bar coming right out of the ground. If there had been one more man it
would have been possible to haul Tiger up, bit by bit. As it was, they
could only remain still. The weight on the rope was heavy, but they
could stop so for hours if need be; till help came, at any rate.
Presently Tiger realised what had happened, and grunted in disgust. He
started to climb, using his arms only, for he was frightened lest he
should hurt the birds and so lessen their value. Dimly he realised that
if he tired and dropped, the rope would jerk the other two over the
cliff-edge, and all three, with the birds, would crash to their death.
He climbed twenty feet, feeling no fatigue. There was another hundred
feet to go, easy work, before the cliff bulged slightly. Slabs of
dislodged rock hurtled past him, and one cut his brow. The blood poured
into his eye, and he spat angrily.
When the first ache came to his damaged wrist he wound the rope
round his right leg and stood upon it. He cared no longer about the
birds. But he knew that to rest thus was no rest at all, so upwards he
went again--a terrible laboured climbing, slowly and with a strained
wrist, blood running from broken knuckles, and the sweat pouring from
his body. He began to feel the weight of the dragging loop of rope
below him, but still he struggled upwards. A shower of dust spat into
his face, and he wondered if he were blinded. His arms shook, his
muscles burned, and his palms, in spite of their coating of horn, were
beginning to tear. He could hardly see for the blood and sweat in his
eyes, and as he breathed he snored heavily, with great shuddering gasps.
The jutting-out cliff was just above him now. Here the rope lay flat
and taut against the loose rubble, but he dug each hand alternately
into the shale and literally dragged himself up, fist over fist. Then
it was possible to press his toes into the slight slope, and rest.
For a minute he lay thus, in agony. But he knew that to rest much
was fatal; reaction would set in. He wound his left leg round the
rope, seized the guide-rope (which ran through another loose belt)
and patiently pulled its lower end through so that there should be no
slack between him and the two men above. After an eternity of patient
hauling the line lay straight between him and the lip of the Hole. Then
he wound it twice round his thick neck, and bit on it firmly with his
teeth. This done, he gave five tugs on it, and saw it tighten. Crushing
his jaws together, he took the mighty strain, and was drawn up a foot.
Arching his back, and leaning out nearly at right angles to the face
of the cliff, he put one foot above the other. All the weight of his
ascent was borne by his teeth; they were his last hope. Tiger’s teeth
were yellow like old ivory, and the best in the village. Many a time he
had taken a hundredweight sack in them and moved about with it; many a
time he had swung from a beam by them, holding a rope in his jaws. Now
they were to save his life. Both the haulers and himself were well-nigh
exhausted when his beard covered with blood-stained froth appeared over
the lip of the cliff, and they dragged him sobbing and cursing on the
matted grass.
Ten minutes later they had coiled up their ropes, taken up the bar, and
were walking quickly to the village. The three ravens were alive and
well, quite unhurt by Tiger’s struggles. The men spoke seldom as they
walked; their fear was that the policeman would see them.
They reached Tiger’s cottage in safety and closed the door behind them.
His wife had a two-gallon jar of small ale for them, and Tiger drank a
gallon, only pausing to fill his basin. Then he licked his moustache,
and sat down on a chair. The other two men had thrown the tackle
on the table, and were taking deep draughts of the beer. They had
finished the two gallons when a succession of heavy blows came on the
door; these ceased, and there was a great thudding on the roof.
At first they thought it was the policeman. Rural folk are usually
terrified at the idea of the law; they have the simple imagination of
children.
“Come in, zur,” quavered Mrs. Tiger.
Aaron, who was a devout chapel-goer, began to tremble.
“It be a ghostie!” he whispered.
“Git out!” scoffed Mrs. Tiger, for she had seen two large black shapes
that she recognised pass across the little window.
Sure enough, the old ravens had discovered their young. The curious
thing, Muggy emphasised, was that there had been no sign of them either
during Tiger’s climb or afterwards, while the three men were tramping
the three miles to his cottage, nor had they heard any croaking.
Meanwhile, the people in the cottage were fearful that the policeman
would come their way and discover everything. The old birds kept
banging away at the thatch, tearing out great mouthfuls of it in an
endeavour to get at the fledgelings. Tiger did not dare to use his
gun; the situation frightened him; so he opened the door. Immediately
the cat pounced at a young bird, but one of the old birds swooped down
and gave the cat a tap on the head that sent it spinning away, to drop
dead with a hole in its skull that Tiger could put two fingers in. The
youngsters, with nobody to stop them, got right away, half flying and
half hopping.
“And since that day, zur,” Muggy said solemnly, “no raven has been
known to touch a lamb. That’s as true as I’m sitting here.”
The ravens have nested on the headland again this year, using their old
breeding ledge; and I am glad that at least one pair of these rare
birds haunts the solitudes by the sea. No one interferes with them,
except the peregrines, but the raven is too much for that fierce swift
raider, turning on his back in mid-air and holding his beak upwards
like a javelin as the falcon is about to strike. A quick eye the raven
needs, for the hawk plunges at about two hundred miles an hour. But
they never harm one another, and I know for a fact, having seen it
myself, that the ravens practise their turning movement. They love to
float in an uprushing wind just below the cliff-edge, and roll over
like a twirled distaff, sideways, and then back again. And I think that
if any stranger tried to shoot one, the Nightcrow Inn would rise in
anger against him. The ravens have earned their sanctuary.
THE OUTLAW:
_Being the indisputable (journalese) truth about the peregrine falcon
that came to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1920._
The beechwood was ten miles from London. One morning in late
September a strange visitor came to it, and perched upon a low
branch. A blackbird, feeding below among the dried moss and brown
leaves, shrilled a sudden alarm. The blackbird had never seen such an
apparition before, but he recognised the family.
The newcomer remained still. He was tired and exhausted after a long
journey. Since dawn he had flown high up, his pinions urged on and on
by a fierce despair. For his mate had been shot upon Lundy Island, and
he had flown straight into the sun’s face as though to find her spirit
taken back into its flame that gave all the wild ones life. Swift had
he flown, never pausing till he came to the beechwood; seeing it
below, and wrapping his wings around him, he had fallen like a great
iron arrowhead into its solitude.
The pigeons who roosted were in the stubble: the starlings haunted the
water-meadows: the jackdaws flocked with the rocks about the furrows.
The beechwood was still, for the blackbird had slipped away.
The stranger flapped his long thin wings, and looked around him.
He was about eighteen inches long, and bluish-ash in colour. His throat
and upper breast were white, tinged with yellow, and marked with a
few dark streaks. But the most noticeable thing was the eyes. They
were large, and keen, dusky; ringed with yellow eyelids. Fierce and
remorseless was their expression, aided by the short, hooked bill.
The falcon suddenly stiffened. From the lake below the sloping forest
had come a faint trumpet-like call. He knew the call well, for many
times had he and his mate preyed upon the wild duck in the Devon
estuary opposite Lundy Island.
The next moment he had gone through the trees, a swift shadow. A little
vole splitting a beechmast on the ground below crouched in terror. For
everything preyed upon its kind. The weasel came by day, and in summer
the grass snake; if it left the wood and went to the meadow there was
the poised kestrel hawk; in the furrows a fox sometimes ran, snapping
at the tiny mice; in the dark night came the great wood owl, and that
white devil, the barn owl.
The mouse crouched in terror, but he passed on, a swift shadow: he was
a noble bird, and did not take rodents.
Seven duck had flighted, and were going towards the reaches of the
Thames. They flew fast and steadily, at fifty miles an hour. The
passing narrow shadow became a relentless and swift whirling speck
above them, ever climbing.
Then one of the duck was falling, the flight was scattered; the falling
one clutched and borne to the beechwood, where the hooked beak tore and
ripped.
Thenceforward the wood became a place of terror. One morning the keeper
discovered a cock pheasant lying dead on the leaves. A small part of
its breast had been eaten. At first he thought that it was the work
of a fox--but he was puzzled; he knew that the fox usually ate more
of a longtail than a small part of its breast, and always buried his
half-eaten victim for consumption on another occasion. And on turning
it over, he was still more puzzled. The back was ripped as though a
knife had slashed and turned the skin right back.
A hundred yards away he found a carrion crow. The back of the crow was
also smashed, although no attempt had been made to eat any section of
its body. In other parts of the wood the keeper found slain pheasants,
all badly broken; the remains of a squirrel--one forepaw and a bushy
tail comprising the remains. Three dead duck floated in the lake.
Whatever new and ghastly thing was causing the havoc, he told his head
man later, it seemed to delight in destroying and killing for sport.
Gradually the terror became the topic of talk in the inns roundabout
Bromley, in Kent. Some of the bolder and more imaginative declared
that it was caused by an Arctic owl--one even said that he had seen it
stooping at a dog in the twilight. He was a well-known liar.
No one in the district--which was outlying to a large town just outside
the suburban area of south-east London--had ever heard of the like.
The mystery was solved in a sudden manner. The keeper had been setting
baited traps--of the “gin” variety--tempting the unknown with the
entrails of rabbits. But he caught nothing save a mangy stoat, blind
in one eye and the other filming over with age. The gins were of no
avail.
The keeper kept fowls in his garden. One day he was sitting in the
porch of his cottage, smoking after the midday meal, and ruminating on
what the squire had said about giving up the rearing of pheasants. His
fowls were strutting and scratching: one had recently produced an egg
and was proclaiming the fact with unmelodious insistency.
There came a hissing as of something falling: an alarmed curse from a
hen. The keeper jumped up, swearing at the bluish tumbling of narrow
wings that had gone over the hedge.
One of his fowls was kicking the air spasmodically. There was blood on
the path. He picked the hen up--it was headless.
The keeper swore; he knew what had caused the mischief among his
longtails and duck. It was a big hawk--of a kind never seen before.
So swiftly had it come that the fowl was decapitated by those dagger
spikes on the hind claw of the raider’s feet.
* * * * *
One day a journalist was walking in a meadow. The meadow was near to
a copse containing a dozen tall elm trees. In the elms were nearly
a hundred black patches--a colony of rooks at their old nests. The
rookery had been deserted in June, when old and young birds took to the
fields and made local migrations.
That morning a mist had lain in the meadow and the rooks had known that
it was time to return to the colony.
As the journalist, happy in the October sunshine, passed near the
rookery, he was surprised to see the whole flock--some hundreds of
birds--rise with harsh imperative cries into the air. The beating of
many jet wings caused a vast soughing, and the leaves below the trees
rose and flitter-fluttered with the winnowing. As suddenly as it had
begun, the outcry ceased. Yet still the birds climbed higher.
Soon they were just specks against the blue, wheeling like a ring
of smoke in one great circle. Then the agitated cries came again.
One segment of the circle broke into falling and diving, zooming and
slipping, birds, as though a strong wind had scattered them every way.
The journalist was mystified. He sat down to watch, and to discover the
reason.
Two of the rooks had left the circle, and were diving to earth. As they
came nearer he saw that their wings hung limp. They fell a hundred
yards away, and he ran over to them. They were dead.
Picking one up, it was warm, the sunlight gleaming on the hues of its
wings, glinting green and purple. Their backs were bare of feathers,
and gaping with a terrible wound. He was more mystified, then thought
that for some inexplicable reason the other rooks had pecked them to
death. But why? He was more puzzled as he thought. He was well known
for his puzzles.
Looking up, he saw that the circle had swung higher than ever.
Gradually it drifted away, silent.
The journalist, who had some knowledge of natural history and
ornithology, returned to London the next day and wrote the incident up
as a “news story.” But he could give no explanation. The editor was
sceptical; said that it was no good. He laughed, and mentioning that it
was “punk,” promptly “spiked” it.
Meanwhile something was about to happen in London.
It was half-past five on Saturday afternoon. The journalist, who worked
with a newspaper that went to press on Saturday night for publication
on Sunday, was passing St. Paul’s Cathedral. He stopped to look at the
pigeons strutting and searching for crumbs upon the worn paving stones.
He found two months continuous work to be most exhausting. He still
was puzzled about the dead rooks. He had been to every paper in London
with his “rook story,” but no one would print it. He even got laughed
at as a “fake merchant”--a tribute to imagination, but damning as a
reputation.
Like chaff before a blast of wind the pigeons scattered. His paper was
rumpled by the agitated draught caused by their departure.
Looking up to the dome he saw a flock of about fifty pigeons wheeling
in steady flight near the cross at the top. A speck fell with a
suddenness that reminded him of a shot aeroplane: like a plunging
halbert-head it was; there was a puff of feathers dancing and
fluttering--the flock scattered, dived to earth, anywhere, anyhow, and
the dark halbert-head became outlined against the sky, perched on the
gilt cross that glistened in the afternoon sun.
Then he knew that it was a peregrine falcon, and thrilling with the
sight, took a taxi-cab back to Fleet Street (he was young and keen) and
“wrote the story up.”
His editor “liked” the idea, but demanded that it should be rendered
in what the journalist thought was the most illiterate English. The
journalist and the editor sneered at each other about prose for some
time: and the editor won. The illiterate account was penned, mauled
over by a sub-editor, and finally displayed prominently on the front
page of his paper. But the editor only leered when the journalist asked
for his taxi-cab fare.
* * * * *
The falcon, leaving the woods near London came once more. The woods
were ten miles from St. Paul’s, and it took him eight minutes to fly to
the dome.
His end was an epic one, and becomes such a noble spirit. From what the
journalist dreamed, he was able to imagine the death, and here it is.
One morning by the lake side stood a gray stump, a tall thing on two
stalk-like legs. The gray stump remained motionless, as though watching
his own dull image in the water.
It was a heron fishing.
He remained still for many minutes. Something passed in the water,
a long neck shot forward, and a gleaming fish, pierced by the beak,
drawn from the lake. The heron, who had paid a visit every morning from
the heronry at Tonbridge, flew away; a slow-flapping, unwieldy thing,
over a yard in length. His feet stretched out behind him, his head was
tucked in between his shoulders.
The falcon was about. He stooped at the heron. Perhaps the spirit of
ancestors, who left the gauntletted wrists of falconers to fly at
the heron of olden times, was about him: for how else should he have
dared that pointed beak? Rolling like a ship in a gale, heavily and in
distress, the heron turned on his back, and held his beak pointed at
the stooping falcon.
The hawk swerved; swept up again; regained height, wrapped his wings
about him and plunged. Again the beak met him, once more he swerved.
So the combat went on. Nearer the keeper’s cottage they drifted.
Now the heron was calling in distress, _Kaa-ack, kaa-ack_. Fell the
halbert-head, darted the spear-beak, slipped the halbert-head. It was
to be a fight to the death, till one should misjudge by the minutest
error of time, the plundering heron or the outlawed falcon. The small
birds hid themselves in the bushes--the sound of a shot rang out,
the heron tumbled in alarm, recovered, flapped away; an eddy of gray
feathers swirled in the wind, the echo of the report shivered back
from the woods--and the falcon fell on the grass, its beak gaping, and
panting for breath.
The keeper picked up the wild one, never more to swoop on “longtail” or
“bird,” never more to descend upon terrorised tame pigeon in Barnstaple
or the great Dome of London. The proud eyes misted, the noble head fell
back--the keeper was surprised to feel how light the bird was; and
while he was weighing it in his hand the outlaw died.
* * * * *
But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this falcon-raid was
that nearly every journalist in London saw the bird; but I saw it
first, therefore it is mine.
PEREGRINES IN LOVE
(_To E. G. S._)
In the salt winds of the Atlantic, and above their ancient eyrie, the
peregrine falcons anchor their flight with easy mastery of the gusty
uptrends of the precipitous headland face. When first the celandine
came below the hedges, the male hawk mounted high, and stooped at his
larger mate like a black and shaftless arrowhead of iron, uttering
shrill love-notes the while. Now the dog violets and the red campion
flowers are among the grasses; the pink sea-thrift blooms in sheltered
places; and still the peregrines pursue each other and kiss with swift
fondness over the foamed waters.
The kestrel is considered by some naturalists to be the most scientific
hoverer of our British hawks. Certainly he uses with great skill the
winds of heaven for his livelihood. He leans upon the moving air,
sometimes slipping sideways and losing height, but reassuming poise by
quick beats of his chestnut pinions. Our largest hawk, the buzzard, is
common in this district by the sea, and with large wings outspread he
sails circlewise till his prey is detected, when a slow descent is made
to the ground. Often these birds have been observed to hang low over
the heather and gorse, motionless, wings arched and bent backwards, for
nearly a minute at a time. But the peregrines, so swift and ruthless
in flight and habit, out-hover both the kestrel and the buzzard. The
hovering of the kestrel is weak, delicately balanced; that of the
buzzard clumsily weighty, and only managed in a strong air-current;
the peregrine falcon cuts into the gusts, controlling his flight with
instant power, unheeding the wind’s vagaries. He can remain still, soar
higher, or drift sideways with ease.
The eyrie is a hundred feet down the cliff-face, upon a narrow ledge.
For years their young have been taken by the Tiger, a small, wiry man
who, descends by a rope attached to a driven crowbar, swings inwards to
the ledge, and is hauled to the top with the young falcons in a basket.
Yet every year when the celandines come the falcons’ courtship begins,
ending only when the scent of the wild thyme fades and the sea-thrift
rusts with autumn’s decay. They hunt together, ranging afar. Their
stoop is terrible to behold, so swift and shattering its ending. It
may be at a rabbit which ventures forth from the holes of the swarded
slopes, at a stock-dove beating speedy flight from Lundy Island, or
at an immigrant swallow flying from alien wastes to the shore and
sanctuary. Nothing is immune from ravage save the larger gulls and the
sombre ravens, who croak defiance from their aerial soughing.
The peregrines raid from their base upon the headland to the inland
villages, watching for the chance of taking a tame dove from a
cot; onwards to the lonely wastes of the sandhills, crowned with
spike-grass, where the peewits wail throughout the springtime. They
dash up the wide estuary; the ring-plover crouch low among the stones
and seaweed as they pass; they even visit Barnstaple itself for the
blue-gray pigeons that wheel above its old shipyards. In the skyey
loftiness one moment are the hawks, watching and soaring, the male
usually the higher; one will close pinions and dive like a dark
arrowhead through the air, flattening as a bird is reached; there is
a burst of feathers, a triumphant chattering, and the limp victim is
borne to the solitudes of the dunes. A week later upon the sand a
bleached skeleton will lie, surrounded by a scattered ring of feathers,
in company with old bones of rabbits and bead-like shells that tell of
ended generations.
The pair rarely separates. Maybe the leading hawk will miss; its mate
follows instantly. Sometimes a third striking is attempted. Usually,
however, it is not needed, although the course of the dive, once begun,
cannot be altered--either the object is missed entirely or secured. In
the pools below the cliffs the sea boils, tossing the spray afar. Shags
haunt particular rocks, content in the sunlight. The falcons do not
molest them, but they may watch the loving couple high in heaven, and
so may the gulls that with yelping plaints rise and fall and glide upon
the air. Swiftly and with quick wing-beats the peregrines climb, almost
vertically, it would appear. Then a sudden speeding at eighty or ninety
miles an hour, a downward dash at the rocks, beaks and wings touching;
they hiss past the gulls, swoop apart and glide upwards, uttering their
sweetly wild mating cries. Nothing matters in the ecstasies of spring.
They may pass uncaring within a few yards of a beholder, when he may
see the neck and wings, slate-ash in colour, the dark crown and nape,
the hooked beak and the barred tail. He may shout and wave his arms
in excitement, the ravens croak, the gulls scream, the lone buzzard
wail as he circles, but the love-chase continues. On the falcons
rush, above the crested waves and the marbled troughs of the ocean,
past the crannies and the ledges of the precipice, among the summer
cloudlets, over the hills of heather and the slopes of golden gorse, by
the mounded sand-dunes and the glistening mud-flats; all the heavenly
freeness is theirs to roam. Bold they are, and observe no law, but they
hunt openly and in defiance--often cursed by the sporting farmer; and
yet all of us are proud of our “pregun forlkns.”
MIDSUMMER NIGHT
(_To G. E. R._)
Against the deep blue of the sky a little money spider was taking a
line from one veined ash leaf to another. Although so small, he was
easily seen in the waning light, a dark speck moving with great care.
It was evening time, and the vesper hymn of warblers and thrushes,
pippits and blackbirds, was all but sung.
Throughout the day the great vibrant waves of sunlight were plangent
on the cornfields and rushing with golden swell over the bee-visited
hedgerows and green meadows, vitalising the slender grasses and red
sorrel growing in beauty with branched buttercups and incarnadine poppy
flowers. Slowly the day-tide of summer’s light and glory ebbed, the
sun swung down from heaven and dipped its lower rim into the ocean.
The fields and distant oakwood were laved in yellow light, and like a
golden sand gleaming in the western sunlight as the sea recedes, the
ebbing tide of sunlight left its pools among the woods and the hedges.
Far away some children were singing as they went slowly homewards
through the closed buttercups and daisies, and their careless cries
were in harmony with the evening.