It was still pitch dark, although the skies were quite clear and
cloudless, when Harry, Frank, and the Commodore re-assembled on the
following morning, in Tom's best parlor, preparatory to the stag hunt
which, as determined on the previous night, was to be their first
sporting move in the valley.
Early, however, as it was, Timothy had contrived to make a glorious fire
upon the hearth, and to lay out a slight breakfast of biscuits, butter,
and cold beef, flanked by a square case-bottle of Jamaica, and a huge
jorum of boiled milk. Tom Draw had not yet made his appearance, but the
sound of his ponderous tramp, mixed with strange oaths and loud
vociferations, showed that he was on foot, and ready for the field.
"I'll tell you what, Master A---," said Archer as he stood with his back
to the fire, mixing some rum with sugar and cold water, previous to
pouring the hot milk into it--"You'll be so cold in that light jacket on
the stand this morning, that you'll never be able to hold your gun true,
if you get a shot. It froze quite hard last night, and there's some
wind, too, this morning."
"That's very true," replied the Commodore, "but devil a thing have I got
else to wear, unless I put on my great coat, and that's too much the
other way--too big and clumsy altogether. I shall do well enough, I dare
say; and after all, my drilling jacket is not much thinner than your
fustian."
"No," said Harry, "but you don't fancy that I'm going out in this, do
you? No! no! I'm too old a hand for that sort of thing--I know that to
shoot well, a man must be comfortable, and I mean to be so. Why, man, I
shall put on my Canadian hunting shirt over this,"--and with the word he
slipped a loose frock, shaped much like a wagoner's smock, or a Flemish
blouse, over his head, with large full sleeves, reaching almost to his
knees, and belted round his waist, by a broad worsted sash. This
excellent garment was composed of a thick coarse homespun woollen,
bottle-green in color, with a fringe and bindings of dingy red, to match
the sash about his waist. From the sash was suspended an otter skin
pouch, containing bullets and patches, nipple wrench and turn-screw, a
bit of dry tow, an oiled rag, and all the indispensables for rifle
cleaning; while into it were thrust two knives--one a broad two-edged
implement, with a stout buck-horn haft, and a blade of at least twelve
inches--the other a much smaller weapon, not being, hilt and all, half
the length of the other's blade, but very strong, sharp as a razor, and
of surpassing temper. While he was fitting all these in their proper
places, and slinging under his left arm a small buffalo horn of powder,
he continued talking:
"Now," he said, "if you take my advice, you'll go into my room, and
there, hanging against the wall, you'll find my winter shooting jacket,
I had it made last year when I went up to Maine, of pilot cloth, lined
throughout with flannel. It will fit you just as well as your own, for
we're pretty much of a size. Frank, there, will wear his old monkey
jacket, the skirts of which he razeed last winter for the very purpose.
Ah, here is Brower--just run up, Brower, and bring down my shooting
jacket off the wall from behind the door--look sharp, will you! Now,
then, I shall load, and I advise you both to do likewise; for it's bad
work doing that same with cold fingers."
Thus saying, he walked to the corner, and brought out his rifle, a short
heavy double barrel, with two grooves only, carrying a bitted ball of
twelve to the pound, quite plain but exquisitely finished. Before
proceeding, however, to load, he tried the passage of the nipple with a
fine needle--three or four of which, thrust into a cork, and headed with
sealing wax, formed a portion of the contents of his pouch--brushed the
cone, and the inside of the hammer, carefully, and wiped them, to
conclude, with a small piece of clean white kid--then measuring his
powder out exactly, into a little charger, screwed to the end of his
ramrod, he inverted the piece, and introduced the rod upward till the
cup reached the chamber; when, righting the gun, he withdrew it, leaving
the powder all lodged safely at the breech, without the loss of a single
grain in the groovings. Next, he chose out a piece of leather, the
finest grained kid, without a seam or wrinkle, slightly greased with the
best watch-maker's oil--selected a ball perfectly round and true--laid
the patch upon the muzzle, and placing the bullet exactly in the centre
over the bore, buried it with a single rap of a small lignum vita
mallet, which hung from his button-hole; and then, with but a trifling
effort, drove it home by one steady thrust of the stout copper-headed
charging rod. This done, he again inspected the cone, and seeing that
the powder was forced quite up into sight, picked out, with the same
anxious scrutiny that had marked all of his proceedings, a copper cap,
which he pronounced sure to go, applied it to the nipple, crushed it
down firmly, with the hammer, which he then drew back to half-cock, and
bolted. Then he set the piece down by the fireside, drained his hot
jorum, and...
"That fellow will do his work, and no mistake," said he. "Now A--- here
is my single gun"--handing to him, as he spoke, one of the handsomest
Westley Richards a sportsman ever handled--"thirty-three inches, nine
pounds and eleven gauge. Put in one-third above that charger, which is
its usual load, and one of those green cartridges, and I'll be bound
that it will execute at eighty paces; and that is more than Master Frank
there can say for his Manton Rifle, at least if he loads it with bullets
patched in that slovenly and most unsportsmanlike fashion."
"I should like to know what the deuce you mean by slovenly and
unsportsmanlike," said Frank, pulling out of his breast pocket a couple
of bullets, carefully sewed up in leather--"it is the best plan
possible, and saves lots of time--you see I can just shove my balls in
at once, without any bother of fitting patches."
"Yes," replied Harry, "and five to one the seam, which, however neatly
it is drawn, must leave a slight ridge, will cross the direction of the
grooving, and give the ball a counter movement; either destroying
altogether the rotatory motion communicated by the rifling, or causing
it to take a direction quite out of the true line; accordingly as the
counteraction is conveyed near the breech, or near the muzzle of the
piece."
"Will so trifling a cause produce so powerful an effect?" inquired the
Commodore.
"The least variation, whether of concavity or convexity in the bullet,
will do so unquestionably--and I cannot see why the same thing in a
covering superinduced to the ball should not have the same effect. Even
a hole in a pellet of shot, will cause it to leave the charge, and fly
off at a tangent. I was once shooting in the fens of the Isle of Ely,
and fired at a mallard sixty or sixty-five yards off, with double B
shot, when to my great amazement a workman--digging peat at about the
same distance from me with the bird, but at least ninety yards to the
right of the mallard--roared out lustily that I had killed him. I saw
that the drake was knocked over as dead as a stone, and consequently
laughed at the fellow, and set it down as a cool trick to extort money,
not uncommon among the fen men, as applied to members of the University.
I had just finished loading, and my retriever had just brought in the
dead bird, which was quite riddled, cut up evidently by the whole body
of the charge--both the wings broken, one in three places, one leg
almost dissevered, and several shots in the neck and body--when up came
my friend, and sure enough he was hit--one pellet had struck him on the
cheek bone, and was imbedded in the skin. Half a crown, and a lotion of
whiskey--not applied to the part, but taken inwardly--soon proved a
sovereign medicine, and picking out the shot with the point of a needle,
I found a hole in it big enough to admit a pin's head, and about the
twentieth part of an inch in depth. This I should think is proof enough
for you--but, besides this, I have seen bullets in pistol-shooting play
strange vagaries, glancing off from the target at all sorts of queer
angles."
"Well! well!" replied Frank, "my rifle shoots true enough for me--true
enough to kill generally--and who the deuce can be at the bother of your
pragmatical preparations! I am sure it might be said of you, as it was
of James the First, of most pacific and pedantic memory, that you are
'Captain of arts and Clerk of arms'--at least you are a very pedant in
gunnery."
"No! no!" said A---; "you're wrong there altogether, Master Forester;
there is nothing on earth that makes so great a difference in
sportsmanship as the observation of small things. I don't call him a
sportsman who can walk stoutly, and kill well, unless he can give causes
for effects--unless he knows the haunts and habits both of his game and
his dogs--unless he can give a why for every wherefore!"
"Then devil a bit will you ever call me one,"--answered Frank--"For I
can't be at the trouble of thinking about it."
"Stuff--humbug--folly"--interrupted Archer--"you know a great deal
better than that--and so do we, too!--you're only cranky! a little
cranky, Frank, and given to defending any folly you commit without
either rhyme or reason--as when you tried to persuade me that it is the
safest thing in nature to pour gunpowder out of a canister into a pound
flask, with a lighted cigar between your teeth; to demonstrate which you
had scarcely screwed the top of the horn on, before the lighted ashes
fell all over it--had they done so a moment sooner, we should all have
been blown out of the room."
By this time, the Commodore had donned Harry's winter jacket, and Frank,
grumbling and paradoxizing all the while, had loaded his rifle, and
buttoned up his pea-jacket, when in stalked Tom, swathed up to his chin
in a stout dreadnought coat.
"What are ye lazin' here about!" he shouted, "you're niver ready no how.
Jem's been agone these two hours, and we'll jest be too late, and miss
gittin' a shot--if so be there be a buck--which I'll be sworn there
arn't!"
"Ha! ha!" the Commodore burst out; "ha! ha! ha! I should like to know
which side the laziness has been on this morning, Mister Draw."
"On little wax skin's there," answered the old man, as quick as
lightning; "the little snoopin' critter carn't find his gloves now;
though the nags is at the door, and we all ready. We'll drink, boys,
while he's lookin' arter 'em--and then when he's found them, and's jest
a gittin' on his horse, he'll find he's left his powder-horn or knife,
or somethin' else, behind him; and then we'll drink agin, while he
snoops back to fetch it."
"You be hanged, you old rascal," replied Forester, a little bothered by
the huge shouts of laughter which followed this most strictly accurate
account of his accustomed method of proceeding; an account which, by the
way, was fully justified not twenty minutes afterward, by his galloping
back, neck or nothing, to get his pocket handkerchief, which he had left
"in course," as Tom said, in his dressing-gown beside the fire.
"Come, bustle--bustle!" Harry added, as he put on his hunting cap and
pulled a huge pair of fen boots on, reaching to the midthigh, which
Timothy had garnished with a pair of bright English spurs. In another
minute they were all on horseback, trotting away at a brisk pace toward
the little glen, wherein, according to Jem's last report, the stag was
harbored. It was in vain that during their quick ride the old man was
entreated to inform them where they were to take post, or what they were
to do, as he would give them no reply, nor any information whatever.
At last, however, when Forester rejoined them, after his return to the
village, he turned short off from the high road to the left, and as he
passed a set of bars into a wild hill pasture, struck into a hard
gallop.
Before them lay the high and ridgy head of Round Top, his flanks sloping
toward them, in two broad pine-clad knobs, with a wild streamlet
brawling down between them, and a thick tangled swamp of small extent,
but full of tall dense thornbushes, matted with vines and cat-briers,
and carpeted with a rich undergrowth of fern and wintergreen, and
whortleberries. To the right and left of the two knobs or spurs just
mentioned, were two other deep gorges, or dry channels, bare of
brushwood, and stony--rockwalled, with steep precipitous ledges toward
the mountain, but sloping easily up to the lower ridges. As they reached
the first of these, Tom motioned Forester to stop.
"Stand here," he whispered, "close in here, jest behind this here crag--
and look out hereaways toward the village. If he comes down this runway,
kill him, but mind you doosn't show a hair out of this corner; for
Archer, he'll stand next, and if so be he crosses from the swamp hole
hereaways, you'll chance to get a bullet. Be still, now, as a mouse, and
tie your horse here in the cove!--Now, lads"
And off he set again, rounded the knob, and making one slight motion
toward the nook, wherein he wished that Harry should keep guard, wheeled
back in utter silence, and very slowly--for they were close to the spot
wherein, as they supposed, the object of their chase was laid up; and as
yet but two of his paths were guarded toward the plain; Jem and his
comrades having long since got with the hounds into his rear, and
waiting only for the rising of the sun to lay them on, and push along
the channel of the brook.
This would compel him to break covert, either directly from the swamp,
or by one of the dry gorges mentioned. Now, therefore, was the crisis of
the whole matter; for if--before the other passes were made good--the
stag should take alarm, he might steal off without affording a chance of
a shot, and get into the mountains to the right, where they might hunt
him for a week in vain.
No marble statue could stand more silently or still than Harry and his
favorite gray, who, with erected ears and watchful eye, trembling a
little with excitement, seemed to know what he was about, and to enjoy
it no less keenly than his rider. Tom and the Commodore, quickening
their pace as they got out of ear-shot, retraced their steps quite back
to the turnpike road, along which Harry saw them gallop furiously, in a
few minutes, and turn up, half a mile off, toward the further gulley--he
saw no more, however; though he felt certain that the Commodore was,
scarce ten minutes after he lost sight of them, standing within twelve
paces of him, at the further angle of the swamp--Tom having warily
determined that the two single guns should take post together, while the
two doubles should be placed where the wild quarry could get off
encountering but a single sportsman.
It was a period of intense excitement before the sun rose though it was
of short duration--but scarcely had his first rays touched the open
meadow, casting a huge gray shadow from the rounded hill which covered
half the valley, while all the farther slope was laughing in broad
light, the mist wreaths curling up, thinner and thinner every moment,
from the broad streamlet in the bottom, which here and there flashed out
exultingly from its wood-covered margins--scarcely had his first rays
topped the hill, before a distant shout came swelling on the air, down
the ravine, announcing Jem's approach. No hound gave tongue, however,
nor did a rustle in the brake, or any sound of life, give token of the
presence of the game--louder and nearer drew the shouts--and now Harry
himself began to doubt if there were any truth in Jem's relation, when
suddenly the sharp, quick crack of Forester's rifle gave token that the
game was afoot--a loud yell from that worthy followed.
"Look out! Mark--back--mark back!"
And keenly Archer did look out, and warily did he listen--once he
detected, or fancied he detected, a rustling of the under-wood, and the
crack of a dry stick, and dropping his reins on the horse's neck, he
cocked his rifle--but the sound was not repeated, nor did any thing come
into sight--so he let down the hammer once again, and resumed his silent
watch, saying to himself...
"Frank fired too quick, and he has headed up the brook to Jem. If he is
forward enough now, we shall have him back instantly, with the hounds at
his heels; but if he has loitered and hung back, `over the hills and far
away' is the word for this time."
But Jem was in his place, and in another moment a long whoop came
ringing down the glen, and the shrill yelping rally of the hounds as
they all opened on a view together! Fiercer and wilder grew the hubbub!
And now the eager watcher might hear the brushwood torn in all
directions by the impetuous passage of the wild deer and his inveterate
pursuers.
"Now, then, it is old Tom's chance, or ours," he thought, "for he will
not try Forester again, I warrant him, and we are all down wind of him--
so he can't judge of our whereabouts."
In another second the bushes crashed to his left hand, and behind him,
while the dogs were raving scarcely a pistol-shot off, in the tangled
swamp. Yet he well knew that if the stag should break there it would be
A---'s shot, and, though anxious, he kept his eye fixed steadily on his
own point, holding his good piece cocked and ready.
"Mark! Harry, mark him!"--a loud yell from the Commodore.
The stag had broken midway between them, in full sight of A---, and
seeing him, had wheeled off to the right. He was now sweeping onward
across the open field with high graceful bounds, tossing his antlered
head aloft, as if already safe, and little hurt, if anything, by Jem
Lyn's boasted shot of the last evening. The gray stood motionless,
trembling, however, palpably, in every limb, with eagerness--his ears
laid flat upon his neck, and cowering a little, as if he feared the
shot, which it would seem his instinct told him to expect. Harry had
dropped his reins once more, and leveled his unerring rifle--yet for a
moment's space he paused, waiting for A--- to fire; there was no hurry
for himself, nay a few seconds more would give him a yet fairer shot,
for the buck now was running partially toward him, so that a moment more
would place him broadside on, and within twenty paces.
"Bang!" came the full and round report of A---'s large shotgun, fired
before the beast was fifteen yards away from him. He had aimed at the
head, as he was forced to do, lest he should spoil the haunches, for he
was running now directly from him--and had the buck been fifty paces off
he would have killed him dead, lodging his whole charge, or the best
part of it, in the junction of the neck and skull--but as it was, the
cartridge--the green cartridge--had not yet spread at all; nor had one
buckshot left the case! Whistling like a single ball, as it passed
Harry's front eight or nine yards off, it drove, as his quick eye
discovered, clean through the stag's right ear, almost dissevering it,
and making the animal bound six feet off the green sward.
Just as he touched the earth again, alighting from his mighty spring,
with an aim sure and steady, and a cool practiced finger, the marksman
drew his trigger, and, quick, as light, the piece--well loaded, as its
dry crack announced--discharged its ponderous missile! But, bad luck on
it, even at that very instant, just in the point of time wherein the
charge was ignited, eighteen or twenty quail, flushed by the hubbub of
the hounds, rose with a loud and startling whirr, on every side of the
gray horse, under his belly and about his ears, so close as almost to
brush him with their wings--he bolted and reared up--yet even at that
disadvantage the practiced rifleman missed not his aim entirely, though
he erred somewhat, and the wound in consequence was not quite deadly.
The ball, which he had meant for the heart, his sight being taken under
the fore-shoulder, was raised and thrown forward by the motion of the
horse, and passed clean through the neck close to the blade bone.
Another leap, wilder and loftier than the last! yet still the stag
dashed onward, with the blood gushing out in streams from the wide
wound, though as yet neither speed nor strength appeared to be impaired,
so fleetly did he scour the meadow.
"He will cross, Frank yet!" cried Archer. "Mark! mark him, Forester!"
But, as he spoke, he set his rifle down against the fence, and halloaed
to the hounds, which instantly, obedient to his well known and cheery
whoop, broke covert in a body, and settled, heads up and sterns down, to
the blazing scent.
At the same moment A--- came trotting out from his post, gun in hand;
while at a thundering gallop, blaspheming awfully as he came on, and
rating them for "know-nothins, and blunderin' etarnal spoil-sports," Tom
rounded the farther hill, and spurred across the level. By this time
they were all in sight of Forester, who stood on foot, close to his
horse, in the mouth of the last gorge, the buck running across him sixty
yards off, and quartering a little from him toward the road; the hounds
were, however, all midway between him and the quarry, and as the ground
sloped steeply from the marksman, he was afraid of firing low--but took
a long, and, as it seemed, sure aim at the head.
The rifle flashed--a tine flew, splintered by the bullet, from the brow
antler, not an inch above the eye.
"Give him the other!" shouted Archer. "Give him the other barrel!"
But Frank shook his head spitefully, and dropped the muzzle of his
piece.
"By thunder! then, he's forgot his bullets--and hadn't nothen to load up
agen, when he missed the first time!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared once again the Commodore--"ha! ha! hah!--ha! ha!"
till rock and mountain rang again.
"By the Etarnal" exclaimed Draw, perfectly frantic with passion and
excitement--"By thunder! A---, I guess you'd laugh if your best friends
was all a dyin' at your feet. You would for sartain! But look, look!
what the plague's Harry goin' at?"
For when he saw that Forester had now, for some reason or other, no
farther means of stopping the stag's career, Archer had set spurs to his
horse, and dashed away at a hard furious gallop after the wounded buck.
The hounds, which had lost sight of it as it leaped a high stone wall
with much brush round the base of it, were running fast and furious on
the scent--but still, though flagging somewhat in his speed, the stag
was leaving them. He had turned, as the last shot struck his horns, down
hill, as if to cross the valley; but immediately, as if perceiving that
he had passed the last of his enemies, turned up again toward the
mountain, describing an arc, almost, in fact, a semi-circle, from the
point where he had broken covert to that--another gully, at perhaps a
short mile's distance--from which he was now aiming.
Across the chord, then, of this arc, Harry was driving furiously, with
the intent, as it would seem, to cut him off from the gully--the stone
wall crossed his line, but not a second did he pause for it, but gave
his horse both spurs, and lifting him a little, landed him safely at the
other side. Frank mounted rapidly, dashed after him, and soon passed
A---, who was less aptly mounted for a chase--he likewise topped the wall,
and disappeared beyond it, though the stones flew, where the bay struck
the coping with his heels.
All pluck to the back-bone, the Commodore craned not nor hesitated, but
dashed the colt, for the first time in his life, at the high barrier--he
tried to stop, but could not, so powerfully did his rider cram him--
leaped short, and tumbled head over heels, carrying half the wall away
with him, and leaving a gap as if a wagon had passed through it--to
Tom's astonishment and agony--for he supposed the colt destroyed
forever.
Scarcely, however, had A--- gained his feet, before a sight met his
eyes, which made him leave the colt, and run as fast as his legs could
carry him toward the scene of action.
The stag, seeing his human enemy so near, had strained every nerve to
escape, and Harry, desperately rash and daring, seeing he could not turn
or head him, actually spurred upon him counter to broadside, in hope to
ride him down; foiled once again, in this--his last hope, as it seemed--
he drew his longest knife, and as--a quarter of a second too late only--
he crossed behind the buck, he swung himself half out of his saddle, and
striking a full blow, succeeded in hamstringing him; while the gray,
missing the support of the master-hand, stumbled and fell upon his head.
Horse, stag, and man, all rolled upon the ground within the compass of
ten yards--the terrified and wounded deer striking out furiously in all
directions--so that it seemed impossible that Archer could escape some
deadly injury--while, to increase the fury and the peril of the scene,
the hounds came up, and added their fresh fierceness to the fierce
confusion. Before, however, A--- came up, Harry had gained his feet,
drawn his small knife--the larger having luckily flown many yards as he
fell--and running in behind the struggling quarry, had seized the brow
antler, and at one strong and skilful blow, severed the weasand and the
jugular. One gush of dark red gore--one plunging effort, and the superb
and stately beast lay motionless forever--while the loud death halloo
rang over the broad valley--all fears, all perils, utterly forgotton in
the strong rapture of that thrilling moment.