PERIL OF DEATH
For some time the hare seemed to be the only living thing within the
homestead: not a cry broke the silence till the finches and linnets
roosting in the furze-rick, in the eaves and crannies of the buildings,
and even in the buildings themselves, began to twitter, heralding with
their low, sweet chorus the wintry dawn.
Presently too there was a sign of stir within the house: smoke rose from
the chimney, now and again a spark with it, quenched immediately by the
snowflakes which fell as close as ever, thickening the covering that lay
like a robe of ermine on the yard, on the roofs of the house, sheds,
barn, and the derelict pigeon-cote springing from its ridge.
But though the household was astir no one seemed disposed to venture
out, till at last Andrew, the farm-hind, lantern in hand, appeared, his
feet sinking deep at every step as he made for the cattle-stalls under
the barn. The flame lit up his corduroys, his homespun jacket, and
beardless chin; it faintly illuminated the mud wall on which his shadow
fell; it dispelled the pitchy darkness of the byre, where with loud
lowings ox and bullock greeted his entry. He was soon busy chopping
turnips, whose fragrance spread around till it reached the hare and set
him longing; then the munching of the cattle almost drove him beyond
endurance; but he remembered that he was an outlaw, so he turned a deaf
ear to the tantalising sound, though he could not help envying the
beasts which he had hitherto pitied. By this the farmyard was wide
awake; the inmates of every shed and pen clamoured to be fed; the bull
bellowed, the horse whinnied, the pigs squealed, the geese cackled, the
rooster crowed at the top of his voice, whilst the linnets, finches,
siskins, a yellow-hammer and a snow-bunting looked mutely on, hoping not
to be forgotten.
And so the hours of early morning passed, succeeded by a sunless
forenoon and the dinner hour, during which the hare contemplated an act
of unusual daring, nothing less than joining the three yearlings who
were eating hay from a rack in the midst of the yard. After all, it did
not seem a great thing to do. He had but to slip from the wall, steal a
dozen yards or so over the snow, then the fodder would be his for the
taking. Yet he could not do it; his wild nature restrained him. Once
indeed he half rose, only, however, to settle down again and watch the
yearlings empty the rack, which the man removed on returning from his
dinner. As he carried it he chanced to look towards the hare, who, ever
suspicious, feared that he was discovered. It was quite a critical
moment to the wildling; had the man’s eyes met his, had the man only
stopped whilst gazing in his direction, he would have made off: luckily,
neither event befell, so that the hare, who had gathered himself ready
to spring, relaxed his muscles and remained. The incident, however, left
him somewhat disquieted, till a wren foraging in the elder diverted his
thoughts; then he became composed and followed the movements of the man
with the same unconcern as before.
Yet, fearful as he was of man’s gaze, he was able to disregard sounds
that would have made fox, marten, and stoat cower and slink to cover; he
was quite unmoved by the shrill voice of the farmer’s wife when she
called after her husband, “Mind, John, whatever you do, don’t forget the
saffron[4] and a penn’orth of Christmas[5]”; he never even started when
the man wrenched the faggots from the furze-rick, though he sang the
Flora[6] tune to words of his own composition, as he pulled at the
stems. Three loads of faggots the man bore to the house, the low sun
which caught the ridge of the barn and cote bathing his face as he went
past the farmyard gate. In the quiet that reigned when at last the
kitchen door closed for the night behind him the hare dropped to the
yard, where he picked up every blade of hay he could find before leaving
for his round.
Rarely had he been at a greater loss to know where to go; it was of no
use seeking the moor, nothing but the unpalatable bark of withy and
alder awaited him there, the fields with their scant herbage were out of
his reach, High Down was inaccessible since the last snowfall; so
without a goal to make for, he loped along the bridle-track, where at
least the going was easy, and food, such as it was, to be had in the
furze that bordered it. He was in hard case, yet not so hard as that of
the predatory creatures who nightly ravaged the country and often
returned supperless to their lairs. The hare knew of their forays from
the trails. He had crossed two on his way back from the Down; this very
night he leapt the burning line of a stoat-pack just before turning
aside whilst the farmer rode past. Close to Crowz-an-Wra he stopped to
browse on the bushes, standing on his hind legs and reaching as high as
he could to get at the tender shoots.
Eager, however, as he was to satisfy his hunger, he was alive to
everything around, and kept pricking his ears at the noise of the
merriment from the cottages with windows all aglow from turnip lantern,
rushlight, and the blaze of furze fire. For Crowz-an-Wra was keeping
Christmas Eve with its customary cheer, little dreaming of the lonely
stranger at their doors. At his slowest pace the hare passed through the
village; he was no more alarmed by the illumination of the cottages than
by the splendour of the heaven.
Just beyond the milestone he frisked and frolicked, and in the same high
spirits galloped along the track as far as the granite cross, where, in
his leverethood, he had scampered up and down the then dusty way under
the eyes of his mother. At the cross he stood and listened as he had
listened then, but there was not a sound; even the little stream had
been frozen into silence. So he fell to rolling on the crisp surface,
which crackled under him; then jumping to his feet, he scratched a pit
in the snow simply to get rid of the energy which the nip in the air had
excited. About midnight he galloped off through the deep snow at a pace
that was surprisingly rapid, considering the weight of the snow that
clung to his fur. Soon he was out of sight.
Four hours later he repassed the cross on his way home. The heavens were
as resplendent as ever; Orion showed no sign of fading, the Milky Way
was still a path of splendour, but the hamlet lay in gloom, and save for
the rocking of a cradle, was as silent as the hills. In the homestead
there was not a sound, and as if afraid to disturb the quiet, the hare
stole noiselessly as a ghost to the form, where he sat watching for the
dawn without a thought of sinister intrusion on the yard.
Yet he had not been there long when the cruel head of a polecat showed
at the far corner by the pigsty, whence it surveyed the enclosure. She
had not come for prey, she had come for shelter, and her keen eyes were
peering here, there, and everywhere to see that the coast was clear
before she tried to reach the retreat that had taken her fancy.
Presently she galloped past the door of the cattle-house and made her
way to the top of the barn steps. There she stood looking for a way in,
and descrying a hole in the shutter, she scrambled up and aslant the mud
wall till she gained it and squeezed through. She had not long
disappeared, however, when to the amazement of the hare, her head was
suddenly thrust through the snow covering the thatch, and the next
instant she was hurrying over the white surface to enter the
pigeon-cote. Now the cote was the home of an owl. Scarcely had the
polecat curled up in it when the bird alighted on the sill, discovered
the intruder, and made such a to-do that the polecat at once came out
lest man’s notice should be attracted, her presence revealed, and—the
dread of her life—hue and cry raised. In the circumstances she was for
peace at any price. Dashing past the owl she made down the roof to the
hole in the thatch, where she struggled for some time to get through. At
last as the result of a desperate effort she forced a passage to the
barn, and so reached the yard by the way she came. From the foot of the
steps she headed for the narrow passage by which she had entered, but,
instead of following it, she skirted the pigsty, the poultry-houses and
the open shed, with the intention of crossing the wall to the turf-rick
which she had noticed from the roof. She reached the wall and was about
to climb it when the latch of the kitchen door lifted. At the sound she
abandoned her purpose, and that very unwisely, because she was in quite
as much danger of being seen as if she had crossed the wall. For where
was she to hide? There was the open shed, it is true, but she could
hardly hope to gain it before the man reached the yard. “Crunch, crunch,
crunch,” sounded the snow under his feet; he was already close to the
gate, discovery was imminent. In desperation, the bewildered creature
dived into a hole in the snow made by a hoof of one of the yearlings.
Even then her tail was exposed for some seconds before she succeeded in
worming a way out of sight, but it did not catch the eye of the man, and
for the time at least she was safe.
The hare, who had observed every movement of the polecat, kept a close
watch on the spot, for he greatly feared that the creature would cross
the wall at the first opportunity and perhaps discover him.
Meanwhile the hind busied himself about his ordinary duties until near
noon, when he began to remove the snow from the front door, a sure sign
that guests were expected. As he shovelled, he sang:
“I saw dree ships come sailing in,
Sailing in, come sailing in,
I saw dree ships come sailing in,
On Christmas Day in the morning”—
shovelling and singing till the steps and the path all the way to the
gate were clear. No sooner had he finished than the farmer’s three sons
arrived, with their wives and families, the women riding pillion behind
their husbands, and the children in panniers borne by donkeys. There was
quite a string of donkeys; the headgear of each and of the little foal
which closed the procession, was decked with holly; the merry voices of
the laughing, chattering children rang out most musically. Last of all
came the fiddler, a long, lean man, shivering in his thin garments as he
ran, his nose blue with cold, his violin in a green baize bag under his
arm. He threw a snowball at Andrew, then skipped up the steps like a
lamplighter, and as the door closed on the heels of his cloth boots, it
shut in the welcome with which the children greeted his arrival.
Now the work that Andrew got through between the coming of the fiddler
and two of the clock, in order not to be “worrited” whilst at meat, was
a record on Brea Farm. In the multitude of his duties, however, one
thing escaped him—he forgot to shut up the rooster. The oversight, as
things turned out, meant a sore trial for the cock, tragic consequences
for the hare. Nor were they long in coming.
At a few minutes past three the long snout, yellow eyes, and red tongue
of Grey Fox appeared round the very corner where the polecat had showed.
Whilst lying in the brake, he had heard the cock crow, and with his mate
had come after it. They had come as fast as they could lay pad to
ground; they were starving. For three days they had found nothing to eat
over the miles and miles of country they had searched, and now at last
within four leaps, there stood this fat rooster scratching away the
snow. Was ever so tempting a morsel, ever so easy a victim, exposed to
the eyes of ravenous wildlings? Yet the unusual silence excited Grey
Fox’s suspicions of a trap. Might not the bird be a bait, a decoy to
lure him into the gin where he had already left one of his claws? If
not, what was cock-a-doodle doing there alone? After all it was too
great a risk.
But by this the little vixen—she looked but half the size of her
mate—who at first kept at his brush, had come more and more forward
till her mask was side by side with his. Did she by whisper or sign of
eye or lip banish his scruples, goad him into action? We do not know.
But the next instant he launched himself towards chanticleer, who saw
him coming and raised cries so penetrating that they caused the hind and
the fiddler to drop knife and fork and rush to the yard. Grey Fox had
just seized the cock when the fiddler burst out, and making the most of
his long legs, succeeded in heading him from the passage that led to the
moor. The fox refused to drop his prey, though the huge wings kept
flapping in his face and hindering him in the race with the fiddler, who
pursued him over the dung-heap and around the yard, to the amusement of
the rest of the party crowding the gateway. As he ran, the fiddler trod
on the polecat, whose sudden appearance so startled the fox that he
dropped the cock, crossed the wall to the rickyard, and rejoined his
mate, who had hurried away to the moor at the first shout of the
fiddler.
Merry as the party was before, it was twice as merry now, yet there was
not a child, nay, nor a grown-up around that festive board, who would
not have been sorry to know that in the act of crossing the wall Grey
Fox had espied the hare and was already plotting his destruction.
For in the earth amidst the furze, Grey Fox, who had an old score to
settle, and the vixen, who had searched for him when a helpless leveret,
sat mask to mask, with wrinkled brow, scheming how they should take him.
It was a matter of life or death to them, at least so they themselves
regarded it; and the moment their plans were laid they were all
eagerness to put them into execution. Their eyes glowed with excitement;
twice they rose and went to the mouth of the earth to observe the light;
the third time they stole away to the rickyard.
On reaching the wall, Grey Fox peeped over, and turning his head slowly
to avoid attracting notice, exchanged looks with the vixen. “It’s all
right, she is in the seat,” that is what his glance conveyed. As the
light faded he got on the wall, and watched as he crouched. Later the
vixen took his place whilst he stole round to the other end of the wall.
The hare was now between them, knowing all, and taking counsel with
himself. From time to time the sound of the fiddle or the laughter of
the children broke the tense silence, but without disquieting the foxes,
who lay with their heads towards the yard ready to spring the moment the
hare made off. Then the hind came and saw to the cattle, and as he
presently returned to the house, hare and foxes gathered themselves for
the work before them.
With a mighty bound the hare reached the yard and made for the gate,
through which he passed to the front of the house with the foxes in
close pursuit. The light from the window fell on the fleeting forms of
all three as they rounded the corner by the beehives on their way back
to the bridle-track, which the hare followed to the point where it
bends. There, instead of swinging round in the direction of the hamlet,
he set his face straight for Chapel Carn Brea.
Now, as at all times, he looked to the hill to escape his pursuers, but
it was no longer the familiar place it had been, for the pits filled by
the snow were level with the runways. Consequently the surface was
treacherous, and therein lay the hope of the foxes, a hope immediately
realised. Twice during the ascent the hare fell into blind holes, from
which he managed to extricate himself only just in time to avoid being
seized by Grey Fox. Though he escaped capture he lost the lead he had
gained; abreast of the chantry he was so dangerously close to his
pursuers that a false step would have meant death, and he knew it; while
the foxes, who knew it too, were already anticipating a feast. For
thirty yards farther the ground beneath the snow was so broken, so full
of pitfalls, that the chances of traversing it without stumbling were
small, but the hare got over it without mishap and reached the ridge,
along which he held bravely, for the going there was good. His heart
sank, however, at sight of the snow in the hollow, where only a rush or
two showed above the smooth surface. But those few rushes served as a
guide, a welcome guide, for they indicated the position of the Liddens,
towards which he at once directed his steps.
In this he was wise, because the ice afforded reliable foothold to his
hairy pads and enabled him to plough his way through the snow at quite a
good pace, much faster indeed than the foxes, though they kept along the
furrow in his wake. The lead thus gained he kept on increasing as he
ascended Bartinney, to the discomfiture of his pursuers, who would have
abandoned the chase had not the big drift in the next hollow, which they
believed impassable, encouraged them to keep going. On reaching it the
hare’s courage failed him, and no wonder, for stretching from foothill
to foothill, and completely filling the dip between, lay like a great
white lake, a drift which threatened to overwhelm him. Face to face with
this new danger he forgot the foxes for a moment, but the instant he
looked back and caught sight of them bounding down the hill, he flung
aside his hesitation, plunged into the drift, and put forth all the
strength of his limbs in an effort to reach the other side.
Nearer and nearer the foxes came to the drift; they leapt into it
without flinching, and began to battle with the feathery mass, striving
to overhaul the hare now some dozen yards ahead. It was a weird scene,
that drift amidst the hills, marked now by the glowing eyes of three
protruding heads, now by the tips of the ears, now only by a slight
flurry of the surface, which showed where pursuers and pursued struggled
beneath, till, where the snow lay deepest, there was no slightest sign
of movement, and it seemed as if all three had found a grave.
At last towards the farther side the points of two ears showed, then two
eyes; they were the ears and eyes of the hare, who had tunnelled his way
thus far, and was standing on his hind legs looking round to see where
he was. Before you could count three the head was withdrawn and the hare
again lost to sight, but presently out he came from the drift with a
long leap, the snow on his back shooting forward between his ears as his
fore feet struck the ground. He bounded up the slope, and had gone
perhaps a score yards when the foxes emerged, pressing after him at
their best pace.
The struggle with the drift had told more on the hare than on them.
Between the drift and Caer Bran, where he passed close to the spot on
which months before he had sat dreaming of the life before him, he
actually lost ground, yet, though seemingly doomed, on, on he sped; nay,
more, he even began to gather his strength for a supreme effort to shake
off his pursuers. The wood on the Beacon was the place he chose for it.
The moment he felt the pine-needles under his pads he breasted the hill
with the speed of the wind, and gained its granite crown several seconds
ahead.
[Illustration: _R. H. Preston & Sons, Penzance._, _To face p. 152._
THE REMAINS OF THE BEACON WOOD.]
This spurt amazed the foxes, for they imagined the hare to be failing,
and they would have been still more amazed had they known how he was
using his advantage. He did not keep on as the foxes themselves would
have done, for that he thought would only prolong the chase, whereas his
intention was to put an end to it. So just over the ridge he leapt from
rock to rock and back again, then to the great slab that looks like a
vast table amidst the furze, and finally into the furze itself, into
which he flung himself just in the nick of time, the bushes closing over
him as Grey Fox appeared on the apex of the Beacon.
With swift glances Reynard swept the hillside, but not a spray stirred
to mark the line along which their escaping prey was stealing towards
the foot of the hill; forthwith he and his mate, who had now come up,
stooped again to the scent with the object of following the trail. But
the hare had succeeded in foiling his line; they immediately discovered
the hopelessness of the task, and both returned to the high rock
conscious that their only chance lay in sighting the hare as he left the
hill.
Their movements had been as quick as lightning, so quick that not more
than ten seconds had passed since Grey Fox gained the Beacon. How his
flanks heaved, how quick the breath came from him, yet despite distress
of lung and agony of lacerated pads that stained the snow with blood,
his one thought was for the game; he did not waste a glance on the
lanterns[7] illuminating the church tower, he was deaf to the
carol-singers, all his senses were in the eyes that watched every
opening between the bushes, every avenue of escape.
Suddenly, they—for the vixen was at his side—sighted the hare as it
crossed the bridge far below. Instantly they were off. Twice Grey Fox
tumbled head over heels in his mad haste, but the shaking made no
difference to him: there was no slackening in the speed with which he
led along the trail which presently recrossed the stream to a
plantation. Here, in their excitement, first he then the vixen gave
tongue on the scent. Their sharp yaps fell like a death-knell on the
ears of the hare, who, believing the pursuit was at an end, was loping
leisurely along the bank of the stream. For a moment his heart sank
within him, but only for a moment; the next he pulled himself together
and redoubled his pace, the thought of being seized and gobbled up by
Grey Fox acting like a spur on his flagging energies. At a bound he
again recrossed the stream, sped across the slope of the opposite hill
in full view of the foxes and headed for a gap at the top.
The pursuers’ plan was formed at once: they would waylay him at the gap
and seize him as he passed. A hedge with a ditch on its further side ran
up the hill. At their utmost speed the two foxes galloped along the
ditch, gained the crest and reached the gap whilst the unsuspecting prey
was yet a dozen yards from it. The fate of the hare was apparently
sealed. But Grey Fox was not content to trust his ears to apprise him of
the hare’s approach; in his eagerness he could not resist peeping round
the corner. This betrayed him: the hare saw his long snout, turned and
made down the hill, the breathless foxes following as fast as they
could. In the descent the hare gained quite a good lead, but it seemed
all to no purpose, for his line of flight was leading him directly
towards a quarry which cut off all escape.
Yet on he galloped straight to the brink, and reaching it, leapt
headlong into the great drift that rose half-way up its sheer wall.
The foxes checked themselves on the very verge and stood gazing at the
snow marked by the cleanly-cut hole made by the hare as he fell. “Done
after all,” was the meaning of the expression on Grey Fox’s mask. But he
was not to be thus deprived of his prey if search could avail, and to
this end he and the vixen made their way down to the base of the quarry
and were lost to sight in the drift as they worked towards the spot
where they expected to find the hare lying dead.
Far from being dead, however, he was not even disabled; indeed he was
none the worse for his dive, the snow having completely broken his fall.
On feeling the ground beneath his pads he moved forward, and had
advanced some twelve yards when he found himself confronted by the huge
heap of loose rock which the quarrymen had piled there. It barred his
way, threatening to prevent his escape, until presently he found a small
opening, and through it squeezed to a narrow tunnel-like passage which
led to a chamber littered with the remains of rabbits, mice, eels, and
frogs. It was a polecat’s den—the den, indeed, of the polecat that had
chased him, the den where she and her kittens had slept after the
pursuit. He crossed the foul lair and tried to pass through the narrow
space between two rocks on the farther side. This looked like courting
destruction, for he ran the risk of being jammed and unable to extricate
himself; but he could hear the foxes behind him; he must go that way or
perish. With a struggle he forced his head and shoulders through; then
he was fixed, he could not clear his hindquarters, tug and strain as he
might. As he stopped to recover his breath, he caught the patter of his
pursuers’ pads: they were approaching the den: in a few seconds Grey
Fox’s jaws would close on him and the rocks ring with his death squeal.
Frantic with fear, maddened by dread of his fate, he made a frenzied
effort and just managed to pull his long hind legs through before Grey
Fox could seize them.
Yet to that very opening which had all but proved his destruction, he
was now to owe his life. For Grey Fox, desperately anxious to reach him,
forced his great head through the hole with the hope of seizing him, and
got it so firmly wedged that some minutes elapsed before he succeeded in
withdrawing it. By that time the hare was once more well on his way up
the hill. He had passed over the brow before the foxes discovered the
line of his retreat. But it was soon evident, from their half-hearted
manner, that they were on the point of abandoning the pursuit, which
they did a bow-shot beyond the lighted cottage.
What a change had come over them! They hardly looked the same creatures
as when, alive in every fibre, they had stood on the Beacon, the
embodiment of eagerness and energy. Now their heads drooped, their
brushes that had waved like feathers, dragged and seemed to weigh them
down. They looked dispirited, as indeed they were, and humbled too: the
grass-feeder had proved more than a match for both of them, though, as
they had seen, he was hampered by large balls of snow that clung to his
fur. They went back the way they had come, the vixen leading, Grey Fox
hopping on three legs. Twice he stopped to scratch his aching jaws, and
at the bend by the quarry he disappeared from view.
The hunt was over, but even when satisfied of that the hare still held
on. He was harassed now by a fresh fear, the fear of being tracked. This
possessed him so strongly, that weary as he was, he wandered in and out
the patches of scattered furze, confusing his trail so as to baffle any
enemy who should try to trace him, and not until the long night was
giving way to dawn did he settle in his form, which he sought in the old
spot on the bank of the mill-pool.
That day, whilst the Squire was abroad after woodcock, he came on the
triple trail above the quarry, and recognising the track of the hare,
was at once filled with desire to see the end of the story told on the
snow. His excitement, as he stood on the lip of the quarry, looking at
the shaft-like hole, astonished his henchman: the feeling he displayed
when he discovered the track of the hare by the cottage door was
altogether beyond the man’s comprehension.
“Ah, that shows how sorely the poor thing was pressed. Had the door been
open, she would have gone in and taken her chance.”
At every stride he expected to come on the end of the tragic chase, and
kept looking ahead for the remains that would mark the last scene. All
the greater, then, was his delight to find that the foxes had withdrawn
from the chase, and greater too his determination to try and get a view
of the animal whose survival in that vermin-haunted district seemed
little short of miraculous. For three hours he followed the trail,
pondering as he went over the animal’s hairbreadth escapes as his
imagination called them up and, in his anxiety to come on the hare
before dusk, almost losing his temper at the delays the creature’s ruses
caused him. “Give it up, Squire,” said his man at last; “you’ll never
come up with her, take and give it up.”
“Not whilst there’s light to see by,” was the laconic reply. It was
nearly four o’clock when they came to the mill-pool. Even then they
searched and searched in vain, for as the hare had landed from his last
spring the snow fell from the tuft and concealed him. “She’s here, I
know she’s here,” said the Squire in despair. The words were scarcely
out of his mouth when the hare bounded from his feet and crossed the
pond.
“Shoot, shoot,” shouted the man; “darn ’ee, shoot.” Instead of raising
his gun, the Squire raised his hand and kept it at the salute till the
creature passed from sight. It was his way of paying homage to an animal
hero.
-----
[4] Saffron is much used in Cornwall for colouring cakes.
[5] A pennyworth of holly.
[6] On Flora day, the 8th of May, dancing takes place in the streets of
Helston.
[7] It was formerly the custom to illuminate the church towers on
Christmas Day.