where she
sat examining the slope. She kept looking in the direction of the
furze-bush as if she saw something of interest there, then suddenly
turned, leapt the opening without an effort, and disappeared along the
very ledge from which she had tried to drop on the back of the chough.
The visit of the marten greatly disquieted the hare. He believed that if
she had discovered him he could hardly have got away. So the question,
Should he abandon the retreat? confronted him. He was loath to leave,
but in the end decided to forsake the spot, because he felt that even if
the marten did not return, he would enjoy no peace through fear that she
would. It was an unfortunate resolve; had he decided otherwise, he might
have avoided the most harassing trials of his life.