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Title: The Life Story of an Otter
Author: Tregarthen, J. C. (John Coulson)
Language: English
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THE LIFE STORY OF AN OTTER
[Illustration]
OTTER CUBS.
Frontispiece.
THE LIFE STORY OF
AN OTTER
BY J. C. TREGARTHEN
AUTHOR OF ‘WILD LIFE AT THE LAND’S END’ AND
‘THE LIFE STORY OF A FOX’
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1909
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
The otter has long seemed to me worthy of serious attention, if only for
the successful struggle it has waged against those exterminating
agencies under which the badger, the wildcat, the polecat and the marten
have all but succumbed.
Its survival throughout Great Britain is due, partly to its endurance
and resources when hunted, partly to qualities and habits which
differentiate it from the other creatures of the wild. Its scent, for
instance, unlike that of fox or badger, to which every tike and lurcher
will stoop, is noticed by few dogs save hounds that have been trained to
own it; and the outlawed beast thus gains a certain immunity from
destruction.
Then the otter is a great wanderer, who not only traverses long
stretches of coast and follows streams and rivers to their source, but
crosses hills and even mountains to reach its fishing-grounds. It has
been known to travel fifteen miles in a night, and not infrequently the
holts where it lies up during the day are ten or twelve miles apart.
On the way to its quarters it will linger to fish or hunt, and the
remains of eel, salmon, pike, rabbit, moorhen or wild-duck mark the
scene of the midnight feast. But no matter how much it may leave uneaten
the otter never returns to a kill, and so escapes the traps with which
gamekeeper or water-bailiff is sure to ring the ground about it. Unlike
its congener the polecat, the otter does not hoard food; unless the
caches of frogs occasionally found in marshes are its work, and not that
of the heron as is generally supposed.
However that may be it is certain that it does not hibernate, but is
abroad night after night the whole year round. Indeed, as often as not,
the female produces her young in the depth of winter, and indefatigable
forager though she is, must often be sore pressed to provide food for
her litter. At times the conditions are too severe, and a tragedy
ensues. At Mullyon, in Mount’s Bay, one bitterly cold December, when the
Poldhu stream was frozen and the sea too rough and discoloured for the
otter to fish, the poor creature in her extremity crept into a bungalow
in the course of erection, and was there found curled up dead.
It seems to me a matter for regret that such an interesting beast is not
better known; and the present narrative is an attempt to portray it
amidst the wild surroundings that are so congenial to its shy nature.
The critical reader will perhaps wonder at the daring that essays to
interpret the workings of the most subtle of animal brains, but I submit
that the inferences are, for the most part, of a very safe character;
and modest as they are, they would not have been adventured on, had it
not been for my long familiarity with the ways and habits of a creature
that is by general consent the most mysterious and inscrutable of our
fauna, for the incidents described embody the gleanings of a lifetime of
observation and inquiry. It will be noted that I agree with those who
hold that in pursuit of fish the otter is guided wholly by sight, though
it may well be that the extraordinary powers of scent which enable the
creature to detect the presence of fish in a stream or pond by sniffing
the surface are called into play during immersion.
The story of the otter is, I believe, now told at any length for the
first time; and my hope is to bring about a wider and deeper interest in
the animal, and be the means of removing some of the prejudice which
unjustly attaches to it.
I take this opportunity of thanking the Duchess of Bedford and Mr. J. G.
Millais for their courtesy in allowing me the use of most valuable
illustrations.
TREGONEBRIS,
SANCREED,
WEST CORNWALL.
_March 10, 1909._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN THE NURSERY 1
II. EARLY TRAINING 10
III. THE FIRST TREK 21
IV. AT THE CREEK 39
V. SEA AND MARSH 53
VI. THE FAMILY BROKEN UP 69
VII. THE OTTER AT THE TARN 83
VIII. THE OTTER AND HIS MATE 104
IX. FROST AND FAMINE 120
X. TRACKED 131
XI. BACK IN THE OLD HAUNTS 145
XII. THE LONG TRAIL 166
INDEX 187
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
OTTER CUBS _frontispiece_
HURRYING HOME _to face page_ 8
THE RIVER BELOW THE MILL " 18
THE WILD COAST-LINE " 62
HOUNDS SWIMMING AN OTTER " 78
THE OTTER " 83
ON HIS WAY UP THE CREEK " 107
HIS LAST SALMON " 173
THE LIFE STORY OF AN OTTER
CHAPTER I
IN THE NURSERY
It was in a morass in a hollow of the foothills that he was littered.
His mother chose this inaccessible spot for the security it promised to
her helpless young. In the heart of the quagmire they would be safe, she
thought, from floods and—what was still more important to her—from
man. She could not find a hover quite to her liking, but in lack of a
better, she chose a ledge where, in an angle of the stream that drained
the bog, the bank furnished a screen from the biting wind which blew up
the valley and soughed over the uplands. After enlarging the ledge into
a shelf, she shaped the excavation for the nest, which she fashioned out
of dead rushes and withered grasses, and which she lined with the
softest products that Nature offered her—tattered reed-plumes and
seed-down of the bulrush. Night after night she ransacked the waste in
quest of these rare spoils, lest the rude structure should be wanting in
cosiness for the cubs which, even before it was quite finished, were
deposited in it.
There were only two to share her affection—the intense affection of the
hunted creature for its offspring. The dread of being reft of them
haunted her from their birth, but happily the mites themselves knew no
fear, knew nothing but the warm, furry mother who fondled and suckled
them. Whelps and dam were as one, for she seldom left them save to get
food; and this she sought and devoured with feverish energy, that she
might the sooner return to them. She foraged sometimes, it is true, in
the morass itself; but usually she had to go to the river at the foot of
the long, undulating slope, and though the inconvenience of having the
fishing-ground so far away was often borne in upon her, she put up with
it, and never for a moment thought of moving the cubs from the safe
keeping of the bog.
Under the grey skies, the rain and the sleet of January, few more
cheerless scenes could be found than the moorland and the morass within
it; yet there in the hollowed bank the otter and the wee, blind,
downy-coated creatures she had entrusted to the chill mercies of
midwinter, lay nestled in the snuggest of hovers. And the grim season
would relent at times, breaking into bright days when the sun bestowed
its warmth on the cold, sodden earth. Then the morass and all the hills
about it were bathed in the glow, and the swollen stream, visible over
the edge of the nest, glistened like silver. Quick to accept Nature’s
bounty for the winterlings, the otter, when satisfied that no eye
observed her, took them between her lips, carried them from the gloomy
hover, and laid them on a tussock which screened her where she crouched,
ready to protect them. There the cubs stretched themselves and basked
with quiet content in the health-giving rays. But when the sun passed
behind the clouds, they would complain at the withdrawal of the warmth,
and raise their blinking eyes to the sky as if protesting to a second
mother against such unfeeling treatment.
For before this they had opened their eyes—black, restless eyes, like
those which kept constant watch and ward over their safety. The otter,
of course, managed to get a little sleep, but it was of the lightest. At
the startled note of a bird, or even the sudden rustling of the reeds
when a gust shook them, her head would pop up from the grasses
concealing her; and she generally made a keen inspection of the sky-line
and of the ground within her ken before she lay down again and snatched
another forty winks. But as morning after morning passed without
intrusion of aught to warrant her suspicions, her vigilance gradually
relaxed; and one noon, when she was very weary from the night’s
foraging, she curled up and fell sound asleep at her post.
Whilst she slept, a buzzard, mewing as he quartered the ground beneath,
espied the cubs, and thinking they were at his mercy, stooped to seize
the easy prey. He was about to lay hold of the smaller cub when the
otter, awakened by the strange cry, rose from her hiding-place and
confronted him. At sight of her the bird, taken aback, thought only of
escape, but the mother was bent on avenging the attempted wrong. Quick
as lightning she sprang at him, and, had not the hummock given way
beneath her, she must have gripped him despite the frantic down-strokes
of the big wings which lifted him well beyond her second leap. Her
fierce eyes and bristling hair made her terrible to behold as she stood
watching the marauder’s retreat, and hissing the while like a fury.
Then, as if fearful that the fray had attracted attention, she took her
eyes off the bird and scrutinized the approaches to the morass before
removing the cubs to the nest, where she stilled their complaints by
fondling them until they fell asleep and forgot their sunny couch on the
grass. The incident troubled the otter so greatly that, resisting all
their importunities, she never again exposed them to the risk of
capture.
To break the monotony of the hover, the cubs, as their limbs grew
stronger, would, in the intervals of sleep, clamber to the wide parapet
of the nest and take note of the things that moved within their narrow
field: of trembling grasses, of the bramble spray that moved to and fro
in the current, of the reeds that nodded in the wind, and, above all, of
the creatures that visited the stream to feed or quench their thirst.
They watched every step taken by the snipe, every thrust of his long
bill; they regarded with wonder the gay kingfisher that perched on their
ledge and fished in their pool; they were moved to the keenest curiosity
by the old dog-fox, who stole from the reeds to drink and set their
young nostrils working with his strong scent. When sure of their
footing, with pads outstretched and every webbed toe expanded they
advanced to the very edge of the nest, pushed their dusky grey heads
through the grassy curtain, and looked down at the eddy gurgling below,
contemplating the element in which their lives would be spent and whose
every change they were to know.
They resembled kittens more than any other young creatures, the
difference lying in their tiny ears and shy, wild eyes. But, suggestive
of fear as was their look, they were not as yet conscious of the danger
besetting them, even when able to scramble up the bank and sprawl about
the bog. Thither the otter led them in all weathers, and it was for this
duty that she hurried back to them the instant she had done foraging.
Now and again the scarcity of prey or the difficulty of securing it
would detain her far into the night and sorely tax the patience of the
cubs, eager for her return. In the intervals of listening they would
pace round the now dishevelled nest, increasing their speed as the hours
passed without sign of her. At length the shrill whistle, heard even
above the storm or downpour, would reach them, and set them dancing with
delight. Two furry heads and little red tongues greeted the panting
mother as soon as her feet rested on the ledge, and the next instant the
capering creatures followed her as she led to the gambolling-ground
beyond the great reed-bed. There they frolicked to their heart’s content
through the hours of darkness, and even after sun-up when thick fog
shrouded the morass. On reaching the nest the otter suckled them to
sleep, and, lying between them and the mouth of the holt, as was her
invariable custom, shielded them from cold and danger.
These were happy days for the dam, but owing to the wilfulness of the
male cub they did not last long. He had taken it into his head that he
was big enough to go out alone, and one night out he ventured. He was
more than half-way to the reed-bed when his mother found him. This first
demonstration of independence caused her little concern, but she was
almost beside herself with anxiety when, two days later, he made an
attempt to sally out in broad daylight, and all but succeeded in getting
away. He was nearly over the bank when she pulled him back by the tail
and gave him a sharp nip by way of punishment. The very next day the
incorrigible fellow got even farther away; but she discovered his
absence before he had got beyond the tussocks, fetched him back, and bit
him severely as she laid him down in the nest. Thus disobedience brought
unhappiness into the hover, and the cub, shrinking from the mother he
deemed cruel, shuffled to the inmost corner, where fibrous roots
protruded from the low roof, and there licked his bruises in morose
isolation.
[Illustration: _Photo C. Reid, Wishaw, N.B._ To face p. 8.
HURRYING HOME.]
Aware now of his rashness, the otter dared not leave the nest by day as
she had occasionally done before. One noon, however, impelled by her own
hunger and the cubs’ piteous entreaties for food, she put aside her
apprehensions and stole out, leaving them to their own devices. As
quickly as her pads could carry her, she made her way down the hill
along the rents that fissured the peaty ground, dived across the swollen
pool in the hollow below, dashed over the sward beyond some alders, and
gained the wood and the river unobserved. The river was bank-high and
much discoloured, but after a long quest she came on an eel abroad in
the flood. Landing under some bushes on the far side, she devoured half
the fish, and then, without a moment’s delay, slipped into the river and
floated down with the current. At a rapid pace she rounded bend after
bend, came ashore at a backwater, leapt some felled trees, and regained
the bog by the same hidden ways. To her dismay she found, as she had
feared, the nest deserted and cold. In great distress she set out to
fetch the truants home. She followed their trail to the reed-bed,
through which she dashed like a thing demented, and came upon her two
cubs playing in the open as fearlessly as only tame creatures may play.
On sighting their mother, the runaways, instead of slinking off
guilt-stricken, rushed at the full speed of their ungainly limbs to meet
her, and tried by winning antics to induce her to join in their midday
romp. Gladly as she would have complied, her response was to drag them
into cover, take the smaller cub in her mouth, carry it to the nest, and
return for the ringleader, who squealed with rage until soundly ducked
in the pool below the hover. The dark-pelted creature was a conspicuous
object as she splashed across the exposed spaces; but, as good fortune
would have it, both she and the cubs escaped the observation of the
keeper who was occasionally to be seen on the hills overlooking the
morass. Still, the poor outlaw had been taught a sharp lesson, and
resolved never again on any pretext to leave the cubs by day. So greatly
was she perturbed by their escapade that she even longed for the moment
when fear should awaken in them and whisper its monitions.
Meanwhile, she looked forward with impatience to the night when they
would be able to follow her afield and learn the many lessons she was
anxious to teach them; and in order to hasten the time, she devoted
every hour she could spare to sharing their frolics, so that they might
develop rapidly.
CHAPTER II
EARLY TRAINING
When the cubs were a little over eight weeks old, their mother resolved
to take them to the pool and teach them to swim; so one starry night at
setting-out time she led the young creatures—overjoyed, as their
excited antics showed, at this new departure—to the brow of the rising
ground, till then the boundary of their narrow world. There, whilst the
otter stood and reconnoitred, the eyes of the cubs wandered wonderingly
from slope and rushy hollow to the woods across the ravine, where a
vixen was squalling. As no danger threatened, dam and whelps made for
the faintly silvered pool lying so still and silent in contrast with the
river that ran brawling along its boulder-strewn channel. On reaching it
the mother swam slowly out, turning her head the while as if to invite
the cubs to follow her, landed on the islet and, in order to work on
their feelings and draw them across the water, hid herself amongst the
withered sedge. This was not without its effect, as the cries of the
cubs showed; yet, distressed though they were at the separation, they
were afraid to commit themselves to the pool and try to join her.
Thereupon the otter swam back to within a few feet of the foreland where
the shrinking creatures stood and, wheeling slowly, returned again to
the islet, calling as she went.
This she did many times, employing every wile she knew to coax them
after her; but all in vain. For three nights, despite all her pains, she
failed to tempt them beyond the shallows. At last, just when she was
about to put them out of their depth, the smaller cub overcame its
hesitation, waded till it lost foothold, then swam bravely across,
landed with a little wriggling jump, and sent the spray flying from
every silky hair along the fourteen inches of its length, as it shook
itself before rolling on the sedge to dry its coat more thoroughly. The
male cub, who had watched her every movement, was now beside himself at
being left alone, and after running for some time up and down the bank,
uttering the most piteous plaints, followed the others across and dried
his fur as his sister had done. Presently they all swam back to the
foreland. Before returning to the hover, they crossed and recrossed four
times more; and once even, in the absence of the otter, who was away
foraging, the cubs crossed alone.
From this night their fear of the water abated, and soon, with scarce a
ripple to mark their smooth progress, they were able to accompany their
proud mother in her circlings round and round the pool. When the smaller
cub tired, the otter slackened her pace, sank very low, took it on her
back, and carried it to the shallows; but the male cub always had to
take care of himself. The subsequent improvement was very rapid, and at
the end of a week so fond did they become of the water that when
released from the hover they scurried to the pool in advance of their
mother, stumbling and falling as they ran in their eagerness to reach
it.
Being full of the young creature’s love of ‘hide-and-seek,’ they often
concealed themselves before she came up. On hearing her approach, they
drew their heads beneath the surface until only their nostrils showed
and, though thrilling with excitement, kept as motionless as the alder
snags about them until discovered. Then mother and cubs joined in play,
disporting themselves at times on the surface, but more often in the
depths. Presently they would rise, locked together as if in deadly
struggle, and roll over and over like a water-logged ball in a current.
All at once, and frequently whilst immersed, they would break up, land,
and make the circuit of the banks, passing one another as though they
were utter strangers, and then suddenly, as if by signal, take to the
water again and resume their mimic warfare. Once whilst they were thus
engaged the whistle of an otter reached them from the river. In a
twinkling they stayed their gambols, and, floating side by side,
listened until the call grew faint as the traveller passed up the
valley; then they fell again to their romps.
Wonderful ease and grace marked their movements in the pool, and still
more in the streams and eddies of the river, to which the otter lost no
time in taking them. They spent hours shooting the rapids below the
salmon pool, landing at the end of the long run where the rush of water
loses its force, and regaining the head of the current by climbing the
rocky bank. So attractive did this diversion prove that but for their
mother’s restraint the eager creatures would have left the nest for the
river long before it was safe to be abroad. Once, indeed, overborne by
their importunities, she so far yielded as to lead them out before the
afterglow had paled; but this concession only made them more exacting.
On the morrow they would have her release them the moment the sun dipped
below the crest and the shadow of the upland fell on the morass. But she
turned a deaf ear to their entreaties and, when they became
insubordinate and attempted to force a way past her, punished them with
many sharp nips and kept them back.
She was also much troubled at this time by their refusal to eat the fish
with which she had been doing her best to tempt them. It mattered not
whether she offered them samlet, trout, or eel, they turned from all
alike, and it seemed as if they would never be brought to touch any.
Nevertheless she persisted, till one night, on the bank of the deep pool
below the rapids, the male cub took a trout from her mouth, and the next
night, just before dawn, his sister did the same. Their aversion to
solid food once overcome, they would chatter over the new diet as if to
testify to the pleasure they found in the exercise of their newly
acquired taste, or even hiss angrily when their savage passions were
stirred by the wriggling or quivering of the fish in their grip. They
held the prey between the fore-paws, slicing off delicate morsels with
their pearly teeth, and champing them fine before swallowing. Most
remarkable was the way they set about eating two of the fish their
mother provided for them. With the trout they began at the head, but in
the case of the eel they attacked the part below the vent, leaving the
upper portion untouched.
This fish diet produced a most significant change: the cubs became
fierce, and at the same time fearful. No longer was any restraint needed
to keep them to the nest or to the holts in the river-banks, where they
occasionally lay; no longer had the mother any difficulty in getting
them to obey the dawn-cry and follow whither she led. Henceforth the
sense of dread lay on their lives like a shadow and deepened with their
development. It was seen in their readiness to crouch or make for the
water at any strange sound, in their suspicion of any strange object. A
bottle left on the bank by the water-bailiff caused them to take a wide
détour, and the snapping of a stick under the foot of a lumbering badger
nearly frightened these noiseless movers out of their wits. Once a
thunderstorm terrified them with its vivid flashes, and one day even a
brilliant rainbow was a source of alarm, until their mother awoke and
showed no concern.
These trifling scares were followed towards the close of March by an
incident they never forgot—an incident which caused the otter even
greater consternation than it caused the cubs. It happened late one
afternoon. The male cub had awakened from his second sleep and, with
head resting on his mother’s flank, sat looking at the light fade over
the wind-swept morass. During a lull an unaccountable rustling in the
reeds caught his ears and brought him to his feet. The startled movement
aroused his mother and sister, and in a trice all three otters were
watching from behind the grass screen for a sight of the noisy intruder.
The next instant they saw a fox, bedraggled almost beyond recognition,
stagger from the reeds, drop from the bank to the stream, lap, raise his
head and listen, lap again, then toil with bog-stained body and sodden
brush up the opposite bank and pass from view. He could not have got far
beyond the river, for which he seemed to be heading, before a hound came
in sight, then two more, followed almost immediately by the body of the
pack, which poured over the brow of the upland and streamed down a gully
towards the morass. Soon they had disappeared, but whine after whine
reached the otters’ ears, mingled with the crashing of the brake as the
pack approached the stream and swept by full in their view. Some minutes
later two yapping, bog-stained terriers crossed, and then the morass
resumed its wonted calm. All this the otters had watched, hissing
through their bared teeth, eyes starting from their sockets, and hair
bristling erect on their thick necks: even when all was quiet again a
great dread still possessed them. Their feral nature had been stirred to
the depths, and they listened and listened, though no sound reached them
save a faint toot of the horn. Setting-out time came and went, but the
otters did not stir, till at length, taking heart from the owls, who
filled the wood with their wild hooting, they stole down to the river.
The otter fished, but not a moment was given to gambolling, and long ere
the woodman’s bantam heralded the day the scared creatures sought
harbourage in the branches of a fallen pine whose top lay half immersed
in the river. Hidden amidst the flotsam caught by the boughs, with the
deep pool just below them, they felt safe, and at length slept as
soundly as they had done in the morass.
They repaired to the same hover the next day and the day following. In
their waking hours they would watch the eddying water and rising trout,
and at times cast a glance at the belt of timber beyond, as if attracted
by the crimson blossom of the elms. Not only did the flowering of forest
tree tell of the passing of winter, but green shoots of flag and reed
shyly whispered the same story, and wild daffodils in glade and dell
proclaimed it. A gold-crest in the tall fir had begun laying her tiny
freckled eggs; a throstle on the lone poplar by the pool sang to his
mate guarding her turquoise treasures by the river’s bank, while the
ravens up the face of the cliff were already busy feeding their young.
Day by day, as the sun grew stronger and the west wind blew, the
sycamores unfolded their fresh green leaves, and soon, the woodland
over, all the buds, responsive to the quickened underworld, opened to
greet the spring.
[Illustration: _Photo F. Frith & Co., Reigate._ To face p. 18.
THE RIVER BELOW THE MILL.]
At the close of a hot day, when every furry wildling had felt its coat a
burden, and longed for sundown and the drinking-place, the otter, who
had been gradually extending her nocturnal rambles, took the cubs three
miles down the river to a point where a part of the water is diverted
into a tranquil mill-stream. Along its bank she brought them to the gate
leading to the mill-yard, where all three stood and listened momentarily
to the croaking of the frogs in the meadow beyond. Then they slipped
under the low bar, crossed the yard, skirted the house, and hurried
towards the ditch from which the noise proceeded. The croaking ceased on
their approach, and before the otter entered the water every frog had
sought a hiding-place at the bottom. The otter had scarcely dived before
she was out again with two frogs in her mouth. These she skinned and
gave to the cubs. Finding the morsel toothsome, and learning that if
they wanted more they must fish for themselves, they joined in the easy
pursuit, and for the first time in their lives satisfied their hunger
with prey of their own taking.
Finally, they quarrelled like little tigers over a frog, of which each
claimed possession, and so loud a chattering did they make that the
miller got out of bed and opened his window to learn the cause of the
disturbance. The creak of the sash silenced and alarmed them, and the
next instant they and their mother were heading for the river at their
best speed. An hour later the raiders started to return home by a route
that took them wide of the mill where the danger lurked, thus reaching
the morass without mishap; and the otter soon fell asleep, but the cubs
lay awake thinking of an incident of the night. It was not the frogs
that occupied their thoughts, not the bare yard or the fearsome trail
across it, but the night-capped monster whom they still pictured as he
appeared at the window.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST TREK
Not a single night was given up to frogging after the cubs had learnt to
skin their prey. Forthwith the little mother, anxious to make the best
of their time, led them to the moorland waters of one of the tributary
streams to teach them to fish. There she had taken her first litter for
their earliest lessons, and now, as then, she made for the pool above
the old two-arched bridge, which she still thought most suited for a
starting-point. To reach the fishing-ground betimes, she left the morass
with the first shades of night and, crossing the river near the fallen
pine, struck across country towards her destination. Her path led
through the woodland to a waste of furze, and this to the high moorland
which the stream serves to drain. Once on the heathery tableland, otter
and cubs advanced at a rapid pace, and presently hit the track to the
bridge, which they followed, leaving their footprints here and there on
the margin of the shrunken puddles. When nearly abreast of the Giant’s
Quoits, first the otter and then the cubs caught the voice of the
stream. The low murmur was almost lost in the sigh of the night wind,
but grew louder and louder, till soon chattering run and plashing
cascade appeared in the dip below.
On reaching the pool, the otter entered the water with the cubs at her
side, dived, and drove the trout to the shelter of the banks. Thereupon
the cubs, who saw where the fish had fled, fell to drawing the hovers,
thrusting their flat heads into hole and crevice as far as they could
reach. But the trout had found secure recesses, and though a few felt
the lips of the otters, they could not be seized, and all but one
escaped. In the pool at the bend, however, where the bank, hollowed
though it is, affords poor shelter, three were taken. Then the captors,
two on the gravel, the other on a mid-stream boulder, lay at full length
and ate their prey, munching ravenously. The otter seemed to have set
aside her fears since reaching the moor, for never once did she trouble
to listen or even to scan the sable waste around her. All her thoughts
were for the cubs, whom she led from pool to pool, aiding them until
they began to fish for themselves; then she stood aside and watched
them. Trout after trout they caught and devoured along the winding
reaches leading to the long, sullen pool in the midst of the moor, where
the mother, elated by their success, joined merrily in their gambols,
which were kept up until past the usual hovering-time.
Day was on them when they landed and sought the most inviting couches
the bank offered. First the cubs wormed themselves out of sight, then
the otter; and so effectually were all three concealed amongst the rocks
and heather that a kestrel, hovering over the spot, failed to get a
glimpse of their brown forms, and flew on without a suspicion of their
presence. Nevertheless, the open bank, though it had a marshy tract on
one side and a deep pool on the other, was an insecure lodging, so that
it was only because the moorland afforded no better that they returned
thither on the morrow. After that the otter, jealous for the cubs’
safety, made some five miles downstream, where the holts amongst the
roots of withy and alder were strong and sheltered from the rain that
had rendered the upland hovers so uncomfortable on the second day. It is
true the trout were scarce, but this mattered little to the otters, for
eels, their favourite prey, were abundant. Amongst them was a very large
one which, on being gripped by the male cub, coiled itself round his
neck and threatened to strangle him. In this predicament the otter,
after a short struggle, made for the bank and rolled amongst the fern
and bramble to free himself of his antagonist. Finding this of no avail,
he shifted his grip to a point nearer the head and, using the terrible
force of his jaws, broke the back of the eel, and so got rid of it. This
fish had been captured in the shallows, but for the most part the eels
were only to be had by turning over the big stones under which they
darted at sight of their pursuers. The young otters eagerly joined their
mother in dislodging their prey and catching them when they bolted. The
swiftness of the animals in this pursuit was amazing, and no less so the
quick turning movements in which rudder and fore-paw were both brought
into play. Indeed the long, lissom, tapering creatures resembled huge
eels, and might have been mistaken for eels but for the bubbles which
rose to the surface and marked their course.
The otters kept to this part of the stream for nearly a week—that is,
until the freshet which had caused the run of eels subsided, and
rendered a change of quarters necessary. They then betook themselves to
the main tributary on the opposite bank, three miles above the morass;
but finding that some other otters had disturbed the water in front,
they pressed on, and at length came up with them where the stream winds
sluggishly through a swampy bottom. Two were fishing in the stream, the
rest in the marsh; but presently the whole party came into view, and as
they trotted along the bank were seen to be four well-grown cubs with
their dam, old and slightly grizzled. They all went on in company, but
as day approached drew only the best pools, and gave up fishing
altogether after striking the trail of the moorman who had forded the
stream at sundown. Indeed on finding the dreaded taint of man there was
quite a stir amongst them, especially amongst the cubs, who kept close
alongside their mothers, and wondered where harbourage was to be found
on the seemingly bare upland to which they were being led. At length the
scared creatures sighted the weedy lakelet where the stream rises and,
just as the rim of the sun showed gained the shelter of the reeds that
fringed it.
The day proved intensely hot and still, with not a breath to ripple the
surface or freshen the stifling air of the brake where the otters lay
panting until dusk fell and allowed them to quench their tormenting
thirst without fear of detection. Then, leaving their quarters, the two
families travelled together till, after crossing two naked hills, they
came to a rushy flat, lined with sour watercourses, where the trail
forked, and there they parted company.
The otter was bound for the head-waters of the tributary nearest the
source of the river, and soon after midnight reached the boggy gathering
ground with its network of runnels and chain of pools in which she and
the cubs fished until the stars began to pale. Then the hunters in
single file made along the slender stream for the basin below the fall,
sporting together till the sun rose over the distant sea and flooded the
upland with its beams. The otter, usually observant of the first signs
of dawn, seemed not to heed the golden light, even when the cubs began
to grow uneasy and to shoot reproachful glances at her for keeping them
abroad at so late an hour. But she needed not to be reminded of her
duty. She knew they ran no risk in that untrodden spot; indeed on
leaving the pool she stood on the bank to gaze across the dew-spangled
waste and then at the gilded crags of Lone Tarn, before at length
withdrawing to a clitter some half-mile down the stream.
There the dark recesses of the pile of rocks proved a welcome retreat to
the cubs, and with the music of the waters for a lullaby they soon fell
asleep. They hovered there again on the morrow; after which they
continued on their journey laying up under the bank of the wide pool
where the stream joins the river.
At setting-out time the otter seemed half-minded to follow the river to
its source, for she kept looking towards the lone hill where it rises;
but presently—the lowness of the water probably weighing with her—she
decided to go downstream, summoned her cubs and trotted across the bend
to the head of the long rapids, where they entered the water and drifted
with the current. At dawn they sought a rabbit-burrow on the river-bank
so near the woods that the cubs, who lay by the mouth of one of the
holes, could hear the pigeons cooing. The retreat was safe and very dry,
and would have left little to desire if the rabbits had taken no notice.
But the timid creatures, thoroughly alarmed at the presence of the
otters, stamped almost without intermission and prevented their
uninvited guests from sleeping. At noon the otter, annoyed beyond
endurance, rose and chased the rabbits along the tunnels; but this only
made them worse. After that the drumming was kept up in every level, and
made the visitors long for night. So at early dusk, after another raid
on the persecutors, the otters slid down the bank into the water and let
the stream take them along reach after reach until they were far into
the wood. All the way they never ceased to scan the banks; they seemed
to suspect an enemy behind every tree, but surely without sufficient
cause. At one spot the green eyes of a fox watched them as they passed,
otherwise they floated along unnoticed save by the bats flitting up and
down the dark spaces beneath the overhanging boughs. On reaching the
fallen pine they began to fish, and so continued all the way to the
salmon pool, where they sported till dawn drove them again to the
morass.
During the weeks that followed they kept to the neighbourhood of the old
nursery, lying up for the most part under rocks and tree-roots at the
water’s edge, but occasionally in the morass itself. It was whilst
couching there that the otter, alarmed by the continued fall of the
river and the exposure of the mouths of the strongest hovers, suddenly
resolved to make for the tidal waters, whose holts are unaffected by
droughts, and where she could teach the cubs many new lessons. She first
thought of going down the river to the estuary, but changed her plans
almost at the last moment and determined to make for a creek where she
had had good fishing with her mate, the father of the cubs. The
destination was two good marches distant, but she knew a stronghold by
the way where they could lodge, and from which they could easily reach
the creek on the following night.
In her anxiety to gain this refuge before dawn, she left her couch in
the reed-bed at early dusk and, full of her purpose, made for the old
hover where the cubs always slept when in the morass. Hearing the faint
rustle of the herbage as she approached, the quick-eared creatures left
the nest, and when she came up, fell into their place at her side.
Leading past the pool to the river, she crossed it and headed towards
the woodman’s cottage. The rapid pace at which the animals travelled
soon brought them within sight of the low, thatched building beneath its
sheltering oak, but as nothing stirred they passed close to the garden
fence and into the gloom of the pines beyond.
A happier little band of nomads could not be found than the otter and
her cubs, quite unsuspicious of danger, though they were running
straight into its jaws. At a sudden turn of the mossy track where rocks
contract the way they came face to face with Venom, the woodman’s
terrier. Venom was returning from a badgers’ sett which he visited
whenever he could slip away unobserved, and his begrimed and
bloodstained condition told how severe had been the fray between him and
one of the badgers. He looked a woebegone mongrel as he limped along on
three legs; but the instant he found himself face to face with the
strangers he forgot his fatigue and flew at the otter’s throat with a
fury that threatened to make short work of her. He soon discovered,
however, that he had caught a Tartar. The shaking he gave her had little
other result than further to exhaust himself, while the otter began
punishing him about the face and shoulders, making her teeth meet at
every bite. Besides inflicting severe wounds, she was actually pushing
the dog back, and after a prolonged tussle was clear of the rocks and
close to a fallen tree from which the terrified cubs were watching the
fray. Another scrimmage here took place, even longer and fiercer than
the first: then the dog hesitated to renew the fight and stood on the
defensive. Thereupon the otter, whose one thought was escape, joined the
cubs and made off. The sight of their retreat was, however, more than
Venom could stand, and they had scarcely disappeared before he was in
pursuit. On overtaking them, he laid hold of the male cub, probably
mistaking him for his mother. With a viciousness that belied his
cubhood, the young dog-otter closed with his first assailant, and would
have made a brave fight had he been allowed to conduct it alone. But he
was not. Like a tiger the mother fell on the terrier, and it looked as
if the dog would be cut to pieces. His one thought, however, was to
destroy the vermin, and instead of drawing off as he might have done at
the foot of the steep slope, down which they fell rather than rolled, he
actually closed again, fought to the edge of the pool there, even held
on to the otter when she dived, and kept his hold until his lungs were
exhausted. Then he let go, but on coming to the surface he did not make
for the bank. He swam round and round, looking for his enemy, and only
when he had lost hope of viewing her again did he land at last. On being
freed from his grip, the otter had made her way close along the bottom
to the upper end of the pool, where the cubs were waiting for her among
some rushes. From their shelter mother and cubs now watched the
movements of their puzzled foe, who began examining the banks of the
pool. When he came near, they sank almost out of sight, their nostrils
alone showing, and so remained until he had time to pass; then the otter
raised her head to reconnoitre. Once as she did so she found the terrier
standing within a few yards, but looking so intently in another
direction that he failed to sight her; whereupon she sank again as
noiselessly as she had risen, not leaving even her nostrils exposed. A
score of times, at least, did the dog make the circuit of the pool; and
had he been able to scent the otter—a thing which but few dogs can
do—he must at least have driven them from their shelter, and possibly
from the pool, for it was very small. Yet, insensible though he was to
the scent, he was so convinced the animals were there that, after
departing, he actually came back and looked again before taking himself
off for good and leaving the otters free to resume their interrupted
march.
For three hours they had been detained, and now, hurry as they might, it
was impossible to reach the cairn before daybreak. Indeed, they were yet
two miles away when the ridges above them were touched by the risen sun.
To add to their troubles a magpie espied them, and though they were
strange to him as to the terrier, he knew they were nightlings with no
right to be abroad after sunrise, and mobbed them as he would have
mobbed a leash of foxes. Under the brambles and osmunda ferns they were
hidden from the pest, but in the open he had them at his mercy and, now
fluttering just beyond their reach, now hopping from branch to branch of
rowan or alder or wild-cherry, he annoyed them with impunity. At last
they came to the foot of the slope at the head of the ravine threaded
the furze as fast as their pads could carry them, reached the pile of
rocks, and one by one disappeared through the narrow crevice near its
base. The magpie, however, instead of flying off, perched on the
pinnacle of the cairn and, with his head knowingly cocked on one side,
watched for their reappearance. Long, long he waited, but as the
creatures made no sign, he tired, took wing, flew down the ravine past
the precipice where the ravens had their nest, and regained the wood of
which he was so vigilant a sentinel.
The persecuted beasts soon forgot the magpie, but the terrier had left a
deeper memory, and all three were long in falling asleep. The otter,
indeed, was still awake at noon, when a weasel threaded the way to the
heart of the cairn, and, poking his snake-like head round the angle of
rock, saw the curled-up forms of the animals whose scent had drawn him
thither. But a single peep satisfied his curiosity, and he went out into
the blazing sunlight, fragrant with the perfume of the furze. Then the
mother otter slept like the cubs.
The ravine was weird with the shades of night, raven and magpie were
asleep, when the nomads left the cairn and took to the trail. Like three
shadows they stole over the crest above and entered the covert. In the
silence of that still, sultry night they might have been heard forcing a
way where the furze was densest, and presently they emerged from the
lower edge, and, traversing a strip of open ground where a rabbit was
feeding, came to a stream. This they crossed by springing from rock to
rock, the otter first and the male cub last. In the same order they
threaded the oak coppice that clad the opposite steep, and made their
way over the craggy summit that crowned it. And so they passed stream
after stream, surmounted ridge after ridge of the wild watershed, and
gained the outlying spur where the cultivated lowland lay before them.
It looked like a sombre, blurred plain unrelieved by water, until the
moon rode clear of the clouds and revealed the winding reaches of the
tidal creek for which they were bound. Their destination was yet a good
way off, but as the going was now very easy the tireless creatures
covered the fields at a swinging pace. The pastures seemed strange to
the cubs; stranger still the sheep and cattle, asleep at such an hour
without a bush to hide them; but leaving them lying there, the otters
kept straight on. A homestead rose almost across their trail; the trail,
however, had been traced ages before the buildings were raised or even
the land was broken, and though disturbed by spade and plough a thousand
times, it was still the otters’ way, so mother and cubs kept to it
faithfully, past the snow-white hawthorns and into the rickyard, where
they stayed to roll and dry their coats, wet from the mowing-grass. The
stamping of a horse’s feet sent them off before they had finished; but
what alarmed them much more was a scarecrow in a top-hat standing
amongst the growing corn. The suspicious creatures gave a wide berth to
this horror, and kept looking back to see whether it was following,
until presently they caught the scent of water; then they never gave it
another thought.
In their eagerness to reach the fishing-ground they increased their pace
across the three enclosures that separated them from it; but at the
sight of the smooth, broad creek the cubs stood and gazed, till a call
from their mother reminded them there was no time to be lost. So they
made down the bank and over the beach to join her on the rocky foreland,
round which the current was eddying. Together they dived and scoured the
sandy bed in search of prey. In her anxiety to secure supper, the otter
soon got separated from the cubs, who, through inexperience, wasted
their efforts in vain pursuit of the bass instead of questing for the
flat-fish that were to be had for the finding. In the end they tired
without having obtained a meal. The last time they landed they were near
the wooded island where the herons build, a long way from the point
where they took to the tide, and it was whilst lapping the water of a
runnel there that they heard their mother’s call from far down the
creek. At once they hurried along the strand, answering as they ran, and
even after they had taken to the flood they repeated their shrill
whistlings until they reached her side. To their delight, a big
flat-fish lay at her feet, its white underside uppermost. The smell of
the prey, strange though it was, so pleased them that their nostrils
twitched with anticipation. Indeed, the flounder was an appetizing
morsel for creatures sated with eels and trout, and soon all three were
busy devouring it. They were not long over the feast, but they had
scarcely finished when the grey light stealing across the creek drove
them to a cave in the overgrown bank.
This was not a hover suddenly chanced on, but a much-frequented place of
call that the otter intended making for when she left the cairn. The
dank vault had been occupied the day before, as was evident from the dry
place on the slab, but it was untenanted then, save by a few bats
hanging from the low roof, and it afforded the new-comers the
accommodation they required. The mother chose the ledge close to the
landing-place, whilst the cubs scrambled to a shelf above, along the
rude way worn in the slaty wall by generations of their tribe. Before
curling up for the day, the otters, as was their wont, teased with their
claws every bit of under-fur, and removed the thorns and furze-spines
about which it had matted. Then, liking the taste of the salt water,
they licked themselves until their glossy coats were as smooth as satin.
As soon as their toilet was finished they settled down to sleep, and so
soft was their breathing, so thoroughly did their dark pelt harmonize
with its surroundings, that there was nothing to betray their presence
except eyes which glowed in the sombre light until the lids closed and
hid their amber fires.
CHAPTER IV
AT THE CREEK
The otter was awakened about noon by the patter and drip of the rain
that had silenced the birds in the woods outside, but the cubs slept
through it all. The downpour, which lasted off and on for hours, ceased
towards sundown, and at star-peep the sky had cleared of clouds, save
where a black pall hung over the uplands. The otters then stole from the
cave, coming singly through the mouth and, keeping within the shadow of
the rocky wall, landed on the beach beyond.
After shaking their coats, they made down the creek over the rain-pitted
sand until nearly abreast of a rock showing above the surface, and there
took to the water. For awhile it looked as if they meant to cross to the
opposite shore, but on reaching mid-stream they dived, and the next
minute were busy detaching mussels from the bed of the channel. The
bubbles which kept rising showed the position of the animals, which
presently came up with their mouths full of shell-fish and swam swiftly
to land. There the otter dropped the mussels she carried, seized one
between her paws, bit off the end of the shell and devoured the fish.
Scarcely had she swallowed it before the cubs were busy breaking the
brittle shells and feasting on the succulent contents; and the crackling
noise that broke the silence would have puzzled any chance visitor to
the wood, but was no unfamiliar sound to the birds that roosted in the
overhanging oaks. The otters made several journeys to and from the
mussel-bed, till they had eaten their fill; then fell to gambolling on
the edge of the tideway, to the annoyance of a heron, which soon took
wing for a station higher up the creek. Two or three hours they there
spent in play, varied by excursions into the wood, where they startled a
hare and put the brooding pheasants in a fever. Once they penetrated to
the craggy summit, climbed the rocks, lapped the water in the highest of
the basins, and, before jumping down, gazed across the intervening
country to where the estuary glimmered between its dusky shores.
The beach was almost covered by the advancing tide when the otters took
to the water and drifted up with the flood. Their outstretched limbs
being flush with the surface, they looked like floating skins as the
current bore them along; but soon after passing the heron, spectral in
the uncertain light, they began swimming, and so entered the cave, where
they shook their coats and lay down in the places they had occupied the
day before. The lapping of the tide was their slumber-song, and the
happy creatures were sound asleep before the last of the bats came
flitting in to roost.
That day a fiery sun beat down upon the country-side and exhausted
toiler and sportsman abroad in the sweltering heat. The mower sweated
and panted behind the scythe, the otter-hunters crossing the moor longed
for the cool woods they had left, and the boy on the smack at the end of
the creek gobbled up his pasty to spend the dinner-hour in the pool
beneath the bridge. Not only man and boy suffered from the heat; beast
and bird too sought the shade, abandoning their haunts to the insect
hosts that revelled in the scorching rays. The flower-gay selvage
margining the far shore of the creek and the tangle of honeysuckle and
wild-rose that curtained the portals of the otters’ lair, hummed with
the noise of countless wings. Honey-bees were there, green-bodied flies
and blue, and, preying on them, dragon-flies that darted to and fro,
casting sharp shadows on yellow sand-bank and sapphire pool. But,
glaring and dazzling as was the light, no ray penetrated the gloom that
shrouded the otters, who never moved until near their usual
stirring-time. Then they rose, but only to stretch themselves, for they
lay down again, listened to the fading voices of the mowers, and watched
the afterglow pale upon the face of the water.
At length, when all was still and the light sombre, they slipped
noiselessly into the current, raising scarce a ripple as they passed
from pool to pool on their way down the creek. They landed at the turn
below the mussel-bed to quench their thirst, then took to the water
again, and were soon busy disporting themselves in Deadman’s Pool. On
leaving it, they moved forward, climbing every rock, and resting there
as if they enjoyed the warmth till, two miles beyond the pool, they came
to where the creek broadens between marshy flats given over to
wild-fowl. As it was in this reach that the otter intended to hunt when
the coming tide had brought up the fish that came there to feed, she and
the cubs landed and played about on the bank to while away the time of
waiting. Presently they entered the fen, where they disturbed some
wild-duck and set the moorhens calling in notes of alarm which were
taken up by the fowl on the other side of the creek, but subsided the
instant the intruders’ gambols showed they had no murderous intentions.
Close on midnight, when the tide was about half flood, the otter, with
the cubs at her side, re-entered the creek in search of flat-fish. Her
quest was no easy one, for she had crossed the sandy bottom but once
before the fish, becoming aware of the presence of their dreaded
enemies, gave up feeding, and buried themselves in the sand. A pair of
eyes dotted here and there about the wide bed was all that showed, and
it was for this sign of the fish’s presence that the otter searched,
jerking her head this way and that to scan the ground on each side of
her course. At the fourth dive she suddenly sighted prey, as suddenly
ceased propelling herself, and stopped within a foot of the spot where
the restless eyes were watching her, while the cubs, who had shot past,
turned, full of wonder, and rejoined their mother. Then the otter
stretched out a fore-leg, touched the plaice through the thin layer of
sand and put it to flight. The cubs, taken aback by the unexpected
appearance of the fish, did not move till it had got some yards away,
but once in pursuit the male cub soon recovered the lost ground, seized
the prey, rose to the surface, and swam ashore. Two more plaice were
captured within the hour, one by the cubs without assistance, and from
that moment their mother let them quarter the sand alone. They propelled
themselves by their hind-legs as their mother did, the fore-legs being
pressed against the side, except when used for sudden turning movements;
but on rising to the surface all four limbs came into play, while the
massive tail alone did the steering. When their hunger was appeased they
made up the creek, ducking their heads as they went, until a stone fell
from the crumbling cliff above Deadman’s Pool and scared them; they then
gave over their bobbing, but redoubled their speed, passing the flotsam
at a rapid pace, and all the way to the cave they scanned the banks as
if they dreaded an ambush, though they had never once been waylaid.
That day, whilst awaiting the dusk, the otter resolved to make a journey
up the creek after the school bass. The tide did not serve before
midnight; then the rain, which had threatened, began to fall and, as the
animals drifted by the herons’ island, was coming down in torrents, but
under it the current bore them rapidly along the reaches without sign of
man’s neighbourhood, save a disused limekiln, until the last bend
brought them within sight of a bridge and of the hamlet that straggles
down the hillside to a wharf on the water’s edge. When they were abreast
of it the bass began to rise, and drew them in pursuit. Shooting up from
below, the hunters seized the unsuspecting fish, and soon were busy
eating their take, the cubs on buoys, the otter on a projecting stone of
one of the buttresses of the bridge. Once all three landed under the
farthest arch and dropped their prey in affright at the unexpected
presence of the parish constable, who was sheltering there and was
almost as much scared himself.
Soon the crowing of the village cocks warned the otter that she ought to
withdraw; but it was not until the smoke began to rise from the galley
of the smack by the wharf that she at last gave up fishing and made for
the drain hard by, where she had twice laid up before. Against a strong
head of water they forced their way up the tunnel till they came to the
rude ledges of masonry in it, and there curled up as best they could for
the day. The cubs had never hovered in such scant quarters before, but
their discomfort was as nothing in comparison with the terror which the
rumbling of a van over their heads occasioned them. In the course of the
morning, towards noon, things were still worse. A sheep-dog with a nose
for otters winded them, and came and sniffed at the grating within a
couple of yards of where they lay. In his excitement he kept pawing the
iron bars and whimpering until the cry of ‘Shep, boy!’ recalled him to
the flock, the patter of whose feet had set the otters on the alert
before the dog darkened the twilight of their hiding-place. These were
the great alarms of the day—indeed, the only alarms, for the otters
took little notice of the bell which rang each time a customer entered
the grocer’s shop, and scarcely more of the voices of the children
abroad when the rain ceased.
The street was deserted and the windows aglow when the otters made their
way down the drain and, after listening at the mouth, stole out into the
moonlight. They ran some danger of being seen as they approached the
smack, and again after passing it, but fortune favoured them; they
escaped observation, and got clear away.
They kept to the margin of the creek till near the limekiln. Then the
otter struck inland, with stealthy motion threading the tufts that
covered the rising ground. Half-way up the slope she suddenly turned and
looked at the cubs as if a careless step had annoyed her, but at once
resumed her stalk. Presently her nostrils twitched; she had scented a
rabbit that was feeding just over the brow. Coming within sight of the
unsuspecting creature she gathered herself for a spring, and a fox could
scarcely have launched itself more swiftly than did the otter. A timely
movement, however, saved the rabbit, which, with others feeding there,
gained the shelter of the bank. Balked of her prey, the otter stood for
a moment where the unavailing leap had taken her, but as soon as the
cubs came up she made for the biggest of the holes, and through it all
three disappeared. Rabbits popping out here and there along the bank
showed how quickly the otters traversed the set, and presently the male
cub, looking with its arched back like a big ferret, issued from the
hole out of which a rabbit had come and, following the scent with great
eagerness, entered another hole into which it had darted. The mother
otter, meanwhile, had been more successful, for a squeal underground
heralded her appearance with a dead rabbit in her mouth, closely
followed by the cubs. When she had bitten off the head and the pads, she
removed the skin as if it had been a glove, and broke up the carcass.
Except for a few moorhen, it was the first warm prey the cubs had eaten,
and they devoured it greedily, as they did their share of another rabbit
surprised in the furze beyond the burrow. This ended the night’s
hunting, and leaving the out-turned skins on the turf, the otters went
back to the creek across the dewy grass which they marked with a clearly
visible track.
On gaining the shore they burst into a gallop from sheer high spirits,
spurning the sand as they hurried along the lone reach in a silence
unbroken save by the sob of the restless tide that was mounting along
their path. Within a mile of the heronry they crossed the flood and
sported in the great eddy there; at times they landed on the cone-shaped
rock that rose amidst the swirl and cast its inky shadow on the silvery
surface. The playful creatures seemed to have set aside their fears and
lingered till sunrise, when the shout of a farm-boy to a neighbour
caused them to dive and make for the cave. Time after time they rose to
breathe, always in the slack water, and at last, when the brimming tide
was all ablush and every songster pouring out its greetings to the sun,
they gained their sanctuary beyond the reach of danger.
Thus day followed day and week succeeded week, until they had got to
know the creek as they knew the morass. By the beginning of August there
was not an inlet left unexplored nor a stream unvisited. The biggest of
the streams they followed to its source among the hills, within easy
reach of the sea, and laid up there, but partly retraced their steps the
next night, and curled up at dawn beneath the roots of a sycamore that
overhung a mill-pool. That day very heavy rain fell, and continued till
a late hour, soaking the country-side and causing even the cave to drip,
to the discomfort of the otters, who repaired there on the morrow. This
decided the otter to make without further delay for the sea, and that
night, after a big feast on the mussels, she led the cubs along the
widening reaches to the estuary and couched on an island at the meeting
of the waters. A barge drifted by at sunrise; later a peel leaped within
a few feet of them; but the otters heeded neither the one nor the other,
nor, indeed, did they raise their heads until a boy, blowing a penny
may-horn, came to fetch the geese from the moor opposite, and startled
them not a little. But by this time the sun was dipping below the pines
near the homestead; it was almost time to be afoot, and as soon as the
stars were bright, the otters took to the water and began the descent of
the estuary.
The river, in spate after the rains, bore them swiftly along, now
between long spits of sand, now close to the shadowed banks, dotted here
and there with glow-worms. The surroundings were as peaceful as the
drifting was easy; yet safe as the way seemed there was danger ahead,
and a mile or so down they came on one of the worst enemies of their
kind. They saw him the instant they rounded the bend; and little wonder,
for the burly figure was clearly outlined against the latticed window of
the keeper’s cottage. Had he moved, they would merely have sunk out of
sight; had he coughed or sneezed, they would have dived, to reappear a
furlong below. But to scare them was the last thing he wished, and,
excited though he was, he never moved a muscle. He had set a trap for
the otters, which he knew would follow the peel; and since dusk he had
been all ears for the rattle of the chain that would tell of a capture.
As soon as they were gone by, he rose and tiptoed along the bank,
wondering, as he picked his way, what made them go down when the peel
were running. By the trunk of a dead ash he stopped to listen.
The otters, on coming to the loop where the estuary wellnigh returns
upon itself, landed, as the keeper knew they would, and passed through a
belt of young larch to a glade in which the still air was heavy with the
scent of flower and fern, and a night-jar was busy among the moths. When
nearly across it, the otter swerved from the trail to avoid the coppice
where her mate had been trapped. It was not likely she could mistake the
spot, for she had stood by him till at dawn the footfall of the keeper
had driven her away. She had even returned the two following nights, and
called and called and called before going off alone to prepare a nest
for her unborn cubs. And now another trouble beset her: the male cub
persisted in following the trail, and, owing to his great strength,
succeeded, despite all her efforts, in getting amongst the bushes where
the trap was set. He was on the point of putting his pad on the plate,
when, in desperation, she bit him and made him turn. As he did so she
closed with him, for she would rather kill him than suffer him to fall a
victim to man; but when, at the sound of the struggle, the keeper came
crashing through the undergrowth, the otter made off, and the cub
followed her.
They struck the estuary near a jetty piled with bundles of oak-bark,
floundered through the mud, and reached the river. The tedious bend, of
which the otters had crossed the neck, now lay behind, and in front
stretched the long reach marked by broad sand-banks that the tide was
beginning to crawl over. So otter and cubs, after passing two branch
creeks, musical with the whistlings of night-feeding birds, came to the
deeper water, where hulks rode at their last anchorage, and, farther on,
to the landlocked haven in which tall-masted vessels swung to their
moorings, and the lights of a little seaport and fishing village winked
at one another across the salt waters. On viewing the uncanny lights and
hearing the shouts of a drunken sailor the male cub sidled up to his
mother; and great was his relief when she rounded the rocky promontory
that projects into the harbour, and entered the tranquil creek, whose
waters reflected only the friendly moon.
CHAPTER V
SEA AND MARSH
The otters landed opposite a white buoy, and, to pass the time till the
fish came in, played about on the rocks that strewed the shore. When the
tide had covered most of them, the otter set out to reconnoitre, and had
not been gone long before she summoned the cubs to join her. At the
signal they took to the water, and soon reached the spot where she
awaited them. On seeing her excitement they became excited too, dived
the instant she did, and the three, swimming in line abreast, soon
viewed the prey. It was but the merest glimpse they got of half a score
tails, for the fish, finding there were three otters, wheeled round in
affright and fled before their advance. At this timid manœuvre, so
favourable to their purpose, the otters, eager though they were to seize
the prey, rose to vent, and on resuming the chase came on the alarmed
mullet in a fathom of water. Further retreat meant certain capture, and
the mullet—craftiest of all the finny tribe—knew it. So the little
school of fish made a dash for the deeper water, and, as the otters
flashed up from beneath to seize them, scattered, leaping wildly to
avoid the fatal grip. The confusion of that moment taxes description,
but one detail stands out clear—the effort of the otter to reach the
leader in its leap for life. She did indeed lip it, but no more; and the
fish, which in its fall splashed the water into ripples of silver, got
right away and resumed the lead of the retreating shoal. A few scales
only remained to mark the scene of the fray, and the chagrin of the
otters was complete when, on drawing the rest of the water blank, they
realized that every mullet had escaped.
The disappointed hunters landed through the maggoty seaweed which had
attracted the fish, and making their way along the stream that flows
into the creek, reached the mill where the otter intended to hover. To
her dismay she found the holt behind the wheel in possession of another
otter with cubs, and quite young ones, as she could tell by their
squeals. It was a difficult situation, for day was near; but she was
equal to it. Without losing an instant, she hastened back along her
trail towards the only other lodging she knew within easy reach—a hole
in the wall of the quay. They might be detected whilst making for it, so
the mother scanned the sleeping port from the end of the promontory
before committing herself to the open; but as nobody stirred, the three
made across the estuary straight towards it. When they were about
mid-passage, where the tide ran strongest, a big fish leaped clear of
the water and fell with a resounding splash. It was a salmon. The cubs
turned their questioning eyes on their mother, but she gave no heed. She
was filled with anxiety lest the hole in the quay should prove to be
beyond their reach. High above the water though it was, she herself
entered it easily, for she could throw herself out of the water almost
like a seal; but, as she had feared, the cubs fell back again and again.
The whistling of the distressed creatures must have been audible to
anyone on the quay. An old man was, indeed, there, putting out the green
light which had frightened the cubs as they crossed, but he was as deaf
as his ladder, and before he approached the edge to see how high the
tide had risen, they had made their greatest effort and gained the
shelter of the masonry.
That day they hardly slept a wink. They were within earshot of the
busiest spot in the port, and every one of the varied sounds that
reached them was a cause for fresh anxiety. To the ceaseless pacing to
and fro of hobbler and pilot there was soon added the shout of the
fish-hawker, the bell of the town-crier, and other sounds of trade,
varied towards noon by the squeakings of Punch and Judy, the yelping of
Toby, and the roars of laughter that punctuated their performance—a
strange hullabaloo indeed for the shy wildlings that had been reared in
the quiet of the desolate moorland, where only the calls of bird and
beast reached them; and many a time through the trying hours they longed
to be back in the morass, under the cairn, or in the cave now so far
back on the trail. Welcome at last to their eyes were the dying rays
that fired the windows of the cottages across the harbour; doubly
welcome the departure of the last fisherman from the quay-head. His
footsteps had scarcely died away when the otters slid down the face of
the wall into the water and, threading the moorings of the boats above
them, rose to the surface in the fairway. Three dark spots that to the
man leaning over the side of the brigantine might well have seemed three
corks, showed where the otters swam noiselessly towards the
harbour-mouth.
After they had passed the last buoy and, indeed, covered most of the
mile that separated them from the lighthouse, they learnt that they were
not the only creatures abroad that fine summer night. Barely a furlong
could have separated them from the castles that once guarded the narrow
entrance when they caught sight of some monsters whose noisy breathing,
growing louder and louder as they drew near, might well have proved most
terrifying to the easily scared cubs, had not their mother’s
indifference convinced them they had nothing to fear; and presently
mother and cubs were among the shoal of porpoises, the great backs of
which gleamed as they showed above the waves. The mother knew the errand
of these corsairs, and understood that they were raiding the salmon that
the flooded river had attracted from the offing. Awakened memories of
great chases in the pools and of feasts on the banks flashed across her
brain as she swam, and before she set foot on the point opposite the
lighthouse she resolved to complete the round with as little delay as
possible and regain the upper reaches of the river, where she could
teach the cubs how to weary out the fresh-run fish and bring them to the
bank.
But the lesson she had come to give the cubs in the sea itself was not a
whit less important, she thought, as she watched their wonderment on
beholding the vast liquid plain that stretched out to no shore their
piercing gaze could discern. Streamlet, pool, river, creek, estuary—all
in turn had been cause for astonishment, but on the ocean they looked
with awe. And it was theirs to fish in. In the recognition of this
spacious hunting-ground the timid creatures quite forgot the terrors of
the quay, which had but momentarily passed from their minds in the
presence of the porpoises, and the next minute they were following in
the wake of their mother as she swam towards the Gull Rock in the midst
of the cliff-skirted bay. Bravely the cubs faced the waves, and bravely
they battled with the surf through which they landed; then they looked
to their mother to direct them how to fish in the deep water by which
they were surrounded.
They had not long to wait. After a glance at the birds on the ledges
above her head, she dived; both cubs instantly dived, too, and putting
forth all the strength of their hind-legs, they succeeded in keeping her
in sight along the spiral course by which she made her way down and down
to the bottom, full six fathoms below. To their surprise, they found the
bed of the sea alive with tiny shell-fish, which they spurned here and
there as they quested. On their left rose a wall of rock, in turning the
point of which they came face to face with a turbot, that the otter
seized and bore writhing to the surface. The cubs, who rose with her,
kept gripping the fish as they swam, and by the time they reached the
landing-place it had ceased to struggle. Then all three settled down to
the feast. Nothing but the tail and backbone remained when they again
took to the water. This time they made the circuit of the rock, and the
male cub, rising from beneath, seized a pollack, carried it in triumph
to a reef just a-wash with the tide, and there consumed it. Before he
had quite finished, the other cub, and later, the otter, were busy
devouring wrasse they had taken. When they had eaten their fill, the
young otters amused themselves in capturing fish which they no longer
needed but left uneaten; and it was over these abandoned spoils that the
gulls clamoured at dawn, whilst the otters lay in a cave they had
entered by a submerged mouth at the foot of the cliffs. Curled up in
pits on the sand above the line of flotsam, with the roar of the sea to
lull them, the cubs soon dropped asleep; but the mother, her thoughts on
the big silvery salmon, lay awake making her plans, till at length she,
too, yielded to her fatigue and slept like the cubs.
Night had fallen when the otters stole through the outlet, left half
uncovered by the ebb, and swam with rapid strokes for the head of the
bay. They were off to a new fishing-ground. They landed where a stream
crosses the beach and, striking into the valley down which it flows,
followed its course without a halt, until they reached the junction of
the two rivulets that form it. There, however, the otter stood
irresolute. Each water led towards a delectable destination—the one to
the salmon pools, the other to her native marsh, with its abundant
food-supply and secure hovers among the reed-beds—and which to make for
she could not decide, until it struck her that the cubs might never find
the outlying water without her. Then she set aside her hesitation, and
held along the western branch at a pace quicker than before, as if to
recover the time lost in making up her mind.
Leaving the valley about a mile above the confluence, she cut straight
across the middle of the hilly field to the upper corner, where a flock
of lambs stood awestruck to watch the strange intruders climb the bank
into the next pasture, from which the otters could hear the startled
creatures stamping with excitement, until first the otter, then the cubs
one after the other, got over the wall and dropped into a neglected
road. This led to a stately gateway with big iron gates, and beneath
them the animals crept to the moss-grown drive, flecked by the moonlight
which filtered through the arching crowns of the oaks. They passed a
mole-heap or two and numerous little pits scratched by rabbits, but the
way was innocent of rut or hoof-mark or any evidence of man’s proximity.
Yet they had not long been following its windings before they all at
once found themselves face to face with a scene that filled them with
consternation. At a spot where the road makes a sharp bend about an
angle of the cliff lay a heap of ruddy embers, and near them a dog. The
animal was not asleep, but stretched to his full length and, as his
restless ears showed, alert to the slightest sound. His every movement
was visible against the dying fire, the glow of which fell on the
curtained window of a caravan and dimly revealed the gnarled branches
above it. The otters, thoroughly alive to the danger of attack, stood
ready to defend themselves; but, seeing that the enemy gave no sign,
they sidled towards the overgrown riding-path just beyond the firelight,
and gained it without attracting the dog’s attention. The moment,
however, the herbage rustled with their movements his head was raised
and pointed towards the very spot where they stood concealed. Still as
death, they regarded the lurcher through the fronds, nor did they
advance a single step till the drooping of the pricked ears and the
resettling of the long head on the fore-legs showed that suspicion was
lulled. Then, with a stealth that cheated the prating ferns, they left
their shelter, stole noiselessly as shadows past the gipsy’s bivouac and
the side road by which the human nomads had come, and escaped into the
safe darkness beyond, where the murmur of the sea far below reached
their ears.
[Illustration: _Photo F. Frith & Co., Reigate._ To face p. 62.
THE WILD COAST-LINE.]
After passing the haunted house to which the long avenue led, they came
to a cairn with a roofless lookout, so placed as to survey the wild
coast-line. Here the wanderers again struck inland until they came to a
high wall that threatened to bar their advance. But the otter knew the
way and, threading the nettles bordering the stubble, reached the drain
that gives easy access to the park. As if glad to be clear of the
prickly harvest-field, the little band made down the slope at a gallop,
passing between groups of trees that cast deep shadows on the turf. In
the herbage of the hollow only their backs showed, but every hair was
exposed when they breasted the opposite slope, over whose crest the land
dips abruptly to a fishpond. At a headlong pace they dashed between the
stems of the pines to the edge of the water, into which they glided as
noiselessly as voles. So swift were their movements that almost before
their presence was known each otter had seized a white trout and risen
to the surface. One came up near the boathouse, another in the shadow of
an hydrangea, the third near the only bit of moonlit bank by the
overflow; and all three swam towards the island, where they lay under
the plumes of the pampas-grass and devoured their take. They ate three
or four fish apiece before their hunger was satisfied, and then began
chasing one another over the rocks, from which the sea stretched like a
plain of beaten silver. Soon they returned along the overflow to the
pond, where they gambolled as fearlessly as they had done in the creek
and other lone spots in their wanderings.
To the surprise of the cubs, the taint of man on the path caused their
mother no disquietude; not once did she stop her play to listen or peer
into the bosky gloom about her. Strange disregard of danger in a
creature both suspicious and apprehensive, yet not difficult of
explanation. For all the demesne within the park wall had long been a
sanctuary for bird and beast. Not a gun had been fired there nor a trap
set time out of mind; and so confiding had even otters become that they
used the drain on the island to litter in, and would lay up in the holt
by the moat under the very windows of the mansion.
Behind one of these a light had just before been burning, where the
young squire sat recording the day’s sport with his hounds along the
stream in which the otter had taught the cubs to fish. But as he wrote
he heard the otter whistle. On the instant he dropped his pen, turned
down the lamp and, seizing a field-glass, took his seat by the open
window. Keen otter-hunter as he was, he was no less keen a naturalist.
Deer, foxes, badgers, seals, all interested him, though not to the same
degree as the otter. The fascination this creature had for him was
wonderful. To him it was the homeless hunter, the Bedouin of the wild,
the subtlest and most enduring of quarry, the gamest of the game.
Therefore he sat with glass to eye watching the lighted space between
two clumps of rhododendrons where he expected the otters would show. His
hands shook and his heart beat faster than its wont; for the life of him
he could not suppress the excitement he felt. Presently a shadow, a
moving shadow, followed by another and yet another, darkened the
sward—these were the otters; and without a wink he watched them cross
the turf to the ferny border of the moat, where, though he could see
them no longer, he could follow their movements by the twitching of the
fronds till, a few seconds later, they entered the water and pursued
their graceful gambols full in his view. Once the otter, attracted by
scent or sound, or both, half rose out of the moat and looked over the
low bank; but the moment she saw that the intruders were only a badger
and two cubs she fell again to her romps. Later she looked up and
scrutinized the strange object at the window. The squire remained as
motionless as the gargoyles; her suspicion was allayed, and once more
she resumed her frolics. Anon the trio stole away and, passing through
the drain beneath the park wall by which the badgers had found an
entrance, gained the valley where the weary hounds lay asleep in their
kennels. But without a thought of hound or anything else save the marsh
to which she was hurrying, the otter made across the barren holdings
beyond and, before the squire had given up hope of their reappearance
and resumed his pen, she had dropped from the boundary wall of Cold
Comfort Farm and set foot on the waste that stretches to the very tip of
the promontory.
The wanderers kept near the cliffs, going straight from angle to angle
of the indentations that mark the jagged coast-line. Here and there they
moved along the edge, so close one behind the other as to look like one
creature, presenting even, at times, a snake-like appearance, especially
when twisting in and out of the colony of ant-heaps that dotted the long
slope within a mile of their destination. Near the top they disturbed a
wheatear from amongst some cushions of withered sea-pinks; but not
another creature did they see until abreast of the seal rock, where a
cormorant stood watching for the dawn. Then, striking the marsh at the
end of a finger-like creek, they followed the bank above it till the
mere with its reed-beds lay before them. Not a breath ruffled the
surface: the array of stems stood motionless as forest-trees: all was
strangely still, save that the sea was heaving ominously. After a keen
scrutiny of the cottage opposite them and a single glance at the
sand-bar to the left, the otter trotted down the bank and, entering the
water, swam towards the farther shore. But when near the wall of reeds
she half-wheeled, and coasted along the curves of the little bays,
skirting the lily-beds where she had disported when a cub.
Till now the finny tenants of the mere had given no sign of their
presence; but as the otters drew near the inflow a dace jumped out of
the water, and the jaws of a pike showed above the surface within a few
inches of it. The sight stirred the hunting instincts of the male cub,
and so great was his rage at his mother’s indifference that, when she
crossed the current on her way to the creek, he turned back, determined
to hover by himself. He landed on a point between two bays and trampled
a couch at the food of the reeds. An old otter could not have chosen a
kennel seemingly safer, yet scarcely had he curled up when a most
alarming noise struck his ears. It was the creak of oars against the
thole-pins, and it grew louder and louder till he jumped to his feet to
see what was coming. Almost immediately the bow of a boat appeared round
a clump of bulrushes, and at the oars bent the old marshman in his
reed-plaited hat and guernsey frock, all lit up by the red sun, now just
above the bar. The rower shipped the oars, turned round on his seat, and
dropped the killick quietly overboard; but the boat still moved forward
till the painter stopped the way on it, less than a score of yards from
the otter, who looked on at the baiting and setting of the lines, and
even the lighting of a pipe before the old man settled down to watch the
floats.
Motionless though the fisherman sat, the otter remained on the alert
and, whenever the old man rose to land a fish, was on the point of
diving and making his escape from so dangerous a neighbour. Thus hour
after hour passed, and the morning wore away with no change in the
situation, save that a little before noon black clouds rose above the
horizon and drifted into the blue spaces of the sky. Intent on his
fishing, the marshman took little notice of the sudden change of
weather, until a gust of wind shook the reed-bed and big drops of rain
began to fall. Then, casting a few uneasy glances to windward, he pulled
in his lines, raised the killick, pressed his hat on his head, and rowed
away.
CHAPTER VI
THE FAMILY BROKEN UP
Sitting there, the cub watched the lurid afterglow fade, dusk creep over
the rough water, and the sky darken till a star appeared in a break
between the scudding wrack. Then he rose and listened. The waves broke
against the point, the reeds hissed, the breakers thundered on the bar,
but no call from his mother reached his eager ears. He was beginning to
fear she had deserted him when from across the mere came the shrill
summons. Immediately he dived and, rising almost at once, headed at
excited pace for the creek, where soon, to his delight, he viewed his
mother and sister swimming to meet him. The wild gambols that followed
in the midst of the mere did not last long, for there was hunting to be
done.
The quarry the otter had set her mind on were the pike frequenting the
reedy bays, towards the largest of which the hunters swam. Near a bed of
lilies they dived, and had not made half the circuit of the wall of
stems before they espied a pike. He had already seen them, and in an
instant the protruding muzzle was withdrawn as the fish backed into his
ambush. It afforded him no refuge from the pursuers, who drove him from
one to another of its recesses, and pressed him so closely that, as he
saw, to remain meant capture. Out he flashed and, had he made right away
and gained the heart of the mere, he would have escaped. But he sought
the shelter of another lily-bed almost within sight of the first, and
there the otters followed in unrelenting chase. Presently he was gripped
by the male cub, but, freeing himself, forsook the weeds for the water
outside, where, with distended jaws and fins erect, he darted now here,
now there, to avoid his harassing pursuers. All was in vain. He had
missed his earlier opportunities, and to escape in his exhausted
condition was impossible. Conscious of this and determined not to die
unavenged, he summoned his remaining strength, dashed at the otter,
seized her by the throat, and held on despite her struggles. This
however left him at the mercy of the cubs. Instantly they fastened on
his shoulders and, using their powerful rudders, tried to raise him to
the surface. Beating his tail, the fish for awhile succeeded in
resisting their efforts; but in the end he tired, and presently the
writhing mass came to the top of the lake and, rolling over and over,
showed now on the crest, now in the trough of the waves. There the otter
wrenched herself free and, half-throttled though she was, at once joined
in the attack. The three soon overpowered their prey and landed with it
at an opening in the reeds. Whilst they were dragging it from the
water’s edge a tremor passed through the fish. Immediately the hungry
hunters relaxed their hold, fell to and sliced and sliced and champed
and champed till wellnigh half the fish was eaten and the great backbone
showed. The feast over, they licked their chops, brushed their whiskers
against the stems and, taking to the water, played hide-and-seek amongst
the lilies.
The exultation they felt over their capture showed in their excited
gambols and in their wild rush through the reed-bed on their way to the
bar. They crossed this at a gallop to the edge of the tide, plunged into
the breakers and, reaching the quieter water beyond the surf, headed
straight for the great pile of rocks over which the spray was dashing in
clouds. On landing, they threaded the sobbing passages between the
boulders and gained the caves that honeycomb the cliff behind. There
they came on the remains of old feasts—fish bones, crab and lobster
shells—and on old nests made of reeds. One cave there was where the
muffled boom of the waves was broken by the tinkle of falling water, and
where the skeletons of otters whitened the floor on the edge of the
runlet that had worn a channel in the rock. Quickly leaving it, the
animals made their way back along the low, tortuous passage by which
they had entered and, passing through the outer caves, regained the
clitter. There they chased one another until they tired. Then they took
to the sea, reached the line of the breakers, and landed through the
welter as easily as, later, they landed on the bank of the mere by the
inflow. The otter was then leading her cubs to the withy-bed and to the
boggy ground between it and the old decoy, where she trod the water-mint
as she went.
So the hours of darkness were spent, and when the grey light told of
coming day otter and cubs slipped into the stream and drifted towards
the mere. On reaching the choppy water they fell to swimming, turned up
the sheltered creek, skirted the island where two of them had kennelled
the day before, and landed near a bramble brake, in which they curled up
side by side. The cubs soon slept, but the excitement of the journey to
the salmon river kept the otter awake longing for dusk, so eager was she
to cross the moors and reach the pools. She dropped asleep at last, but
awoke long before setting-out time and, whilst awaiting nightfall,
watched the angry sun go down and the clouds scud by close overhead.
Before it was quite dark she aroused the cubs, and made up the hilly
ground towards the heart of the moor. It was a wild night, but the fury
of the gale seemed to quicken the energies of the wanderers, for they
breasted the foothills at a pace beyond their wont and soon gained the
high plateau with its chain of pools, known to men as the Black Liddens.
These they swam as they came to them, passed to the heathery waste with
its old Stone Circle, and reached the marshy valley and the lazy stream
which supplies the mere. The wind had little force there—the thorns,
shaggy with lichen, stood motionless, even the bulrushes scarcely
stirred; but over a stagnant backwater a will-o’-the-wisp kept dancing
like a lantern swung by invisible hands. Splash! splash! the otters
crossed the shallow pool near the stream; and again, splash! splash!
they rushed through the shoal water beyond it before turning up the brae
that led to the wind-swept moor. On, on the untiring creatures sped,
more like agents of darkness executing some urgent commission than
beasts of prey speeding to a new fishing-ground. Mile after mile of the
desolate upland they traversed: at one spot skirting a cairn whence came
that weirdest of all wild cries, the shrill chattering of badgers; at
another, passing the only road over the moor, where they left their
footprints between the fresh wheel-marks of the doctor’s trap. A
sleeping hamlet rose almost in their path, and so close did they
approach that they heard the creaking of the signboard of the Druid’s
Arms, about which the cottages cluster. Then over wall after wall they
clambered as they came to the crofters’ holdings, reached the lodge of
the keeper who had been the otter’s terror when her cubs were helpless,
gained the edge of the moorland above the old nursery, made their way
down the very gully along which the hounds had followed the fox and,
leaping the stream close to the hover, came out on the salmon pool
beyond the poplar.
Eager to see whether the pool held a fish, the otter slipped into the
water and swam to the favourite lie near the foot of the fall. A salmon
was there, and towards it she advanced so swiftly that it seemed she
must fasten before it could become aware of her presence. But the fish
had been harried by otters on its way up from the estuary, and was
prepared for her coming. In a flash he was off downstream, leaving the
otter far in his wake. At the tail of the pool he swung round, raising a
big wave that greatly excited the cubs where they watched on the edge of
the bank. After a short interval the wave came again, and again, and
again. Later the salmon leapt clear of the white water near the fall.
And so the chase continued, until the otter, seeing how vain were her
unaided efforts, summoned the cubs to her assistance. In an instant they
slipped into the pool and joined in the pursuit.
Now wherever the salmon turns an otter meets him. Conscious of the
danger he is in, he rushes at the shallows in a daring attempt to reach
the waters below. His three enemies hurry after him, breaking the
surface in their desperate haste, and while he is still floundering the
otter closes and strives to grip him beneath the gills. No defence has
he but his slippery scales and the lashing tail that sweeps his foes
aside. But these avail, and before the teeth fasten in him he struggles
through to the deep water beyond, where he easily outdistances his
pursuers. Pool after pool he passes at his utmost speed, making for a
refuge that lies near the foot of the rapids. He had rested in it on his
way up the river, and now swings into it and stays there gasping, in
dread of discovery. The otters soon show on the top of the rushing
waters, which they search as they descend, ducking their heads, and yet
avoiding the rocks against which the current threatens to dash them. In
a few seconds they are close to the spot where the fish lies exhausted,
and surely one or other will get a glimpse of him. But no, the
sheltering rock befriends him, or the foaming waters amidst which he
lies. The hunters pass on; but he is not safe yet. If they draw the
rapids against the stream they can hardly miss him. But will they?
Apparently not—at least, not for the moment. They are going on, despite
the near approach of day. How carefully they examine the hollow banks
and recesses of the boulders, disdaining even the grilse they disturb,
in their expectation of yet getting the salmon! Beneath the gloomy pines
that form a vista towards the brightening east they swim, eager as ever.
But, clear of the trees, they all at once cease their quest and listen.
Some suspicious sound downstream has alarmed them. They are all ears
when, above the voice of the river and the wild rustling of the
tree-tops, the penetrating note again makes itself heard. It is the toot
of the horn. The twice-hunted otter dreads that sound above all sounds
save the cry of the hounds, and before it has died away she and the cubs
are in full retreat to the holt in the salmon pool. Only at long
intervals do they rise to vent before reaching the rapids, where they
leave the water and gallop up the bank, as if fear itself were at their
heels. At the top they re-enter the river, and so gain the shelter of
the alder-roots near the fall.
The cubs, feeling safe in the holt, make their toilet as usual; but the
otter listens, and before long catches the dreaded cry. Then the cubs
hear it too: they begin to share their mother’s alarm and, when the
swelling clamour tells of the close approach of their enemies, seek the
inmost recess of their refuge. Soon the hounds enter the pool and
cluster like maddened things about the holt. ‘A good solid mark,’ shouts
the doctor to the squire. ‘He’s there right enough.’ The foremost hounds
can see the otter where she stands hissing through her white teeth, but
they cannot reach her. So the hounds are called off that a terrier may
get at the quarry, and after a terrible fight he compels the otter to
take to the water. Shouts of ‘Heu gaz’ from the field greet the
appearance of the bubbles that betray her flight, and the next moment
the twelve couple of hounds are in pursuit towards the stickle, where a
dozen men or more stand foot to foot to prevent her from going
down-water.
[Illustration: HOUNDS SWIMMING AN OTTER. To face p. 78.]
Round and round the big pool swims the otter, rising now under the bank,
now amongst the hounds, narrowly escaping their jaws. Time after time
she returns to the cubs, but only to be ejected by one or other of the
terriers. At last, after being badly shaken by the hounds, she lands,
gallops round the line of men with the white terrier at her rudder, and
gains the water beyond. At amazing speed she follows the winding reaches
to the rapids, and even succeeds in gaining Longen Pool, famous in the
annals of the Hunt. However, the hounds again press her sorely, and
after a while she takes to the tangled coppice on the hillside,
traverses it, reaches an ancient hedgerow matted with bramble and thorn,
and there lies listening, trusting to have escaped pursuit. But she has
left a burning scent, and soon the cry of the pursuers warns her that
her hopes are vain. Nevertheless, as she is very weary, and as the pool
to which the hedge runs down offers no harbourage, she remains where she
is. But though the hounds soon wind her, the denseness of the thicket
hinders them from getting at her until the terriers force her to the
river. In the shallow water every eye can mark her where she swims and
note her shortening dives. The end is near. Presently Dosmary seizes her
as she rises, and the pack worries her life out.
That night, when the storm had passed, the miller heard the cries of two
otters in the tangled coppice beyond the orchard, and as he knocked the
ashes from his pipe before going indoors, said: ‘They’re missin’ her,
I’m thinkin’.’ He was right. It was the voice of the cubs calling for
their mother.
They were there again the next night, and the next; after that they gave
up the vain search and withdrew to the moorland.
It was well for the young creatures, thus thrown on their own resources,
that they were able to fend for themselves. Indeed, as has been seen,
the male cub had already shown signs of revolt against his mother’s
authority, and of a desire for independence.
He was free now, free to roam as he liked, to keep to the trail or leave
it as he pleased, to fish when and where he chose; for his sister had no
influence over him. Yet, for all his selfish, headstrong ways, he proved
a safe leader, his movements being inspired by the wariness of the
outlawed creature. He was a stickler for good hours, rising late and
couching early. He curbed his passion for wandering, and showed rare
judgment in the choice of hovers, selecting always with an eye to
strength and invariably shunning such as were not near deep water where
refuge might be sought in emergency. On sallying out he generally fished
upstream for a mile or two, gambolled till the night was nearly gone,
and then floated back with the current, shooting the rapids and lesser
falls on the way. Yet fear haunted both him and his sister, for they
carefully scrutinized every bush, rock, and bole that might harbour an
enemy, and their fears grew to terror once when they happened on the
remains of one of their kind recently killed by the hounds. On the
discovery they were at once all consternation, as their puffing and
blowing showed, and forthwith forsook the tributary for the river,
kennelling at the end of their hurried retreat in a hover below the
mill. They lay in this holt on the following day, but the next found
them ensconced under the bank of the weir pool at Tide End. There they
were waked towards noon by the tide, which rose and rose till it invaded
their quarters, and compelled them to seek refuge in the opposite bank,
where a young dog-otter was already lying up. Their coming startled him
not a little, but the moment he saw the new arrivals were otters like
himself he settled down again, and soon all three were sound asleep. At
dusk they journeyed on together and, after fishing and sporting in the
salmon pool below the morass, sought the roots of the alder. They lay
there again on the morrow, a morrow momentous in one of its
happenings—the separation of the cubs. For when, at setting-out time,
the male cub began moving up-water, his sister, till that moment the
most faithful of followers, turned her back on him and, with the strange
otter at her heels, struck into the wood. She had renounced the brother
for the lover. Is it possible, animal though she is, that she can
abandon the companion of her life hitherto, without some sign of regret?
May not the slowness of her steps indicate reluctance to sever the ties
that have so long bound them? Surely it is so, for just as she is about
to enter the undergrowth, she stops and turns her head to find her
brother watching her. The next minute, however, she has passed out of
his sight and out of his life, as, with her mate, she follows the trail
that leads by the woodman’s cottage and the cairn to the distant mussel
creek whither she is bound.
CHAPTER VII
THE OTTER AT THE TARN
So the otter held on his way alone, and before dawn broke sought shelter
in the wooded ravine next the edge of the moor.
The rocky recess was one of the favourite holts of his kind, partly on
account of the dry lying it afforded, but more because of its congenial
surroundings. The seclusion, the gloom, the roar of the fall, and the
tumult of the pool all contributed to please the shy wildling; and he
became so fond of the ledge by the foaming waters that, like a badger to
its earth, the young nomad returned to it again and again, till at
length the instinct to roam began to cry out against his unnatural
conduct and urged him to seek new quarters. ‘Wander, wander,’ repeated
the voice that grew more insistent as the days stole by. ‘Tarry, my
child, tarry,’ replied the spirit of the glen; and for a while—a little
while—he resolved to stay. Yet before his short sojourn came to an end
the pool was sought by a hunted stag and turned into a pandemonium.
[Illustration:
THE OTTER.
_Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. J. G. Millais._
To face p. 84.]
Not by mere chance, after rounding the base of Lone Tarn, was the
beast’s antlered head set for the ravine. It was there he had first seen
the light. The early weeks of his life had been spent in the ferny
clearing where the otter’s trail ran, and his mother used to lead him, a
dappled calf, down the steep bank to drink at the shallows of the
otter’s pool. Four years had passed since then; but the memory of the
sombre, sequestered glen and of the pool at the foot of the high fall
was still clear in his mind, and to them he turned his wearied steps in
the hour of his distress. After crossing the rugged purlieus of the
woodland, he threaded his way between the stems of the birches and,
entering the ravine at its lower end, made his way up and up along the
shaded waters until he came opposite the holt, where a submerged rock
permitted foothold. His wild rush through the shallows had filled the
startled sleeper with alarm; but the otter did not understand the cause
of the strange creature’s distress until the cry of the pursuers caught
his ears—a cry that swelled louder and louder until every hound had
splashed into the pool and swam there, baying their quarry with
deafening clamour. More than once whilst the din was at its height the
otter was on the point of slipping into the water and stealing away; but
it was well he refrained, for presently the stag broke its bay and made
off down the river, drawing the pack after it.
Then, though calm returned to the pool from which it had been so
ruthlessly banished, it brought no peace to the otter. A peel leaped
where the stag had stood, trout rose where the hounds had clustered,
pigeons ‘roohooed’ overhead, and a squirrel came down and drank at the
water, yet the otter was still perturbed. His faith in the holt was
gone, and he longed for dusk that he might leave it and get away from
the taint of hound that drowned the scent of moss and fern and poisoned
the sweet, fresh breath of the river. He did not await the fall of
night, for a faint glow yet lighted the spaces between the boles when he
left, and as he came out upon the moor, the sky was still red with the
embers of sunset. Far ahead loomed the familiar outline of the solitary
hill, as yet unvisited; and now at last he determined to follow the
stream that veined it to the summit, and there find the refuge that the
specious ravine denied.
At a good pace he moved over the heather and bog till, a furlong or so
beyond some stacks of turf, he came to a sudden standstill. It seemed as
if he had caught some suspicious sound along the back trail, for his
head was suddenly turned that way; but, discerning nothing, he resumed
his brisk trot along the bank that at this point rose high above the
rushing river. Soon he came to the tributary down which his mother had
led him and, swimming Moor Pool, as the meeting of the waters is called,
he crossed to the opposite bank and kept it till he reached the troubled
‘Kieve’ at the base of the hill. As though haunted by the memory of the
hounds, he again looked back over the moor, now black under the stars;
but in the end, after peering long and satisfying himself that no enemy
followed his trail, he slipped into the foaming basin in search of the
trout it contained, and on two of these fish made a hurried supper
before beginning the climb of the great cone that towered grim and
forlorn above him. He kept close to the wild, headlong stream, and made
the ascent by scrambling up the rocks that abutted on fall and cascade.
Far, far up, his nostrils caught the scent of a body of water, and in
his eagerness to reach it he redoubled his pace and soon gained the
crest. There he found himself face to face with a tarn—a tarn of aspect
as forbidding as the strangely contrasted shores that encompass it, for
the sheet of water lies sullen and monotonous between precipitous rocks
and a beach of grey shingle. No islet rears its head above the surface;
no line of flotsam marks the shelving strand. The wanderer had come out
on the shingly beach, and after sniffing the water he trotted leisurely
along its edge, and presently descried a small bed of reeds, till then
hidden by a rocky headland. Gladdened by the discovery, he mended his
pace, yet kept surveying the tarn, doubtless on the lookout for signs of
prey. A wave in the shallows, a splash, or even a dimple, any break of
the water, would have betrayed the presence of some finny inhabitant, of
which, however, his nose had given him no hint; but the surface had no
message for him. Neither was there a single wild-fowl; there was no
animal of any sort. At the far end, however, and almost in his path as
he made the circuit of the pool, lay the skeleton of a giant pike.
Though the vertebræ had dropped into crannies between the stones, the
bleached skull, its open jaws bristling with teeth, was the most
conspicuous object on that desolate shore. Yet dry bones apparently had
no more interest for him than the newly risen moon, for he passed on and
clambered over the rocks towards the reeds, where he was soon at work
preparing a couch in which to pass the coming day. The unusual noise
awoke a buzzard in his eyrie above, and kept him awake until the otter
ceased trampling the stems and entered the water; then he lowered his
head on his wing and dropped asleep again.
The otter, meanwhile, swam towards the horn of the bay, his long back
flush with the surface, scarce rippled by his advance. When clear of the
point, he dived and began exploring the recesses and ledges. There was
not a harbourage along the cliff’s base that he did not investigate, but
he did not sight a single fish. Reaching the glassy surface by the
overflow, he spreadeagled himself and drifted more and more quickly
towards the lip of the fall, till it seemed that nothing could save him
from going over; but within a foot or two of the brink he suddenly
wheeled, and extricated himself by rapid strokes that took him within a
score yards of the beach. Then he dived again and quested along the
stretch between the shallows and the deep. This likely hunting-ground
also proved as void of fish as the water under the cliff; so at the
farther end he landed, shook his coat, and rolled on the shingle, thus
catching the skull of the pike, which he sent flying over the stones.
The rattle it made caused him to run after it, and the grim toy served
to amuse him, for he played with it much as a kitten plays with a ball.
Not so had its owner been bandied about by his forbears. More than one
otter, appalled by his great bulk and terrible jaws, had shrunk from
tackling him: even the father of the cub was glad, after a tussle that
convulsed the little bay, to reach the rocks and escape with his life.
But famine had effected what no enemy could effect—a famine caused by
the ravages of otter, of heron, of cormorant, of the pike themselves,
reducing the fish one by one till only the monster of the reedy bay
remained. Whilst strength lasted he made a daily circuit of his wasted
realm for prey to satisfy his maddening hunger. As his weakness
increased, his beat dwindled, until one day, after but a short cruise,
it was all he could do to regain his station among the reeds. There he
lingered till death claimed him. His gaunt carcass, still beautiful with
its marblings of olive and gold, rose to the surface, and the west wind
wafted it to the strand, where the terror of one generation became the
sport of the next.
The otter, however, soon tired of toying with the skull and, leaving it
where he found it, he made along the rocks towards the spot where the
precipice rises almost sheer from the tarn, and began to scour the face
of the cliff. He seemed as surefooted as a marten, and never once
slipped or stumbled as he dropped from shelf to shelf whose scanty width
in places all but denied foothold. Three times he made the descent,
leaping from ledge to ledge like the overflow rushing down the hillside;
but, unlike the stream, he leaped in silence, save for the muffled thud
of his spongy feet as they struck the rock on landing. The last time he
dived, rose at the end of a long swim by the boulder flanking the
outlet, climbed to the top, and lay down at full length. The water ran
from his unshaken coat, leaving it smooth and refulgent in the
moonlight, as he reposed there gazing at the windings of the river on
the plain below. Soon however the restless creature rose and plunged
again into the tarn, where he gambolled, partly on the surface, but
chiefly beneath amongst the currents that well up from the unfathomed
depths. And so the hours sped till, when the moon had set and the stars
wellnigh paled, he gave over disporting himself and swam towards his
lair. On the way thither, forgetting that he was alone, he uttered the
dawn cry, and the next moment rounded the point and gained the reeds. In
the grey light, the buzzard winging his way to the moorland saw him
curled up there, holding one of his pads in his mouth,—asleep, as he
knew by the slow, regular rise and fall of his flank.
But what creature is that astir near the outlet? It must be some other
wildling come to share the primal solitude of the hilltop. Yet its
movements are not those of a four-footed beast. Surely, surely it is
a—is it possible? Yes, it is a man! He is clear of the rocks now, and
is picking his way across the current. Now he has landed, and look, look
how he hurries up the strand, and how suddenly he drops to the ground on
the crest! Strange conduct in this lone place and at such an hour! He
must be under the ban of his fellows, a fugitive, maybe, from hue and
cry, and fearful of discovery.
Nothing of the kind. That man is Grylls the harbourer, from the deer
forest; but otter, not stag, has drawn him here this morning, and
eagerness to examine the ground below is the reason of his haste.
Already, glass to eye, he follows the course of the tributary on his
left, hopeful every second of seeing an otter making its way to the
clitter near the stream. How carefully he scans the banks, and what a
time he dwells on the pile of hoary rocks yet spectral in the uncertain
light! ‘No luck, no luck,’ he mutters, as he turns the glass to the
tributary zigzagging across the western moor. Yet he is all expectation,
and great will be his joy if only he can get a glimpse of the long, dark
creature hieing to some holt. Away up to the boggy gathering ground he
traces the narrowing water, surveys in vain the pools amidst that
curlew-haunted waste, then with quick movement, redirects the glass to
the clitter, already much less dim and mysterious. Little wonder that
that particular refuge attracts him so strongly, that he scrutinizes the
approaches so carefully. It was there that he once marked an otter
enter; and the memory of the sport it gave has drawn him year after year
to the hilltop in the hope of harbouring another. Again and again he
surveys first one stream, then the other, but with no better result;
then he hurriedly examines the river from the foot of the hill to Moor
Pool, where the hounds will presently meet. ‘Nothin’ movin’, nothin’ at
all, and day close handy. You may as well shut up the glass.’ Soon the
fleecy clouds crowding the vault are tinged with rose, pool and stream
catch the foreglow, the reflection in the tarn is like an almond grove
in bloom, and the sun shows below the crimson streaks that had heralded
it. At the sight Grylls returns the glass to his pocket and, feeling
chilled, jumps to his feet and walks briskly up and down on the rim of
the great basin to warm himself.
Had he seen an otter he would by this be crossing the moor to meet the
squire and tell, instead of pacing to and fro waiting for the hounds and
glancing down now and again towards the spot where he expects to see
them. It is full day by this, and river and tributary stream stretch
across the purple moorland like golden threads. ‘Grand mornin’. Ah! if
we can only find!’ he sighed, as the uncertainty of the sport flashed
across his mind. ‘If! But there, man, ’tes no use iffin’. Wait and hope
for the best.’ All at once the harbourer stopped and, screwing up his
eyes, looked steadily towards the solitary clump of pines to which from
time to time he had directed his gaze. ‘Here they come, and a good few
with ’em. Ah! ah! and there’s one, two, three, four comin’ up-river, and
Matthey—it caan’t be anybody else—crossing the foord. There’ll be a
brave little meet to end the season.’ Then he lay down again on the
heather, raised the glass to his eye, and turned it on the party with
the hounds. ‘The squire and the passun, of coorse. Wonder if church
moosic or hound cry do stir un most. “Everything in its season, Grylls,”
that would be his answer, and said kindly. He is a good sort, is the
passun, and dearly loves a kill. And theere’s Doctor Jim, in his white
hat. Lor’! he ain’t missed the Moor Pool meet for seven-and-thirty year.
Iss, seven-and-thirty year, Grylls, and it’s seven-and-thirty times
you’ve sat where you’re sittin’ now to the hour, and wellnigh to the
day, and’—counting the notches on his stick—‘it’s nine otters you’ve
seen killed on the moor. Who can they be with the Doctor? Strainyers, I
reckon, stayin’ at the big house most like. Ah! theere’s Black Geordie,
and the keeper, and the landlord, and Tom “Burn the Reed” walkin’ with
the bailiff hisself as large as life and as brazen as Sally Strout at
the christenin’. Well, he’s got a face, and no mistake! Wonder how many
salmin he’s took out this turn.’
Thus he lay and made his comments whilst the party approached Moor Pool,
but no sooner did they reach the bank than his demeanour changed and he
sprang to his feet as though an adder had stung him. And no wonder, for
the hounds at once struck the line of the otter, and made down-river at
full cry. ‘Well now, Grylls,’ said he, ‘is it go or stay? Why, stay, of
coorse; sure as you’re alive they’ll be back again.’ So he stood
watching and watching and watching till hounds and men became blurred by
distance, and at last disappeared into the wood. ‘You’re out of it, git
chucklehead!’ said he, as he lowered the glass. ‘Why didn’t ’ee go down
to the meet as you always do? You’re gettin’ lazy. You’re out of it, out
of it, and come fifteen mile for nothin’! Pick up the pony and shog home
along; there’s nothin’ else for ’ee to do.’ In his rage he kicked the
loose rock at his feet, and sent it bounding down the face of the hill.
Nevertheless, it was not many seconds before he was again scrutinizing
the spot where the river falls to the ravine, and before long he
exclaimed, ‘Halloo! what’s that? Ah, theere ’tes again and again; the
glint of the horn, I’ll be bound.’ He was all excitement now, and
watching as he had never watched before in his life. ‘What’s that—eh,
eh? It’s they, it’s they! See, thee’re crossin’ the bend of Zingey
Pool.’ Though the hounds were scarcely discernible he was right: they
were returning and becoming more and more distinct every minute.
‘Hoorah,’ he shouted in his exultation; ‘the otter must have come
up-water laast night; wheere’s he lyin’, wonder.’ His eyes, almost
starting from his head, followed the pack as it drew nearer and nearer
to Moor Pool. They reached it; then he was all anxiety to see whether
they would take up the tributary or keep to the river. Like a man toeing
the line for a foot-race he stood ready to start, and if they had gone
up the stream he would have descended the hill at breakneck speed; but
they did not: they came on. ‘Niver such a bit of luck in all my born
days,’ said he, his weather-beaten face beaming with delight. Presently,
as the deep bay, like the bay of bloodhounds, reached his ears: ‘What
moosic! how wild and savage and grand it is! eh, and what a sight for
one pair of eyes! The squire’d give gold to be in my shoes.’ Not for a
single instant did the harbourer divert his gaze from the pack. ‘Pretty,
pretty,’ he kept saying as the hounds, time after time, recovered the
line momentarily lost. ‘They’re travellin’ fast. It’s time to be going
down. I’ll lay a groat the otter’s in the Kieve.’ With a bound he was
off and, following the overflow, had just reached the big boulder from
which the buzzard sometimes watched the moor, when, to his surprise, he
saw Dosmary and Tuneful just beginning the ascent of the hill.
‘Niver lyin’ up round the tarn! ’Tes ten year agone since they found
theere. However, here they come, here the beauties come.’
There was a strange tenderness in his voice, but the light that leapt to
his eyes told still more plainly how he was stirred. He watched them for
a few moments, so that the whole pack was in sight before he began
retracing his steps, and quickly as his sinewy legs carried him up the
steep, the hounds had passed him when he gained the crest. Quivering
with excitement, he stood again for a moment with his eyes on them as
they streamed along the strand; then he tore along in their wake.
He might have covered twoscore yards, during which the pack had swept
round the end of the tarn to the rocks, when a crash of music proclaimed
the find, and brought him up in his stride. Soon the white-and-tan heads
of the leading hounds showed as they rounded the point. One glance he
gave them—only one: then his eyes were all for the otter. Whilst he
watched the water well in front of the pack, the otter rose, shook his
head, rested until his pursuers were within a few yards of him, and
dived, showing his back and rudder. ‘Takin’ things quietly, are ’ee?’
said the harbourer in high glee; and then, presently, on observing the
hounds lick up the scent as they swam, ‘They’re tonguing the ream
brave.’ Scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when up came the otter
within a few yards of him. The excited ‘Tally-ho!’ with which he greeted
him made the welkin ring.
The squire would always have it that he heard the penetrating scream;
but however that may be, it was a good half-hour before he appeared on
the summit, and by that time the otter had given the pack the slip and
set the harbourer wondering what had become of it. He was amongst the
reeds and hidden by the rocks when the squire came up near the overflow,
but his cries, as he cheered the pack, betrayed his whereabouts, and
presently the squire hailed him across the tarn: ‘Have you viewed the
otter, my man?’ ‘Iss, sir, over and over again, but he’s creapt away
somewheere out of mark.’ The hounds raised their heads on hearing their
master’s voice, and when he sang out, ‘Seek him, my lads! wind him, my
lads!’ they bustled about, searching along the foot of the cliff as if
they meant to find; and very soon they did find, but in a place where
neither hounds nor terrier could reach the quarry. The doctor, who was
nearest, at once made his way to the spot where the hounds were
clamouring and, lying flat on the ledge, succeeded in dislodging the
game from its retreat by means of the pole he carried. Thus driven from
his only refuge, the otter got no rest. As a good scent guided the
hounds, the hunted creature’s only chance lay in wearying out his
pursuers. And what endurance he showed! He dived hither and thither for
over three hours and never landed once; but all in vain, the pack showed
no signs of tiring.
At last, in desperation, he slipped over the fall into the pool below
and passed down the stream, searching for a hiding-place as he went.
Soon he reached the boulder from which the harbourer had watched the
hounds and, sighting the crevice at its base, swam through the narrow
opening to the hollowed space within. Scarcely was he ensconced when he
heard the cry of his pursuers, and a minute later the maddened creatures
were roaring at the mouth of his retreat. Squire and followers came
tearing down the hill, and when the whipper-in had succeeded in calling
off the hounds, Venom, the terrier, was sent in to drive the otter out.
‘He’ll soon have un out,’ said a man in a blue guernsey who knew his
worth. But hard and game as the terrier was, the otter was his match. So
the squire must have thought, for he determined to send Vic to his
assistance. As soon as she was released, the eager little thing swam
whining along the passage and joined in the fight; but, owing to the
cramped quarters, instead of assisting her mate she hampered him. Once
the tip of the otter’s rudder showed momentarily, raising the excitement
to fever-pitch; but this was followed by a long spell during which not a
hair of either terrier or otter was visible.
‘They’ll never drive un, squire,’ the woodman ventured to say. ‘Why not
flood the varmint out? Theere’s a good head of water.’
‘Too good a head, I fear; but we’ll try. The terriers have had about
enough. Get ’em out if you can.’
Watching his opportunity, the woodman managed to pull Vic out almost at
once, and Venom after a while. Both were terribly cut up. The sight of
their wounds angered the squire, who at once called out: ‘Now, men,
build a dam, and look lively; that otter shan’t live another hour.’ All
set to work. Except the whipper-in, who had as much as he could do to
look after the hounds, every man lent a hand. Some brought big stones,
others armfuls of heather, others stone-crop stripped from the rocks,
whilst Geordie the gipsy, the parson, the miller and the water-bailiff
constructed the dam. Under their eager hands the wall rose steadily
across the tail of the pool, and before long the impounded stream began
to creep inch by inch up the face of the rock. In half an hour the mouth
of the holt was covered; soon, too, the stone which had provided a
resting-place for the otter; so that he now was compelled to plant his
fore-feet against the wall to keep his head above water. Still the water
rose, and but for the presence of the imprisoned air the hollow would
have been filled and the beast forced to leave and meet its fate in the
open. Yet, contracted though the space became, there was a small
interval between the water and the roof, and there the otter’s nostrils
still found relief.
Meanwhile the men at the dam had all they could do to hold the stream
back; and presently, despite their frantic efforts, the obstruction gave
way, and the whole mass rushed roaring down the hill.
‘Don’t much matter, squire; the otter’s drownded before this.’
‘May be; but will you put your hand in and draw him out?’
‘No, thank ’ee,’ replied the miller amidst the loud laughter of the
crowd. ‘Geordie’s the man for that job.’
‘I don’t mind trying, sir,’ said the gipsy, who unhesitatingly
approached the rock, knelt in the water, put in his hand to the full
length of his arm, and began feeling blindly about the inside. He had
worked round three sides and reached the corner to the right when the
otter gripped him by the ball of the thumb. His face, which was half
turned to the onlookers, must have betrayed the pain he felt, for the
woodman called out: ‘Have ’ee got un, Geordie?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ replied Geordie, ‘but he’s got me.’
Slowly he drew the resisting creature towards the aperture, but on being
brought to the light it let go, and allowed the man to rise to his feet.
‘Rather a nasty wound, Geordie,’ said the squire, putting half a
sovereign in the bleeding palm.
‘Thank you, sir; ’tes only a scratch to some I’ve had. I’ll have another
try if you like, sir.’
‘No, no, my man, not on any account. The otter deserves his life. We’ll
leave him for another season, and I hope we may meet again.’
Little did he dream that the game beast which had baffled his best
efforts was to become the talk of the country-side, and would for many a
day disappoint his hopes and flout his plans.
CHAPTER VIII
THE OTTER AND HIS MATE
Rather more than a year has passed since the hunt. The vegetation then
in flower, after blooming again, has lost its glory, and is now
withering and dying. In the marsh the reeds are sapless, the flags
stained by decay, the tall-stemmed flowering plants shrivelled to
skeletons, disarray and discoloration appear everywhere, save perhaps in
the velvet spikes of the mace-reed, whose hue yet rivals in its rich
umber the pelt of the otter curled up below them on the spot where he
lay in the days of rebellious cubhood. But what a huge fellow he has
grown! Fine whelp though he was, he has developed beyond all promise,
and there is not an otter on his rounds that can compare with him. He is
inches longer and pounds heavier even than his father, and it is little
wonder that he should have attracted the notice of sportsmen and become
the talk of the country-side. For though since he reached his prime no
one has caught more than a glimpse of him, yet keeper, bailiff and
moorman have all come on his footprints and given such reports of their
size that interest has become widespread and people have flocked from
far and near to the meets in the hope of seeing him found and hunted.
No one was more interested than the squire, but he succeeded in
concealing the excitement he felt, unless, perhaps, it showed in his
very caustic language to the field at the least tendency to press the
hounds; and when the season ended without the otter being accounted for,
no one save his wife and the old butler knew his disappointment. But
disappointed he was; and indeed it was almost inexplicable that the
hounds should not have chanced on the otter, for he kept to the usual
trails and kennelled in the well-known holts. Once they followed his
line to the creek, but there, owing to the rising tide, the pursuit had
to be abandoned. At another time they actually drew over him where he
lay far in under the bank out of mark.
Yet if he bore a charmed life to hunter and hound, he was not fortunate
enough to keep quite clear of the other perils that beset him. After
having long avoided traps set here and there on his path, he was caught
when about fourteen months old by a gin laid in a shallow, and he
carried the cruel engine about with him for three days before the chain
became so entangled in an alder-root that he was able to wrench himself
free. Soon after he was shot at by old Ikey, the wild-fowler, in the
channel connecting the Big and the Little Liddens. His quickness in
diving at the flash alone saved him, for the man was a dead shot. One
night he came on a gang of poachers ‘burning the reed’ in the pool below
the morass, and stood to watch them, fascinated by the flare that lit up
the excited faces bending over the water. But though scared by the sight
of his enemies, he went only a short distance out of his way to avoid
them, and soon after was chasing a salmon in Moor Pool, killing in time
to make a hurried meal and reach the tarn before dawn.
Long, arduous and generally vain was his pursuit of the fresh-run fish;
but, mighty hunter that he was, he was successful now and then, and
enjoyed a hard-earned feast.
It was after such an achievement that the bailiff stood a-stare at his
tracks, and shouted to the miller to come down to him. ‘What do ’ee
think of it?’ he asked. ‘Think of it?’ said the miller, who had noticed
only the remains of the otter’s banquet, ‘think of it? You didn’t holloa
like that for an old fish, did ’ee? I thought somebody was drow——’
Before he could finish the word he saw and, understanding, added in a
changed tone: ‘Well, well, they prents beat all I ever did see. I’d give
a sack of bests to clap eyes on the varmint as left ’em. Where’s a
lyin’, wonder. Anywheres handy, do ’ee think?’
‘It’s a safe offer you’re making, William Richard. You’ll nae see the
canny vagabond the day. He’s no couching near the kill, I’m thinking,
but miles and miles awa’—at Lone Tarn, maybe, or by the Leeddens. That
print’—and he pointed to a footmark half in and half out of the
water—‘seems to say he was travelling up-water.’
[Illustration: _Photo W. S. Berridge, F.Z.S._ To face p. 108.
ON HIS WAY UP THE CREEK.]
The bailiff was right in supposing that the otter had sought a distant
couch, but wrong as to the direction it took and its whereabouts. At
that moment the animal was curled up asleep in Rundle’s oak coppice
overhanging the estuary, ten miles away as the river winds. The next day
he was in the bat-cave, but he had not come to stay. At night he was off
again, nor did he arrest his steps save to fish and call along the
lonely reaches which led to the swamp he was bound for, a good league
beyond the bridge. Indeed, he was always on the move, seeming to think
it unsafe to sleep two successive days in the same hover. In one
fastness, however, he was content to linger—the headland between the
Gull Rock and the Shark’s Fin. There he would stay for days together,
held by the drear solitude, the supply of fish, and the snug lying in
the caves that honeycombed the cliff, where man never came, and where,
whether the wind blew from the east or from the west, the otter, who
disliked exposure to it as much as any fox, could always find a recess
on the lee side to shelter in. He took no notice of the tolling of the
bell that marked the reef on which he often landed, and the only thing
that drove him away was the flooding of his hovers by tempestuous seas.
This at last made him seek the drain in the island of the squire’s pond
the day before he came to the marsh, sharing it with two other
dog-otters, refugees like himself. At dusk he foraged along-shore
despite the heavy ground seas, and at peep of day returned to his old
couch at the foot of the reeds.
To see him lying there no one would dream that he lived in fear of his
life. His breathing is placid, his limbs are quiet; no whimper, telling
of disturbing dreams, escapes his lips; the very lapdog on the hearth
might be more troubled than he. Nor does he seem to be the ferocious
beast he is till he raises his head and peers suspiciously through the
stems; then the fierce, restless eyes proclaim him a savage and an
outlaw as he scans bar and cliff and creek. On the bare patch on the
hillside his glance rests a moment—one would say the removal of the
furze was a matter of concern to him; but soon, apparently satisfied, he
falls to grooming the glossy coat which is his pride. He bestows much
care on the massive fore-limbs and on the huge, splayed feet whose
prints have stirred the imagination of the neighbourhood. A bit of fur
on his grey waistcoat not being all he would have it, he licks it again
and again; and so the afternoon passes, till the starlings come flying
in to roost, the shadows creep over the furze, and the mists gather on
the mere.
When night had quite closed in, he rose, slipped into the water and,
coming up a good gunshot away, swam rapidly towards the beach. In the
shallows he turned his mask as if to make sure the mist harboured no
enemy, and then took across the bar, spurning the pebbles and seaweed as
he ran. At the edge of the tide he looked back again, but as nothing met
his eyes save the ridge and the stars that shone above it, he moved
leisurely down the shelving strand, plunged into the curl of the wave,
came up in the rough water beyond, made straight for the fishing-ground
some two furlongs from the shore, dived, and began scouring the sand and
the rocks that chequered it. He looked more like a conger than a beast
of prey; yet the fish were quick to recognize their dreaded enemy, and
darted from his path. Of sand-eels and flat-fish he took no heed, but
gave chase to a bass, pursuing it till it was lost to sight in the
depths beyond; then, his lungs being exhausted, he shot up through the
seven fathoms of water and lay awhile on the surface, now in the trough,
now in the crest of the wave, with his face towards the moon, which had
risen clear of the headland. He seemed to be listening, perhaps to the
booming in the caves or to the tolling of the bell on the Shark’s Fin,
but more probably to the surf about the Seal Rock, for presently he swam
towards this favourite landing-place. Within a stone’s throw of it,
however, he dived, and made his way in a spiral down and down until he
reached the mouth of a cave in the base of the great pyramid of which
the rock is the peak.
He knew the place well, for he had been worsted there by a conger some
months before, and he had come now in quest of the same fish. His head
was scarcely through the weeds that half screened the entrance when he
sighted his enemy, who on the instant retreated to its stronghold in the
wall of the cave. There, quicker than it takes to tell, each fastened on
the other. Matched in weight and strength as they were, it is doubtful
whether the otter would have got the mastery even in the open: in the
conger’s own retreat the attempt was hopeless. But the otter did not
realize that, and made frantic efforts to drag the fish from its den.
Despite them all he failed to move it a single inch, and the only result
of his struggles was to free himself from the conger’s jaws. When his
breath was all but exhausted he relinquished his hold and turned to go.
Thereupon the conger, taking the offensive, made a grab at him; it tried
to seize him again near the mouth of the cave to which it pursued him,
but in both cases it failed to get a grip of the slippery skin, and the
next minute the otter was at the surface.
He had not done with his antagonist. As soon as his lungs were refilled,
he dived again, and in a trice was back in the cave, face to face with
his enemy, this time with tactics sobered by experience. Instead of
laying hold of the fish, he kept making feints at it and retreating,
with the object of enticing it into the open; but the wily conger never
budged.
Then the otter examined the wall of the cave in the hope of getting at
the fish from behind, where the powerful tail gripped the rock. There
was no way in, however, and again the baulked marauder had to ascend to
take breath. Three times more he made his way down to the mouth of the
den, dodging to and fro within a foot of the dull green motionless eyes;
but in the end he gave up hope and left.
As he rose to the surface the last time he seized a pollack with such
eagerness that his teeth met through it, and this he took to the rock
and devoured. Then, swimming towards the shore, he fished along the
cliffs, catching wrasse which he left uneaten on the weed-covered ledges
where he landed, till at length, tired of wanton destruction, he entered
the clitter, and after a long interval came out on the topmost boulder,
gained the crest of the cliff, and so crossed to the creek. There he
cruised restlessly from bank to bank, raising himself at times half out
of the water and looking round as if in search of something. Presently
he took to the furze brake that mantles the slope and, traversing the
bare patch, passed up the misty valley, only to return to the sand-hills
beyond the cottage, where, like an embodied spirit of unrest, he
wandered from dune to dune, repeating at times the shrill whistle he had
already sounded from the Seal Rock and the bends of the stream that
winds along the valley, and standing with raised head pointed now this
way, now that, to listen. Once he thought he heard an answering call,
but presently discovered his error, and from that moment gave over
calling.
Thus he spent the hours of the long night before returning to his lair,
where he busied himself in cleansing his lips and whiskers of the slime
that adhered to them and smoothing the patches of his coat, disarranged
by the conger’s jaws. He was long over his toilet, but longer still in
falling asleep: the recollection of his defeat kept him awake and caused
the hair to rise on his neck as it had risen on the neck of his father
at the thought of the pike of Lone Tarn, so that the sun had climbed to
half its height before he drowsed and forgot his troubles. Consequently
it was late when he bestirred himself and took to the mere, where
another dog-otter was already fishing. For a long time each was ignorant
of the other’s presence, but at last chance brought them together, and
as the stranger flashed by, the otter saw that both ears were torn and
that he was otherwise scarred by fighting. Later the two animals passed
and repassed one another on the surface, and towards dawn, when the
otter made for his couch, the new-comer crossed the beach towards the
cliffs.
That night the otter, whilst calling from the Seal Rock, heard a rival
call from far away across the water in the direction of the Shark’s Fin.
Later the cry came from the cliffs below Cold Comfort Farm, and close on
cockcrow from the clitter where he himself had called an hour before.
Every minute he expected the stranger to round the bluff and cross the
bar, and presently he saw him come over the pebble ridge and slip into
the mere. It was the otter of the night before, who passed down the
creek, landed opposite the island, and lay up under the furze.
At nightfall both otters, apparently on good terms, were fishing near
the inflow, when the shrill summons of a female reached their ears and
set them aflame with passion. They swam as fast as their legs could
propel them to the spot whence the call proceeded, and as soon as the
otter had landed and licked the face of the skittish little creature
awaiting the rivals, he turned to face his enemy. Like two furies they
fought in the shallows churned with their incessant movements. As they
struggled they got into deeper water, where, locked together, they sank
beneath the surface, and so long did they remain immersed that it seemed
as though both must be drowned. But the eddies by some decaying lilies
told that the fight was still going on, and at last the beasts came up,
it might be a yard apart. Quick as lightning they closed again and,
rolling over and over, passed from sight a second time in the convulsed
water. Then they half rose, and lashing the water with their powerful
tails, kept snapping at each other with a viciousness that nothing could
exceed, their savage snarls mingling with the clash of their teeth when
they failed to get home. For over an hour the conflict raged, now above,
now below the surface, till in the end, the old otter, unable to
continue the battle, dived to escape further mauling from his victorious
foe. But the wild creature’s jealousy is never appeased unless its rival
is utterly worsted; and a relentless pursuit followed. The bitch otter,
now all ears as she had been all eyes, heard the landing, first of the
fugitive, then of his enraged pursuer, and soon the crashing of the
stems that told of further conflict. At length, in the silence that
succeeded the noise of strife, she saw the victor emerge from the mist
as he swam towards the spot where she awaited him. Thus, by the
discomfiture of the tyrant who had been the terror of every young
dog-otter on his rounds, the otter won the little mate who was to share
his lot.
Happier than they were, two otters could not be. Their close
companionship proved it. Where one was, there was the other. They fished
in company, they hovered together, and when they journeyed to fresh
fishing-grounds they travelled side by side. A fortnight after they had
paired they made their way up the valley of the stream that supplies the
mere, and laid up in holts known to the female otter. Three nights’
fishing and roaming brought them to the great quagmire where the stream
rises, which in summer is but a thread of water winding through the
waste of cotton grasses that nod over it. All day they lay asleep on dry
couches in the heart of the mire, and at dusk the female led over the
high ridge to the watershed that slopes to the northern cliffs where she
had been reared. The stream they followed empties itself near a hamlet,
and there in the cove under the very windows they fished until daybreak
drove them to the cave where they intended to hover. Shaking their
coats, they entered—to find an otter already in possession. The instant
he raised his mask they saw it was he of the scarred face, but before
they advanced a yard he had risen to his feet and was in full flight
towards another outlet. The influence of the fight was still on him, and
he preferred retreat, even by daylight, to risk of another mauling. They
never saw him again.
The otters stayed in the neighbourhood of the hamlet over a week, and
during their sojourn nothing disturbed them, nothing even made them
prick their ears, except the creaking of the oars as the fishermen rowed
past their quarters. On leaving they moved westwards, and beyond two
wild headlands came at dawn to the beetling cliffs where the seals have
their dwelling in vast caverns hollowed by the Atlantic. Swimming
through the turmoil of water at the narrow mouth of the nearest cave,
they landed half-way in, climbed to a ledge, from that to another higher
still, and there lay down on the bare rock and licked themselves,
pausing now and again to look at the seals reclining on the beach of
white sand that loomed in the darkness shrouding the inmost part of the
cave. When they had completed their toilet they curled up on the smooth
slab and, being weary after their long swim, fell asleep, despite the
incessant cries of the seals and the ceaseless roar of the waves. They
did not awake till the last rays of the sun illumined the surf at the
cave’s mouth; but when the shags came flying in to roost, they bestirred
themselves, and presently sallied out to fish on the edge of the
tide-race and gambol in the swirls of the boiling eddies.
They used the cave for nearly a week, until tempted by the very fine
weather to lie out. Then for three days they hovered in the basin at the
summit of the Pillar Rock, about a furlong from the cliffs, their
presence known only to the gulls and gannets that sailed overhead. On
resuming their round, they came, after four hours’ journeying, to the
beach of the Gulf Stream fronting the west, and there they fished and
frolicked amongst the waves that broke on the shelly strand, and sought
couches amongst the sea-rushes that tuft the dunes. They lingered there
week after week till the weather changed, but on the night of a lurid
sunset, rounded the grim promontory which marks the end of all the land,
and set their faces towards the marsh. On the way thither the female
otter kept biting off the rushes and carrying them in her mouth, and
when she reached the mere she at once chose a place in the heart of the
reed-bed to make a nest. From it soon proceeded the faint squeals of
four baby otters, the rearing of which, as it proved, was to try the
resources of herself and her mate to the utmost.
CHAPTER IX
FROST AND FAMINE
After the night on which the whelps were born the otter repaired to his
old hover on the point, whence he could slip into the water by day and,
without exposing himself, catch what fish his mate needed to make good
the drain on her strength. In going to and from the spot near the nest
where he left his takings for her he soon beat a path amongst the reeds,
by which the little mother reached the mere at nightfall and joined her
mate in raiding the fish that seemed more abundant than ever. Eels
indeed were scarce since the autumn migration, but of pike, tench and
bream there was great store. On these the otters fed for the most part;
but occasionally they fished in the sea, and took toll of the pollack,
plaice, conger and shell-fish found in the inshore waters. They could
not have wished for greater variety of prey, and the supply seemed as
assured as it was inexhaustible.
But there was soon to steal upon the unsuspecting creatures a frost
which exceeded in severity any visitation of cold that even the old
marshman had witnessed. It set in whilst the cubs were yet blind, and on
the second night the water near the nest was frozen thick enough to bear
the otter’s weight, as were also the shallows near the bar, for he
landed on the ice there to eat his supper. Before many days passed,
strings of wild-fowl arrived, causing great rejoicing to the otters,
who, far from regarding them as harbingers of famine, foresaw an
agreeable change in their usual fish diet. Nor had they occasion to look
with apprehension on the gradual encroachment of the ice, inasmuch as
the breathing-holes which they made and kept open enabled them to range
as freely as before the frost. Of course, they had to bring their prey
to the open water; but for the trouble this gave them they found some
compensation in the convenient landing-place afforded by the edge of the
ice, which was soon dotted with the remains of their repasts. Moreover,
the great sheet of ice served them as a playground when they were weary
of gambolling in the mere, and on it they cut mad capers which held the
mallard, widgeon, and teal at gaze.
Protected by their thick coats the creatures enjoyed the biting cold,
and the cubs, cuddled together in the cosy nest, suffered no ill effects
from its rigour. The pike, like the otters, revelled in the frost; but
the tench, and the eels that had not gone to sea, felt its pinch, and
the bream forsook their usual feeding-grounds. Where these gregarious
fish had betaken themselves the otters never knew, but the eels and
tench buried themselves in the mud and gave much trouble in the capture.
Still, disagreeable though the process was, both these fish were to be
had by patient searching in the ooze—at least, it was so at first; then
the ground ice, which had gripped the stems of the weeds, spread and
spread as the cold increased, until it formed an impenetrable layer over
most of the bed of the mere. This followed on the withdrawal of the
sea-fish to the warmer depths of the offing, inaccessible to the otters,
which were thus caused no little uneasiness.
It was the closing of the breathing-holes however a few days later that
seriously alarmed them, all but costing the dog-otter his life; for,
never dreaming that he would be unable to reopen them at will as
heretofore and get the air he needed, he made without misgiving for the
best hunting-ground, far in beneath the ice-field, and after capturing a
pike, swam unconcernedly to the nearest vent-hole. A single bump of his
head, hitherto sufficient, failing to break the crust, he delivered two
more blows in quick succession; and when these proved of no effect, he
saw his danger, and hurried to the next vent-hole, hard by a frozen-in
trimmer. One blow, and only one, did he give; then he dropped the pike,
and with lightning-like strokes of his powerful hind-legs made for the
open water. It was a race for life, and he knew it. His lungs ached for
want of air; again and again in the next few seconds—seconds that
seemed hours—he was on the point of opening his mouth and throat to
find an impossible relief, but he forbore, holding on his desperate way,
till presently he shot from under the ice-roof and drew breath again in
the frosty air. He had escaped drowning, but only to be confronted the
very next night with difficulties even more aggravated.
The cold had then reached its greatest intensity. The marshman was
conscious of its severity as he sat by the fire, listening to the
honking of the geese and the trumpeting of the swans—rare sounds, that
were music to the aged wild-fowler, and kept him to the chimney-corner
later than his wont. Yet at daybreak he was at his lattice to get a view
of the overnight arrivals. To his amazement, not a living thing could he
see. He rubbed the pane, he rubbed his eyes, and looked again; then he
realized—what he had never seen before—that the mere was completely
frozen. Despite the depth of the water, the current, and the restless
movements of the wild-fowl, the frost had had its way; the vast sheet
was one continuous field of steel-blue ice. The otters had witnessed the
sealing of the mere, had watched the ducks, geese and swans take wing
and melt into the night, before they realized their desperate situation;
then, had the cubs been able to travel, they would at once have turned
their back on the marshland, as the wild-fowl had done, and made across
country for the salmon river, where fish crowded the spawning-beds. But
as yet the cubs could only sprawl, and to carry them over the miles of
moorland that lay between or to attempt to reach it by way of the sea
and the estuary was out of the question; they had no choice but to stay
and face the famine that threatened.
As yet they had not suffered at all; indeed, they had caught more fish
than they needed, and for their leavings the hill-foxes regularly
visited the ice. Amongst them was a poor, half-starved vixen, who, along
with the otters, witnessed the ice meet across the strait of open water.
Thin as she was, her lot was preferable to that of the otter, with cubs
wholly dependent on her; for it seemed impossible to support them unless
the frost should soon relent.
Shut off from the mere and the stream that fed it, the night after the
closing of the ice the otters turned to the land and quested wherever
cover afforded prospect of finding prey. They threaded the reeds and
furze-brake, they drew the two osier-beds and tussocky ground between
them, but met with nothing save a few dead starlings, from whose sorry
skeletons they turned away, hungry though they were. On the next night
the hard-set creatures made their way along the stream until they came
to the solitary homestead in the heart of the western moor. There they
left the ice, clambered up the high bank, and climbed the farmyard wall
to the cart-shed, where, standing on their hind-legs, they examined the
crannies in the wall for snails, but found none. Coming out, they
skirted the pigsty, passed between an alder-tree and the lighted window,
and just as they rounded the corner of the house, found themselves
almost face to face with a white cat. Savage tom though he was, he never
thought of fighting. In a twinkling he was in full retreat, with both
otters at his heels. The male was the faster, and he pressed the cat
very closely across the small garden in front of the house, through a
gap in the wall, and along the strip of field at the side. He must have
overtaken it before reaching the gate had not the cat suddenly swerved
and gained a couple of feet, maintaining the lead until it passed
through the hole in the stable door at the upper end of the farmyard.
The otter followed. Scarcely were they out of sight when the female
otter came up the yard on their scent, and also passed in through the
aperture at the foot of the door. A fearful spitting ensued, and
immediately the cat reappeared with the male so close behind that his
nose all but touched the big fluffed-out brush. At a desperate pace both
sped over the frozen dung-heap towards the alder-tree; the cat swarmed
up, despite the efforts of the otter to seize it, and from its safe
perch amongst the topmost branches sat looking down at both otters, from
whose nostrils the breath issued like jets of steam. Presently the
blazing up of the furze fire within drew the eyes of the otters to the
window, and when a shadow fell on the blind they slunk away, followed
the rude cart-track to the boundary of the farm, and struck straight
across the moor in the direction of the Liddens.
A bitter wind swept the waste, but they held on in the teeth of it,
crossed the frozen pools, and headed for the mere. On reaching it the
female otter made straight for the nest, where she lay oppressed with
the dread of famine, till fatigue had its way and sleep made her deaf to
the plaints of her unfed cubs. At dusk she and her mate foraged
alongshore and found a few limpets, on which they managed to keep
themselves and the whelps from starving until the supply failed. Then
the little mother, driven to extremity, dulled the gnawing pangs of
hunger with seaweed.
To the famine under which parents and whelps were wasting was presently
added the outlawed creature’s most treacherous enemy—a fall of snow. It
began one morning soon after they had sought their couches, and did not
cease until a thick covering lay on the marsh and on the hills about it.
That night the otters again foraged along the coast, but nothing passed
their lips save a few more limpets and a little water from the runnel
which still trickled in the cave behind the clitter. Yet, distressed as
they were, they rolled and gambolled on the snow in the heart of the
mere, whence the tell-tale trails diverged, ready to betray their
whereabouts to the first comer. Some hours later, however, more snow
fell, obliterating the tracks, and spreading a coverlet over mother and
young where they slumbered in the deep nest. The mother’s light sleep
was broken by the creaking of the windlass over the well and the
quacking of the marshman’s ducks, but both sounds, under the muffling
effect of the snow, seemed to come from far beyond the cottage. The
quacking of the ducks was so tantalizing to the famished creature that
she actually left the nest and, with just the arch of her back showing
above the snow, stole towards the spot whence the noise proceeded. On
and on she forged her way, and actually advanced to within gunshot of
the duck-house. Then her courage failed her, and caused her to retreat
along the furrow she had made.
She was afoot again at early nightfall, joined her mate and followed him
to the shore. After they had fished far and wide to no purpose she
turned to him with a distracted look that meant, ‘Whither now?’ For
answer he shifted his gaze from her face towards the cottage; and when,
after some hesitation, he moved towards it, she understood, and took her
place at his heels. They passed very near the nest—near enough indeed
to catch, despite the loud rustling of the reeds, the plaints of the
cubs. On hearing the pitiful cries, the mother, her maternal instincts
stirred, quickened her pace in a succession of leaps that gave her the
lead, which she maintained until the sight of the cottage brought her to
a standstill and her mate to her side; then, with their necks raised
like little watch-towers, their keen eyes reconnoitred the enemy’s
dwelling. Nobody stirred, no light showed; the whistling wind favoured
them; all seemed propitious, and they drew near the duck-house. Within a
few yards of the door they suddenly halted, turning their heads towards
the cottage. But it was a needless alarm; the noise that scared them was
only the scraping of the wall by the branch of a medlar-tree. The
instant they discovered the cause of their hesitation they stepped
forward, and put their noses to the crack at the bottom of the door. The
scent of the birds within nearly drove the starving creatures mad. But
how were they to get at them? Though only a wooden partition separated
them from the savoury prey, it was enough. They never thought of biting
through it; to crawl under or dig their way in was impossible, and the
aperture at the top seemed out of their reach. Nevertheless, this
opening was their only chance of entrance; and frantic were the efforts
they made to obtain a hold on the top of the door. More than once the
otter all but succeeded; had his claws been long and sharp instead of
short and blunted, he would have got a footing and probably an entry.
But the door rattled and creaked with their futile attempts, and the
noise, with the quacking of the terror-stricken ducks, reached the ears
of the marshman as he lay listening to the gale. Old and stiff though he
was, it was the work of a moment to jump out of bed, open the lattice,
and shout at the top of his voice. At the sound the guilty creatures
stole away in the direction of the big osier-bed; yet their lot was so
desperate that when they neared the furze-rick the little mother stopped
and looked back. Despite her dread of the marshman, she would have
returned to the duck-house had her mate been willing; but whilst she
stood he kept on, and presently she followed and overtook him. It was
with weary steps they plodded forward, hopeless as two otters can be.
Whither could they turn? Not to the hills, whence even a polecat had
come to the marsh to forage; not to the cliffs nor inshore waters; they
knew them only too well. And so with no goal to make for, the luckless
creatures passed into the night.
CHAPTER X
TRACKED
Day had scarcely broken when the old marshman came bustling out of his
cottage to see whether the fox—as he supposed the marauder to be—had
carried off any of his ducks. Before he had crossed the little garden,
however, he descried the snow-marks on the door and, from their size,
judged them to be made by a badger, till his eyes fell on the
unmistakable trail outside the gate, which placed the raiders’ identity
beyond all possible doubt.
‘Oters! Lor, whoever would ha’ thought it?’
And then, as he remembered that the mere was frozen and the creatures
shut off from the water, the expression of surprise changed to one of
triumph, and forgetting for a moment his decrepitude, he exultingly
exclaimed: ‘They’re mine—sure as eggs, they’re mine!’ It was not their
destruction that elated him, but the prospect—the almost certain
prospect—of securing their pelts, and of adding a sovereign to the
dwindling store in the thatch.
Of course, before he could dispose of the skins he must find the otters,
and shoot them when found; but what could be easier, he thought, than to
track them down with such a trail; and then even he, old and infirm
though he was, could hardly fail to hit the long-bodied creatures as
they left their couches and floundered through the snow. So easy did the
task seem in the first flush of excitement, before the difficulties
presented themselves, crowding upon him as if to shake him from his
purpose. The bitterness of the wind, the depths of the drifts, the
possibility—nay, the probability, of the creatures having sought the
cliffs, his own physical debility: all confronted him, but only to be
made light of and swept aside before he turned and hobbled back to the
cottage, determined at all costs to make the attempt.
On crossing the threshold he went straight to the hearth, his eyes
raised to the two guns and a brass blunderbuss that rested on wooden
pegs above it. The flintlock was within easy reach; but it was the
modern gun he meant to use and, standing on tiptoe, he managed to grasp
the hammers and take it down. A little over a year before, when he had
put the wonderful piece there, he thought he should never use it again,
never dreaming of such an easy chance as that offered by otters on the
snowed-up mere.
‘Can I hold straight enow, wonder.’ ‘Iss, sure,’ came the complacent
answer; ‘you can hold straight enow for that.’
Nevertheless, as if conscious that he could not and fearing to put his
enfeebled powers to the test, he kept blowing on the barrels, though all
the dust had gone, until at last, remembering the dark, snow-laden sky,
he raised the stock to his shoulder, shut one eye, and looked along the
gun. In his younger days man and weapon might have been molten together
in bronze, so steadily could he stand and hold; but now, as he had
dreaded, the sight zig-zagged over the pane when he aimed at a starling
on the medlar-tree outside.
‘’Tis no use; couldn’t hit a seal, leave alone an oter, with muzzle
wobblin’ all over the place like that—dear, dear, oh, dear!’ and he
sank into the corner of the settle.
But as he sat before the furze fire which a girl was tending, warmth
came back to his hands, the thought of the golden sovereign quickened
his blood, and he resolved to make a second attempt. Rising to his feet,
he again raised the gun to his shoulder and, holding his breath, aimed
at the bird still bunched up on the swaying branch. As the sight kept
fairly true to the mark, confidence returned, the old man’s face
brightened, and resting the weapon against the table, he set about his
preparations. He fetched from a drawer in the dresser powder-flask,
shot-pouch, caps and wads; he loaded both barrels, and replaced the
ramrod. Then he turned up the collar of his worn velveteen coat, pulled
the badger-skin cap over his ears and, telling the child he should not
be away long, sallied out with the gun at half-cock under his arm.
The trail led past the frozen-in boat towards the tossing withy-bed, but
just before reaching it, swerved unexpectedly, as if the creatures had
caught a glimpse of some forager who had forestalled them, or had all at
once thought it best to make without delay for the farther side of the
marsh. Bending his bowed figure as he turned, the old man set his face
to the gale and plodded bravely along by the side of the tracks, the
snow in places reaching half-way up his leather leggings. The depth of
it made him hopeful that the otters had not gone far before lying up;
so, as he drew near each bit of cover that offered harbourage, he raised
the hammers and held the gun at the ready. He did this again and again,
whilst beating the tussocky ground on the farther bank of the stream,
where the otters had stayed to quest before crossing the unbroken
expanse of snow that stretched to the foot of the hill.
At every stride now he was getting more and more under shelter of the
land; every score yards the snow was becoming appreciably deeper and
deeper, until at last it lay in a big drift that threatened to bar his
way. A break in the embankment, fluted and escalloped by the wind,
showed where the otters had tunnelled their way through; and the old
man, sanguine as to their near neighbourhood, after blowing on his
numbed fingers, tightened his grip on the barrels and determined to
follow. As the drift was formidable enough to daunt a younger and a
taller man, he twice shrank from committing himself to the smothering
mass. But again the thought of the golden sovereign, now as he believed
so nearly his, lured him on: he held the gun above his head, went at the
yielding obstacle, sank in it, disappeared all but hand and gun, fought
with it, and at last battled through. Furiously brushing the snow out of
his eyes, he looked eagerly to right and to left, thinking the game was
afoot and striving to escape; but among the laid reeds that met his gaze
no living thing stirred: only the big and the little trails, as plain as
under the wall of the duck-house, wound in and out amongst the stems,
trending in the direction of the mere. ‘No hurry, my beauties; I shall
come up wi’ ’ee by-and-by;’ and snap, snap, went the brittle reeds as he
made his slow way through them. He kept looking eagerly ahead as though
he expected to catch sight of the game retreating before his noisy
advance, but nothing caught his eye save the wing of a moorhen on which
some fortunate forager had broken his fast.
Yet though he saw nothing of the otters themselves, he came on evidence
in the snow which told him they had not spent the night wholly in
wandering. Between the reeds and the creek were the beaten places where
they had rolled, and a gunshot farther, the slope down which they had
slid. On sighting the slide he stopped, astonished that famine-stricken
creatures, as he knew they must be, could waste a moment in gambols.
‘Most playsomest critturs on God’s eerth,’ said he; but at once resumed
his murderous errand, now with grave misgivings lest he should presently
discover that the otters had kept straight on to the bar and cliffs, and
got beyond his reach. He was greatly elated, therefore, on reaching the
furzy foreland, to find that his fears were groundless, that the otters,
instead of crossing the mouth of the creek, had rounded the point and
passed up the inlet; for so he felt sure of coming upon them, and most
probably in the nearer of the two likeliest holts towards which,
whenever he peeped from under the sheltering peak of his cap, the
gleaming eyes were directed. It was the ancient pollard whence he had
twice seen an otter steal away as he sculled past the island on which it
grew.
‘They’re theere right enow,’ the old man said when he saw the trail turn
that way, and raising both hammers to full cock, he went on with a
stealth he had not before thought necessary. As he reached the island he
lost the tracks under the snow-laden tangle. This he proceeded to beat
thoroughly; but as he did not really expect to find the quarry there,
presently he ceased trampling, looked towards the hollow trunk where he
believed they were, called out, ‘Harkin’, are ’ee?’ crept as close to
the bole as he dared, and peeped through the cleft. He was obliged to
keep at some little distance to get a fair shot when they bolted; and
screw his eyes and crane his neck as he might, it was impossible to
distinguish the dark bodies in the gloomy recess. He felt sure however
they were there, and it occurred to him he might dislodge them with a
snowball. Taking up a cake of snow that bore the impress of his
hobnailed soles, he made two balls, which he hurled in quick succession
through the opening. The second was scarcely out of his hand before he
picked up the gun he had laid down, and stood ready to shoot the animals
as they escaped; but still no otter showed. ‘Not theere after all,
s’pose,’ said he; yet he advanced on tiptoe to the tree, kicked it, and
jumped back with an agility that showed his expectations were not quite
exhausted. Again there was no response: nothing stirred except the snow
that fell from the rickety crown. Then he walked up to the tree, and
peering through the crack, examined the dusky shell from root to branch
to find nothing save an old nest with fish-bones on the ground beside
it.
Convinced at last that the otters really were not there, he proceeded to
make a cast beyond the island, using the gun to steady him as he crossed
some exposed ice to the snow. There the sight of the trail brought home
to him his want of prevision, and threw him into a rage.
‘Drat my stupid old head, why didn’t I ring the eyot afore?’ came the
quick, hot words. ‘Once bit, twice shy,’ he growled, and strode from
bank to bank in search of a return trail which would prevent his being
fooled again. But neither on the open snow nor amongst the reeds was
there a sign that the otters had broken back. On regaining the track he
advanced along it, confident now that the creatures were lying up at the
end of the creek.
‘At laist, and worth all the trouble. In pride of pelt they’ll be. Take
your time mind, aim for the head, and the big un fust.’
The nearer he got to the end of the inlet, the more agitated he became,
until, on reaching the spot where the otters had passed in single file
between two tussocks before entering the brambles, he was in a fever of
agitation. But despite his excitement, the precautions he took showed he
had got himself well in hand, that he was anxious to make the most of
his hardly-earned chance. He raised the flaps of his cap that no sound
might escape his ears; he brushed away every particle of snow from the
barrels of the gun, and to satisfy himself that the weapon would not
miss fire, he raised the copper caps and saw that the powder was still
up in the nipples. Then, everything being ready, he began to trample
upon the matted sprays in order to drive the otters from their last
possible retreat.
He had taken some half a dozen steps when a patch of snow falling from
the brambles well in front informed him that something was afoot. On the
instant he stopped to listen, whilst his restless eyes sought the likely
points of escape, and the gun shook in his nervous hands. As the otters
did not show, he felt sure they were stealing away before him, and
carefully watched some reeds into which they must pass on leaving the
thicket. Seeing a slight agitation in the stems, he tore like a madman
through the rest of the scrub, and stood at the edge ready to shoot.
But, too excited to await the otters’ pleasure, after the briefest delay
he advanced again, not however with the reckless strides of a few
moments before, but with gingerly tread, as if now that the supreme
moment had come he was apprehensive of dislodging the creatures he was
so eager to kill. He had taken a few cautious steps when there was a
slight rustling; then, to his dismay, a bittern rose and flew down the
creek. Up went the gun, the fore-finger found, but did not pull, the
trigger; and the bird escaped without further scare. It was a terrible
disappointment, under which the old man collapsed. The gun fell from his
shoulder; his jaw dropped; the eyes, but an instant before full of fire,
were dull and listless. He seemed inches shorter as he staggered through
the reeds and along the gully towards a small enclosure about which the
banks rose almost sheer.
‘Niver can be in the Piskies’ Parlour to be sure; and yet how could they
get out?’
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when his eyes fell on the fresh
marks against the face of the scarp. Then he saw the footprints left on
the snow by the otters as they sprang to the lowest ledge.
‘Has the frost touched my brain, or the little folks my eyes? Nonsense!
nothin’ of the kind; thee’rt seein’ things as they are. Well, well,’ he
went on after drawing a long breath, ‘I’ve been wanderin’ about the
ma’sh for wellnigh fifty year, and come on many tracks, but never prents
like these. Lor mercy! must be a mighty big varmint as left ’em. What a
catch if only I could ha’ bagged un!’
The sight of the footprints had put fresh life into him; he determined
to follow as far as he could.
‘I’m bone-tired, but I’ll see it through if I drop on the track.’
Only a cat could follow where the otters had climbed; so he made his way
back to the creek and clambered up the high bank to the wind-swept ridge
leading to the cliffs. A forlorn figure the old man looked as he fought
his way in the teeth of the gale to the brink of the precipice, only to
find the trail end on a slab of rock, from which the spray had washed
some of the snow that covered it.
‘It’s all up,’ he said, turning his eyes to the great pile of loose
rocks farther along the cliff; ‘they’re gone to clitter. Now, old fool,
goest home along.’
After a glance at the sea, on which not a sail or a wing showed, he made
his way to the point of the bluff above the mere, and letting himself
carefully over the edge, succeeded by clinging to rock and tussock in
making the descent without mishap. At the foot he stood awhile to rest;
then, presently, set out across the snowfield for the cottage, his
thoughts full of the otter, which however he had given up all hope of
getting.
So convinced was he that the creatures were in the cliff that he
attached no importance to the trail he stumbled on in the midst of the
mere, till he came to the spot where the tracks forked; but there he
awoke to the significance of the situation.
‘Oh, oh,’ said he, as he checked his steps, ‘so this was where you
parted, was it?—one for the reed-bed, t’other for up along, the withies
most like.’
After a pause he added with a chuckle, ‘Jack oter, you’re mine yet.’
At the thought of the valuable prize falling to him he was all life and
energy again: the vigour of his stride showed it as he stepped along the
furrow made by the otter, with eyes fixed on the isolated clump near the
inflow through which he expected it would pass. His surprise and
excitement may be imagined when on reaching it and ringing it, he found
no sign of track on the snow beyond.
‘Niver can be in this morsel of a patch,’ said he under his breath, as
he took up a station between it and the reed-bed he felt sure the otter
would make for. ‘Yet eh must be, eh must be.’ Then, raising his voice,
he called out, ‘King Oter, thy time is come; show thyself and get the
business over.’ With that he began to beat the reeds with the gun,
trampling the stems as he advanced. In the midst of the clump he came on
the couch. He stooped quickly and felt that it was warm. ‘I knawed thee
was theere,’ said he; and crack, crack, crack went the reeds as he
levelled them with the ground.
Less than a dozen yards of cover remained when the old man, in his
anxiety to get a glimpse of the otter, knelt down and peeped through the
stems. Only the head of the otter showed, but the eyes of man and beast
met. Before the marshman could regain his feet, the creature had bolted,
making wild leaps in its attempt to escape. Bang! bang! first one
barrel, then the other; and the old man, who believed he had wounded the
animal, started in mad pursuit. For a few strides he actually gained on
the short-legged creature: but for want of breath he might have
overtaken it. As it was, all he could do after covering a score yards
was to lament his helplessness, and watch the huge dark form draw
farther and farther away. ‘What a grand beast!’ he gasped again and
again; then suddenly, ‘He’s down!’ he exclaimed, starting to run. But
the otter was not down: not a pellet had struck him: he was only lost to
sight in a drift. When he reappeared near the bar, the excited marshman
saw his error, and once more stood to watch. On reaching the ridge the
otter ran along it, showing his magnificent proportions. Once he stopped
to look back at his enemy; a few moments later he disappeared from view,
and the old man turned on his heel and made for home.
CHAPTER XI
BACK IN THE OLD HAUNTS
On passing out of the old man’s sight the otter made for the cliffs,
where he lay close, impatiently awaiting nightfall that he might return
to his mate. The light had scarcely faded when he took to the water.
Early though it was to be abroad, he had not got far before he espied
her swimming towards him, and presently he saw that she held a cub in
her mouth. The reports of the gun had made her apprehensive for the
safety of her young, the tiniest of which she was removing first to the
clitter. The sea was rough and the spindrift blinding, yet she held on
with her precious burden till she had reached a cave behind the boulders
and laid the dripping mite in a nest there. Then she hurried back for
another; when that was placed beside the first she fetched another, and
yet another, till all four were in safety.
As soon as she had deposited the last she assisted her mate to scour the
sea-bed between the cliffs and the Seal Rock in search of prey to
relieve her maddening hunger. For hours the couple drew likely ground
without result; but when they were about to end their quest they came on
a stray pot containing a big crayfish. The find was as welcome as it was
unexpected. In their eagerness to get at the prize the starving
creatures swarmed about the osier cage like terriers about a rat-trap,
vainly striving to find a way between the bars or through the aperture
at the top, which was all but closed by the battering the pot had
received. It was a most tantalizing situation. The otters’ only hope was
to stay near the cage until tide and ground-swell should drive it
ashore, dash it to pieces against the cliff, and leave the crayfish at
their mercy. So through the long night they never left it except to
breathe. In the end their patience was rewarded. The breakers got hold
of the trap, tumbled it over and over, and wedged it between two rocks,
smashing one of the bars, and making a hole through which the female
otter managed to squeeze. In a twinkling she had seized the fish and
crushed its life out. As soon as the wave which covered her withdrew,
she began devouring her prey. Whilst she feasted, the otter made frantic
efforts to get in, but failed, and presently desisted, contenting
himself with the bits that escaped through the bars. The tide rose, yet
the little creature, despite the rush of the waters and the blows she
received from the stone that weighted the pot, remained where she was
until she had consumed all except the feelers and harder parts of the
shell; then, leaving by the way she had entered, she skirted reef and
ledge in the dawn-light, and made straight for the clitter. Her one
thought was for her famished cubs, which, before the sun was very high,
she was suckling from her abundance, purring whilst they fed.
That day a thaw set in, and a shag appeared on the Seal Rock; The otter,
who had shifted his quarters to avoid the drippings from the cliffs,
after watching the bird’s fishing for a time, began himself to fish. At
the end of a long, fruitless quest he landed; but now, in his extremity,
no longer careful for his safety, he lay out in the open on a granite
boulder. Happily no harm came of it. Through the night he and his mate
hunted in the deep water beyond the rock, still without seeing a fin, so
that when the sun peeped above the sea the creatures returned to the
cliffs in despair. At noon the mother brought her puny little ones from
the dank cave and laid them in the sun’s rays to enjoy the genial
warmth; but as they soon cried to be fed, for fear their plaints might
betray them she carried them back to the nest, and there, lulled by the
sob of the restless tide, she at length dropped off to sleep.
She might have slept for two hours when the clamour of sea-fowl awakened
her and brought her in haste to the edge of the clitter, where the otter
was already on his feet gazing at a flock of gulls, whose excited
movements showed they were over fish. Whilst they looked the shoal
disappeared, and the gulls dispersed—like the wonderful scouts they
are—to watch for its return to the surface. The instant the birds
congregated over an agitated patch of water between the clitter and the
Seal Rock the eager otters slipped into the sea. Soon they were near
enough to distinguish the silvery spoil in the beaks of the birds, and
two minutes later they were in the middle of the shoal.
Luckily the fish were sprats, so small that the otters could eat them
without landing, and if the shoal had remained long on the surface the
animals would have filled themselves to repletion; but before they had
gobbled down a tithe of what they needed the fish again sought the
depths. The otters pursued as far as breath allowed, raising themselves
in the water when they came up, to look towards the direction the fish
had taken. Time after time they stood up to gaze over the heaving
surface, but with the gathering of the dusk and the withdrawal of the
gulls to the cliffs they ceased, and landed on the Seal Rock.
As the few sprats had excited rather than allayed their appetite, after
a short rest they began to fish again, little dreaming of the struggle
in which they were almost at once to be engaged. For they had scarcely
reached the bottom when a tiny fish darted across an opening between two
clumps of weed; close behind, in pursuit of it, came a big conger. At
once they took up the chase of the pursuer where it followed its prey
from tangle to rock and from rock to tangle and presently, when a sudden
turn brought them within striking distance of the unsuspecting fish,
they rose from beneath, careening over so as to fasten on the fleshy
throat. Their teeth had scarcely met before the still depths were
convulsed by the writhings of the fish in its efforts to shake off its
assailants, who however hung on till their victim grew quieter. Then,
using their tails and hind-feet, they raised their prey through fathom
after fathom until, for lack of breath, they had to let go and come to
the top. It was a few seconds only before they were back again; but the
disabled fish made good use of the interval, and had reached the mouth
of the cave when they overhauled it. They began anew to drag it towards
the surface. The monster writhed in their grip, trying again and again
to fold its tail about some projecting rock past which it was being
lifted, but it failed to get a hold, and was borne up, and up, and up,
until the stars were just visible through the water. Then the otters
were again compelled to let go and rise to breathe. At the third attempt
they barely held their own against the fish, so violent was its
resistance; at the next, however, after a terrible struggle they
succeeded in getting it to the surface, where with glowing eyes they lay
and rested beside their ghostlike prey before essaying to land it. Soon
they began towing it to the cliffs towards which the tide had drifted
them, but before they had got far the conger, singling out the stronger
enemy, strove to coil itself about the otter. Failing to get a grip of
the slippery, lissom form, it lashed the sea as if to vent its rage at
its own impotence. Then it took to shaking its head and snapping its
jaws. The otters however had it helpless, and held grimly on their way
till they brought it to the edge of the breakers, where from sheer
exhaustion they let go, resting awhile to recover a little strength
before committing themselves to the welter of the surf. Though the fish
too seemed to be at its last gasp, suddenly, as if roused by the warning
voice of the breakers to a final effort, it shook itself free from the
otters, who had seized it as it stirred, and, with a great swirl,
disappeared beneath the surface. Like a flash the otters were after it,
but rose without it once and again. The third time the fish was between
them. Almost immediately a wave bigger than its fellows curled over
them, buried them in its mass of waters, and hurled them on the sand, up
which the otters dragged their prize inch by inch till they had brought
it to a wide table of rock beyond reach of the surf. Although out of the
water, the conger still writhed until the otter bit through its great
backbone; then it lay almost quiet whilst the starving creatures sliced
and munched and gulped as if they never would be satisfied. Satiety
however came at last, and when they could eat no more they withdrew to
the clitter—night though it was—to sleep off the orgy that marked the
close of the days of want.
With the continuance of mild weather pollack and plaice returned to the
inshore waters, so that soon, through the plentiful supply of food, the
otters regained their good condition, whilst the cubs lost their
emaciated appearance and throve apace. From that time the ties that
bound the otter to his mate grew looser and looser, and a week after the
young had learnt to swim he left her altogether, to resume his solitary
life.
For a while he kept to the headland and the cliffs near the Gull Rock:
then, tiring of these haunts, he crossed to the wild coast opposite,
where he lingered week after week, until the breath of spring quickened
his roving instincts and set him longing for the old trails. So he
retraced his steps from the point of the promontory to which he had
penetrated, and on the night of the full moon drifted up the estuary to
Tide End. There, after fishing, he sought the shelter of a pile of
faggots before the villagers were astir. He slept soundly, despite the
near neighbourhood of man, and when dusk fell swam past the lighted
cottages towards the wood. Landing there and striking straight through
the trees, he held on without a stop till he reached the rude wall at
the upper end, on which he stood to listen to the croakings proceeding
from the marshy flat beyond. Presently he stole towards the biggest of
the pools that silvered the rushy waste; but when about midway he must
have been heard or seen, for the frogs there ceased their chorus, and
forthwith the marsh became as silent as when in the grip of the frost.
On gaining the water’s edge he dived, and in a twinkling was back with a
frog, which he skinned and devoured. This was the first of some half a
score that he caught and ate before repairing to a ditch-like piece of
water, dark from the shadowing alders, where he long remained feasting.
At length he had had enough and, leaving the marsh, made for the river,
which he followed mile after mile till he reached the morass and laid up
in the hollow bank in which he was born.
Meanwhile otter-hunting had begun, and all the country-side over men
were on the lookout for his tracks. Not since the mysterious
disappearance of the bob-tailed fox had so keen an interest been taken
in any wild creature. Through the winter he had been the topic of
conversation in the chimney-corner of cotter and crofter, and a very
frequent intruder on the thoughts of the squire. The slightest
association was enough to recall the creature to his mind: the sound of
running water, the appearance of a salmon-poacher in court, even the
sight of the short-legged animal carved on the screen of the parish
church—indeed, his preoccupation showed itself in many acts of his
daily life.
Whilst the snow lasted he went every morning to the pond to look for
tracks, and as soon as the first daffodils bloomed he began to dip his
hand in the streams to try their temperature, longing for the time when
the water would be warm enough for the hounds to draw them. In the
meantime he busied himself with the various duties of a master of otter
hounds. He visited the kennels every day to make sure that the hounds
got road exercise to harden their feet. He succeeded after much trouble
in inducing the keepers on neighbouring estates to remove the traps
which had been the bane of the Hunt. A fortnight before the opening meet
he rode round to see the water-bailiff, the miller, the moorman, old
Ikey, and the marshman, asked them to keep a lookout for the otter, and
parted from each of them with the words, ‘Now don’t forget, my man.
Morning, noon, or night, bring me word if you strike his trail.’ It is
not true, as alleged by the gossips of the port, that he offered a
reward of ten pounds for information that should lead to the finding and
death of the otter, though had there been an offer of twice that sum the
trackers could not have shown greater keenness than they did. There was
evidence of it even before the search began, for every man from far and
near who meant to take a part turned up at the hour fixed for the
allotment of the waters, determined to get his rights. This unusual
procedure had been adopted at the instance of the squire, in order to
avoid the disputes and bad blood which he foresaw would arise unless the
beats were formally assigned before the season opened.
Raftra, in his ‘Annals of our Village,’ gives a very full account of the
meeting. It took place at the Druid’s Arms, with Reuben Gribble, the
landlord, in the chair. Between him and the red-bearded water-bailiff
sat the venerable tenant of the Home Farm, called in ostensibly on
account of his wide knowledge of the streams, but really because of his
well-known powers of conciliation, which were needed as soon as the
business of the evening began. The chief difficulty was with Sandy, the
bailiff, who claimed by virtue of his office the whole length of the
river, from Tide End to Lone Tarn. Though he was one against a score,
counting the men in the doorway, he seemed bent on maintaining the
unreasonable position he had taken up. When the miller and the moorman
asked him for the reaches which they preferred and which every man round
the table thought they were entitled to, he brushed their requests aside
as if they were nobodies. As Raftra says, a Lord High Ranger couldn’t
have treated vagrom men with more contempt. This haughty demeanour
enraged everyone; in fact, it was all Geordie and the wilder spirits
could do to keep their clenched fists off the bailiff’s person. As it
was, angry words passed, but when a fight between the gipsy and the Scot
seemed imminent, the old reeve rose, lifted his thin hands to command
silence, and said:
‘Don’t quarrel, my friends—don’t quarrel; better the otter never came
anist us if it’s to lead to blows. And yet, as an old tracker, it does
my heart good to see how eager every man of ’ee is to get a good beat.
For what else does it mean but this, that the love of sport among us is
as strong as ever it was? It makes me long to be one of ’ee, it do; to
be young again, abroad at peep o’ day, when the sun is touchin’ the
cairns and the wakin’ world is fresh and sweet, to feel once more the
joy of comin’ on the wild rover’s prents. This minit in my mind’s eye I
can see the five round toe marks and the seal of the otter I spurred
beside the Kieve. You’ve heard of the sport he gave. An old man’s tongue
will run away with him—run riot, I ought to call it. Your indulgence,
my friends, and your further patience while I touch on the matter that
brought me to my feet. And let me say by way of preliminary and to all
alike, don’t be overreachin’; don’t, simply to keep others out, claim
more water than you can search. “Live and let live” is a good motto for
a sportsman, be he Englishman or Scot; and this I’m sure of, that my
friend beside me will look at things as a big-minded man always do, and
prove himself the good neighbour we’ve taken him for.
‘Mr. Macpherson, we’ve treated ’ee like one of ourselves since the coach
dropped ’ee at the crossroads now three year back; the more so, maybe,
since we’ve got to understand your mouthspeech. True, there was a little
soreness because Zachy Kelynack didn’t get the job, but only for a month
or two; and we did our best to hide it, agreein’ among ourselves that if
the Duchy slighted our own man, ’twas no fault of yourn, and no case for
pitchin’ and featherin’, or even for the pump. Come to look back upon
it, for a rough-and-ready sort of people, whose parish is their world,
we met thee handsomely, though I say it, as I hope we shall every
strainyer who looks us straight in the eyes and does his duty without
fear or favour. Now, is it askin’ ’ee too much to show a friendly spirit
in return and a little consideration for local feelin’?’ Here the
speaker paused; but, as the bailiff showed no sign of giving in, he went
on: ‘Come, come, Sandy, only try and see the matter as we do. William
Rechard and Matthew Henry were born and reared upon the moor, and have
known the river all their lives. Right or no right, do ’ee wonder they
think theirselves entitled to a reach or two? No, you cannot, you do
not. Be strong, my friend, and give way.’
Now, it was not so much what the old man said as the way he said it that
made the appeal seem irresistible to all but the bailiff. And truly the
voice and manner of the speaker, mellow as the rich light that flooded
the low-raftered room, would have gone home to men even less emotional
than his countrymen; but the dour Scot seemed to be not the least
affected till the landlord, who had hurriedly disappeared through a
side-door, returned with a double-handled jug of old cider, and by the
influence of the seductive liquid brought him to reason. At the fourth
cup he gave in with a good grace, yielding to the miller the three miles
of water above the mill. At the sixth he granted the reach above Moor
Pool to the moorman, who also got the stream near his cot; old Ikey got
the Liddens, as was only fair, since the pools were on his holding; the
marshman, the marsh; and the poachers shared the waters that remained,
the order of choice being decided by the length of straw, drawn from the
landlord’s closed hand. Geordie and Tom, who as leaders of their
profession had first and second choice, to their chagrin got the
shortest straws.
Now for rivercraft or marshcraft the fourteen men that daily gave at
least an hour or two to the search could not, perhaps, have been matched
outside that most ancient terrain of the otter-hunter, the Principality
of Wales. Yet though the otter followed the usual trails over the moor,
the trackers never once came on a sign of him. The reason is not far to
seek. The beds of the river and the streams are for the most part rocky,
the shallows and landing-places pebbly, and spits of sand are few and
far between. It was on these last that the trackers relied to find the
footprints, and at dawn they might have been seen bending over them,
plying their craft as eagerly as men seeking gold or precious stones.
They found nothing, for the otter had never set foot there. Once,
indeed, he left his tracks within a bowshot of Moor Pool—tracks so
plain that they seemed to cry out; but before the bailiff reached the
spot the river rose and obliterated them, and the bailiff never knew how
near he had been to discovery.
After the quest had gone on for nearly a month, when men and squire were
beginning to fear that the otter had abandoned the district or that his
skin was adorning the bedroom floor of some keeper who had trapped him,
by the merest chance the moorman happened on the prints near the
boundary of his little holding. He was struck all of a heap, as he said,
at the unexpected sight; but on recovering himself he remembered the
squire’s words and the look in his eyes, so, though the sun was only a
few handbreaths above the moor, he left the peat where he had dropped it
and set off at a brisk pace for the Big House. In his excitement he
forgot the hounds were out until he reached the wood; but there, to the
amazement of the watching woodman, who had wondered at his haste, he
suddenly turned, late as it was, and made for the cross-roads, hoping to
intercept the squire and save himself a very long journey.
By good luck the moorman reached the top of the hill just in time to
hail the squire as he rode by, and ran down breathless to where he had
drawn rein.
‘Tracked un at laist, squire,’ he gasped.
‘Good news, Pearce. I’ve had a long day, but I’ll go back with you.’
‘It’s a brave way off, sir.’
‘No matter.’
So leaving the hounds to the whipper-in, he accompanied the man to the
moor, and examined the tracks by the light of the lantern the moorman
had fetched from his cottage.
‘They’re his, right enough, Pearce. Funny place to come on them.’
‘’Tes and ’tesn’t, come to think of it, for I’ve spurred otters on this
very bit of ground more than once before, and all goin’ the same way.
’Tes a line of traffic from the strame to the revur.’
‘Ah, that’s interesting. But, my word, what amazing prints they are!
What weight do you put him at?’
‘Afeerd to say, sir.’
‘They’re a couple of days old, Pearce.’
‘Iss, sir, all that, but you mind what you told me.’
‘All right, my man. I attach no blame; that’s not my meaning.’
‘He’s alive and in the country, sir.’
‘Yes, yes; to be sure he’s in the country. Great thing to know that. It
will hearten every man of us. Great day, red-letter day when we drop on
him, eh, Pearce?’
Then he rose to his feet, but was almost immediately on his knees again
for a last look. At length he tore himself away, slipped a crown-piece
into the moorman’s hand, remounted, bade the man good-night, and
galloped off.
Now the moorman on his way to stop the squire had overtaken and told the
post-woman: the blacksmith at the cross-roads had overheard what he
said; and from these two the news spread so rapidly and so far that
before the morrow’s sundown it was known through the country-side that
the otter had been tracked on Matthew Henry’s splosh, that the squire
had gone there and seen the prints with his own eyes. To what a pitch of
excitement the trackers were aroused by the tidings may be imagined.
Most of them were at the stream-side at the first glimmer of day, and
all of them remained out hours longer than usual. The squire, expecting
that word of the otter might be brought at any moment, feared to leave
the house. He had even given orders that Limpetty, the whipper-in, was
to have his meals at the kennels and to sleep in the loft.
But the otter’s plans ran counter to the hopes and expectations of his
enemies. On the third day after the discovery of his tracks he forsook
the moorland for the creek, where he feasted on mussels and flounders
till he tired of them. Then he made down the estuary to the headland; he
robbed the trammels and spillers of the choicest fish, and on one
occasion actually took a bass off a whiffing-line.
Thus another month passed, by the end of which the trackers who had
stood so high in the estimation of their neighbours began to be made
slight of, and even to be laughed at. Right welcome to them were the
heavy rains that rendered river and streams unfit for hunting and
furnished a sound excuse for discontinuing the hopeless quest. The flood
was indeed a big one, as the mark on the door of the miller’s stable
testifies. To this day the old men at the port will tell you they never
before knew the sea stained to such a distance by the peaty water,
adding in the same breath that the run of fish was ‘a sight to see.’
Harbour and estuary seemed alive as the salmon made their way up the
river: people gathered at different spots to see them pass. Villagers
crowded the bridge at Tide End where the fish take the weir; Geordie and
Tom stood at the fall beneath the pines; the miller, at the foot of his
garden, watched them go up the new ladder.
‘Bra run, Reuben,’ remarked he to the landlord at his side.
‘Iss, fy, and good fish among ’em. That’s a heavy fish goin’ up now.
He’ll do it; no, he won’t, he an’t. That basin is like Malachi’s hen,
too high in the instep. I said it was when they were puttin’ un in.’
As the miller took no notice, he bellowed in his ear, ‘Custna hear what
I’m sayin’, you?’
‘Hear! Of course I can; I’m not deef. Hear, indeed! Thee wust drown the
roar of a dozen floods, thee wust! What have ’ee got to say?’
‘Why, only this, that he’ll be up afore long.’
‘What do ’ee mean by he?’
‘What do I mean? What can a man mean these days but one thing?’
‘How teasy you are.’
‘Teasy, indeed! Do ’ee wonder at it? That varmint has got on my nerves.
I’m always thinkin’ about un, I caan’t sleep for’n, and if I do, I see
un in my dreams. Most like he will come up; and I hope and trust he
will, and that the hounds will find and kill un, or what’ll become of
the parish I don’t know. From the squire to Tom Burn-the-Reed we’re
gettin’ in a poor way, and you the one man gettin’ any good out of it.’
When the flood began to fall the otter did come up, and the first night
spent hour after hour, to no purpose, chasing salmon in the pool below
the rapids. At dawn he climbed to the ivy-covered branch of a tree
overhanging the river, to sleep as well as his uncomfortable quarters
allowed. That night he killed in the Kieve; early in the morning the
moorman disturbed a pair of buzzards from the remains of his feast, and
tried to cross to look for tracks; but the current was dangerous, and
after being nearly washed off his feet he turned back. The river had not
yet fallen to hunting level; but as soon as it had, the bailiff, the
miller and all the others were out again, confident that the otter was
up and, despite previous failures, hopeful that they would come on his
track on one of the many new sand-spits left by the receding waters.
CHAPTER XII
THE LONG TRAIL
It was ‘betwixt the lights,’ as he would have said, when the miller
closed the door quietly behind him and made his way among the nut-bushes
to the ford where his search for the otter usually began. No track
marked the ground by the water’s edge, nor was there a sign on any of
the likely spots all the way to the stranded alder, where he sat to rest
awhile before resuming his beat. The pine-tops were then aglow and the
birds in full song, but they meant nothing to him in the mood he was in;
his thoughts, as his words showed, were all for the otter.
‘Not a trace. Pools full of fish, too, and everythin’ as keenly as can
be. Yet I’m sure he’s up, and sartin he’ll be spurred afore the day’s
much older. Wonder who’ll be the lucky man?’
At the thought of his rivals he sprang to his feet and soon had reached
the precipitous bank above the shelving strand where, though so many
landing-places were undisturbed, he had every hope of coming on the
tracks. Most carefully the eager eyes examined every foot of sand
visible between the rowan-trees as, slowly on hands and knees, the
miller advanced towards the bend which commands the likeliest spot of
all. There twenty feet below he saw a salmon lying and, with the same
glance, marked the tracks beside it. The descent of the scarp was nearly
as perilous as the crossing of the current, but he accomplished both
without mishap, and a few seconds later was crouching beside the
footprints.
‘By the life of me they’re his, and not many hours old.’
His face, no less than his agitated voice, showed the wild excitement
that possessed him as he rose and made down the wood as fast as he could
lay foot to ground. When he reached the mill he was almost at his last
gasp, but he bridled and mounted the pony, which he urged to a gallop
through the open gate and up the stony lane. He was on his way to the
squire.
As he rode through the hamlet, where the clatter of the hoofs brought
the villagers to door and window, his cries of ‘Tracked un!’ roused man
and boy to a fever of excitement, and sent the sexton in hot haste to
the belfry to apprize the country-side. The miller, however, leaving
them behind, was soon at the lodge gates. There he nearly frightened old
Jenny into hysterics by his shouts; but she took her revenge, for after
letting him through she shook the keys in his face and screamed after
him, ‘Mad as a curley! mad as a curley!’ until he rounded the bend where
the mansion comes into view. The whole house seemed asleep; but as the
miller crossed the bridge over the moat the squire appeared at a window
and, in a voice that betrayed the tension of his feelings, called out:
‘Where?’
‘Longen Pool, sir.’
‘Fresh?’
‘Last night’s.’
‘Rouse the men, Hicks; we shall need every hand we can muster.’
Before he had got through the plantation on his way to the kennels the
clang of the fire-alarm broke on the still morning air, and when he
returned from his round, squire, whipper-in and hounds were making their
way through the park with a small retinue of servants in their train. At
the hamlet they were joined by the parson, the parish clerk, the
landlord, two sawyers, and six or seven others, and between the pound
and the river by a few crofters, whom the church bell had summoned from
outlying homesteads.
They crossed the water below the pool, the squire examined the tracks,
the hounds were laid on, and the rocky gorge with all the wood about it
immediately resounded with their wild music, while the squire and every
man behind him thrilled at the prospect of at last coming up with the
creature whose movements had so long baffled them. The ground was very
rough, and in parts swampy, yet not a man turned back. That active,
hard-conditioned followers made light of the obstacles and the pace was,
of course, not surprising; but that the landlord, the clerk, and the
chef—short-legged, eleven-score men every one of them—should scramble
over rocks and fallen timber, flounder through thickets and boggy
places, and still hold on, bedraggled and breathless though they were,
testified to the fascination the pursuit of the giant otter had for
them.
Some two miles above Longen Pool the squire caught sight of spraints on
a boulder in the middle of the river, and knew at once from their
position at its upper end that the otter which had dropped them was
travelling down-water. At once he recalled the hounds and began drawing
anew the reaches he had passed. He tried every holt he came to, but
without result.
‘Do you think he’s gone down?’ shouted the squire to the miller across
the river.
‘I don’t, sir. I didn’t find a trace from the ford up, and, as you know,
the hounds didn’t give a sign.’
‘Well, there’s no holding worth the name between here and Longen. Where
can he be?’
The puzzling question was answered by the deep note of Dosmary from an
overgrown watercourse that served to drain the morass. No need was there
for the squire to cry out, ‘Hark to Dosmary’; for the hounds, on hearing
the summons they knew so well, flew to her where she threaded the
reed-bed before taking the steep leading to the moor. Then up the all
but bare face the twenty couple made their way in a long winding line.
Close after the hindmost pressed the squire, the parson and five others,
all sound of wind and limb, capable of holding on to the end of the
promontory, if need be. Not a word passed until the hounds had crossed
the stream where it was thought the otter might have laid up, and then
only ‘Liddens, men,’ and ‘Ay, sir!’ from the moorman in response. Even
the sight of the otter’s footprints in the next hollow drew no remark;
though it caused an unconscious quickening of the step up the long,
heathery slope, from whose brow the sea showed beyond the hazy outline
of the land. Wide on either hand rose grim piles of rock, where down
this avenue of cairns the seven, comrades on many a trail, sped in the
wake of the pack towards the Liddens, shimmering in the distance.
But if the seven were elated as never before, there was one on the far
side of the moor who was suffering a bitter disappointment. It was the
old marshman. He too had discovered the tracks of the otter and, full of
his tidings, had driven to the mansion as fast as his Neddy could cover
the ground, only to learn from the butler that squire and hounds had
already been summoned and gone off to the river. Staggering though the
blow was, he bore up till beyond the gates; but on the open moor he
broke down, said it was a judgment on him for tracking the varmint in
the snow, and let the donkey find the way home as best it could. When
they reached the cottage he set the animal loose, tried in vain to shake
off his trouble by overhauling the trimmers, and finally sat down on a
bench, with his back to the mud wall and his face to the marsh. It was
green and gold with the swords and banners of the iris; the air was
drowsy with the hum of bees and the sea murmured on the bar; yet the old
man noted nothing of it. His thoughts, too, were all of the otter; he
was busy trying to reconcile the seemingly contradictory discovery of
the tracks in two places so far apart. ‘’Tes a job to piece ’em together
with leagues—iss, leagues—of moor between. Why, look here. ’Tes all
eight miles from the revur to the Liddens, and a good three as the hern
flies from the Liddens to the ma’sh; a long journey, an unaccountable
long journey for a crittur that edn framed for travellin’. On a
midsummer night, too, and he more afeard of the glim o’ day than a
cheeld of the dark. And then to turn his back on the salmin for the
pike, and they poor as can be from spawnin’. Why, the thing edn in
reason. But, theere, what’s the use of wastin’ breeth when he’s done it?
For the prents are hisn and none other, and nawthin’ could be fresher.’
The marshman was right: the otter had crossed. At star-peep the creature
had slipped from his holt in the side-stream and floated down to Moor
Pool, where he killed a grilse, took a slice or two from its shoulder,
and left it on the pebbles. Thence, contrary to his habit, he passed
down-water, throwing the fish into a panic at every pool. Waves in the
shallows showed where the most timid fled at his approach; some however
remained and here and there, as the water favoured his purpose, he gave
chase. Twice the formidable marauder landed with victims which he left
uneaten on the bank where he laid them, for lust of slaughter, not
hunger or love of pursuit, possessed him, and he was moved by a
restlessness greater than he had ever shown. True, he climbed at times
on snag and boulder; but that was only for an instant before taking
again to the water or bank, as fancy led.
[Illustration:
HIS LAST SALMON.
_From a painting in oils by Edgar H. Fischer._
To face p. 173.]
At Longen Pool his coming caused a general exodus, but he singled out
one salmon, and by his wily tactics prevented it from fleeing with the
others to the rapids below. The long chase which followed was for a
while in favour of the fish; yet the otter, who was not to be denied, in
the end wearied it out and carried it to the bank, where he bit
viciously at the shoulder, as if to wreak his vengeance on the prey that
had caused him so much trouble. Presently he re-entered the water,
cleansed his blood-stained muzzle, and making upstream turned aside into
the wet ditch and traversed the morass.
On gaining the high ground above it he stood awhile, as if asking
himself whether at the late hour he might venture across the moor. The
instant his mind was made up he set out at a rapid pace, glancing at the
keeper’s lodge as he went by, and again at the sleeping hamlet before
crossing the road and entering on the waste, over which he held on his
way till nearly abreast of the cromlech. There he halted whilst he
sounded the call and listened. Twice he uttered the shrill cry, his mask
turned in the direction of the lone pool to the north; but there was no
answer in the mocking whistle of the curlew, so he moved on again under
the fading stars, and at last came to the Liddens.
He kept awhile to the open water, cruising restlessly about, as he had
done before in the creek and mere, raising himself at times and gazing
round, as wild a looking creature as imagination can conjure up. Thence
he passed into the thick fringe of reeds, and remained hidden so long
that it might be thought that he had laid up there. Later however he
appeared on the far bank of the westernmost pool, and though the pale
primrose streak in the east warned him of coming day, the outlawed
animal, alarmed by the taint of human footprints he had happened on, at
once forsook the refuge and set his face for the marsh.
His hurried movements showed that he had full knowledge of the risk he
ran in the open, where he looked a monster as he crossed the patches of
sward amongst the bilberry. Indeed, so fast did he cover the ground that
no sprinter could have kept up with him, especially when he breasted the
long, boulder-strewn ascent to the Kites’ Cairn. There old Ikey must
have viewed him had he been on his way to the pools at his usual hour;
but he was late, and soon the otter was amongst the crags. His feet were
here delayed momentarily by the rising sun, whose light he dreaded as
much as did the witches of Crowz-an-Wra. But there was no staying where
he was: he must press on to marsh or sea, now both in his view; and at
panic speed he made his way down the bare slope and up the opposite rise
to the great furze brake that runs down almost to the margin of the
mere. Leisurely he threaded his way through the close cover to a point
where he stood and listened to the crowing of a cock before slipping
into the water and crossing to the old hover on the edge of the
reed-bed. He made his careful toilet as usual, and before the marshman
discovered his tracks he had curled up and fallen asleep.
But whilst the otter slept in untroubled security, heedless of his
enemies, they had passed the Liddens and come within earshot of the old
man, who had scarcely finished his soliloquy when he started to his feet
with the exclamation, ‘What’s that?’ and stood listening as intently as
the otter a little earlier had listened for a reply to his call. This
time, however, the reply came. ‘Surely theere ’tes again,’ and a few
seconds later, as the cry rose afresh, he shouted ‘’Tes they’ so loudly
that he attracted the child who joined him on the furze-rick he had
hurriedly climbed.
‘Do ’ee hear them, Mary? ’Tes the hounds. Hark! cheeld.’
‘I hear something, granfer.’
‘Wheere do ’ee make the cry to come from?’ and for answer she pointed
with her free hand to the Kites’ Cairn. ‘Now keep an eye on the rocks,
and tell me if you see anythin’.’
‘There’s something streaming through the Fairies’ Gap this minit. . . .
Now it’s like a shadow, a moving shadow on the down. . . . They’re dogs.
My word, such a passel of them, all in a bunch!’
Then they passed from sight and the weird cry almost died away; but
presently the chorus swelled, and swelled, and swelled, and then the old
man saw the hounds, like maddened things, come pouring over the brow and
enter the brake full in his view.
‘You’re tremblin’, granfer.’
‘Iss, cheeld, all of a quake, like the yallow furze where the hounds are
forcin’ a way. The moosic is ’most too much for me.’
‘Mary,’ said he, and the child raised her wondering eyes to the excited
face, ‘’tes the line of the King Oter they’re spakin’ to, and—who can
tell?—maybe the sun will shut down on a great day. But, lor me! what am
I doin’ here on this rick, with hounds about to take the water? My place
is in the _Mary Jane_.’ With that he scrambled down the rude ladder and
bustled towards the spot where he had left the boat in the early
morning.
As soon as he stepped in, the pack, which had been almost mute since
entering the mere, broke out into a babel of music, proclaiming a find.
The uproar so unnerved him that he was long in getting the oars between
the thole-pins; but when he did, he pulled with might and main till,
drawing near the hounds, he stopped rowing and kept a sharp lookout for
the quarry repeating as he scanned the water: ‘Ef ’tes only he, only
he.’ But not a sign of otter, big or small, met his eyes, either in the
mere or in the creek, to which the chase presently shifted. There the
fear that the game would land and reach the cliff suddenly possessed
him. So all at once he urged the boat past hounds and island to the
reedy corner, where he jumped to his feet and kept splashing the water
to drive the otter back. The nearer the hounds approached the more
frantically he wielded the oar, nor did he desist till they showed by
their movements that the otter had left the end of the creek and was
returning to the mere.
Whilst he watched them the squire and his followers came over the brow,
and all made for the beach except the squire, who came tearing down the
hill towards the boat.
‘To the hounds, John!’ he gasped as he stepped into the crazy craft. At
the word the old man pushed off and bent to his work with wondrous
vigour.
‘Have you viewed the otter?’
‘No, sir, I haven’t, but I spurred un.’
‘You spurred him? When?’
‘Soon aifter break o’ day.’
‘You did?’
‘Iss, sir, sure as you’re standin’ on they starn sheets.’
‘What! the big otter?’
‘Iss, sir. The King Oter, I call him.’
‘Then why didn’t you bring word?’
‘I did, sir, fast as I could, but you’d gone off to the revur. ’Twas Mr.
Pugmore as told me.’
‘I see, I see! Pull with your right, or we shall be into the island.
That will do; now both together.’
‘Wind him, my lads! middy ho, wind him! Padzepaw, Troubadour, Rowtor,
wind him! Wind him, my lads!’
The cheery cry seemed to put fresh life into the hounds as they worked
the reeds, from which they presently drove the quarry to the mere.
The squire’s keen eyes searched the glittering surface to get a glimpse
of him, but in vain; the hounds might have been giving tongue to some
phantom quarry for all that he or the old man saw. And so the chase
continued for an hour, and another and another, whilst the otter led the
pack from reed-bed to reed-bed, where he rose and vented without
exposing himself.
At last the marshman, who at the moment was resting on the oars, pointed
to the surface beneath the right blade.
‘The chain, the chain!’ whispered the squire excitedly on sighting the
string of bubbles, and ‘There he vents!’ as the nose of the quarry
showed between two lily-leaves a few yards off. The otter remained where
he was until the hounds were almost upon him; then he sank as
noiselessly as he had risen, and made for another refuge.
‘You viewed him, sir?’
‘I viewed an otter, John.’
‘Then why didn’t ’ee tally him, sir?’
‘Because I’m not sure it’s him. I don’t want to raise false hopes in all
these people.’
For by this time many had arrived, some by boat, others in vehicles,
some on horses or donkeys, and had taken up stations round the mere.
There were at least a score on the point, as many near the inflow: there
was a tall thin man who had somehow found his way to the edge of the
reed-bed, and quite a little crowd on the bar.
‘Never see’d such a passel o’ people here since the wreck of the
_Triton_, and that was afore your time, sir. The casks of rum were all
over the beach, and men, too; and as for the cocoanuts, they were . . .’
The outstretched hand of the squire silenced him, for the otter had
risen within a few yards of the boat, and lay there showing its great
length. Both were tongue-tied by the sight, but no sooner did the otter
dive than the squire gave utterance to a ‘Tally-ho!’ the like of which
had never passed his lips before. It made the marshman jump: it sent a
thrill through the cordon of spectators: it made the child hurry again
to the furze-rick.
‘Did you see him?’ asked the squire excitedly.
‘I did, and I don’t wonder it fetched such a screech out of ’ee. Lor,
maister, ’twere enow to wake the dead.’
Two minutes later the otter was ‘gazed’ by the men on the point. Soon
after a shout came from Geordie at the end of the creek,—so soon that
the squire feared there must be two otters afloat. But he was wrong:
there was only one. Next the people on the bar saw him rise, with the
hounds close behind driving him towards the reed-bed, where he landed
within a dozen yards of the solitary figure there. To him it looked as
if the otter must be overhauled, and eagerly he watched the swaying of
the reeds as otter and hounds traversed the bed. Soon, in view of the
excited crowd near the inflow, the hunted beast managed to slip into the
mere as a hound was about to seize him. Four times he rose in crossing
to the farther shore, where he threaded the sags and, in his
desperation, sought the refuge of the furze-brake. The cover was all in
his favour; for he could run where the hounds, and even the terriers,
had to force a way. Yet to him as to them the atmosphere was
suffocating, so that he was glad to reach the upper edge and get a few
breaths of fresh air before the clamour of the hounds and the crackling
of the stems warned him it was time to move. Then he made his way down
to the creek to quench his thirst. The parson, by this time perched on
the willow, saw him lapping, but forbore to shout, and presently the
dark mask was withdrawn. Soon the hounds reached the spot. Thirsty
though they were, they thirsted still more for the otter’s blood. Not
one stayed to lap but, like infuriated creatures, went on after the
quarry whose distress they must have been conscious of.
Before this the crowd from the bar had moved to the bluff above the
creek, whence they could trace the windings of the otter by the
movements of the hounds. Breathless was their excitement when they saw
from the wild shaking of the bushes that the otter had been seized, and
great their disappointment when the resumption of the chase showed that,
after all, he had got away.
Twice more the gallant beast made the wide circuit of those ten acres of
furze in the hope of shaking off his pursuers before he made his way in
despair down to the sags and slipped unseen into the mere. He rose after
but a short dive, and swam with the pack in his wake straight for the
bar. Not one of those who watched dreamt he would dare to land; but he
did, a good score yards in front of the leading hounds. Then all could
see his distress as he laboured over the pebbly ridge he knew so well.
It looked as if he must be overtaken before he reached the tide; but the
hounds were nearly as exhausted as he, and though they gained on him, it
was not until they came to the calm water beyond the breaking wave that
they managed to hold him and worry his life out.
Then the squire waded into the sea almost to his armpits, took him from
the hounds, and holding the heavy carcass above his head, brought it
ashore. The ‘field’ closed round him in their eagerness to see and touch
the beast and examine the huge pads.
‘A little elbow-room, gentlemen, if you please. I can’t possibly weigh
the animal whilst you press me like this.’
His words had instant effect. The moment the crowd fell back he
suspended the otter from the hook of the spring-balance he carried, and
watched the index.
‘What does he scale, sir?’ shouted a score excited voices.
‘Twenty-nine pounds good.’
Then followed a tumult of conversation, amidst which could be
distinguished:
‘Now, Thomas ’Enery, what did I say all along?’
‘He’s a pound over and above your guess.’
‘Sandy was right.’
‘You said forty pound, Geordie, you know you did.’
‘You’m a liard; I——’
‘Silence, mates!’ roared the landlord, stepping into the ring; ‘the
squire wants to spake. Silence, I say!’
When the noisy groups of disputants at last quieted down, the squire,
hoarse from his efforts, said: ‘It is my custom, as you know, to
distribute the pads, mask and rudder, and fling the carcass to the
hounds. To-day, however, I mean to depart from the rule. I will tell you
why, and I hope every one of you will agree that I am right. My view is
that this fine beast’—and here he lifted the otter clear of the sand as
if to emphasize his words—‘which has excited so much interest and
afforded a hunt we can never expect to see the like of, ought not to be
broken up, but should be preserved for ourselves and others to look at
in the years to come. Now, if any man has got anything to say, let him
speak out.’
‘Say, sir,’ replied the parish clerk, after casting his quick eyes round
the circle of approving faces, ‘why, that we’re one and all of the same
way of thinkin’ as yoursel’! What’s a pad here or a pad there? To say
nawthin’ as to who’s to have ’em. By all manner o’ means let the otter
be set up, and let un be given pride of place again’ the wainscot; for
if ever wild crittur deserved the honour, this one do, if only for the
good he’s done the landlord.’
So the otter was set up in the hall in a handsome case, with a picture
of the marsh for background. Of the many trophies that adorn the walls
there is not one the squire was so proud of, none whose story he liked
so well to relate. It alone bears no inscription; for, as he always
said, ‘There is no need; my people will never let the record die!’ His
words have proved true.
Though the wild promontory is steeped in legend and romance, though
tales of giants, fairies, smugglers and shipwrecked sailors, abound,
there is no story the crofters so often repeat by the firelight as the
story of the otter, none the children listen to with closer attention.
Mary’s three boys never wearied of hearing their mother tell how she
stood on the rick and watched the hounds stream through the Fairies’
Gap; they always insisted on her giving the squire’s ‘Tally-ho!’ and
hung on every word when she came to the message brought by the steward,
that old John and his grandchild were to have their little place rent
free for the rest of their days.
‘Again, again!’ they would cry, clapping their little hands; and
generally Mary yielded to their entreaties. And when the time comes they
will repeat the tale to their own children, as indeed do the miller’s
and the moorman’s sons and daughters to-day. Thus the tradition of the
otter bids fair to be handed on by generation after generation for long
years to come, and to win an imperishable place amongst the hearthside
stories of the West.
INDEX
Allotment of waters, 155
Badger, 15, 65, 74, 83
Bass, 36
Bittern, 140
Blunderbuss, 132
Boat, 67, 134, 178
Breathing-holes, 121
‘Burning the reed,’ 106
Buzzard, 4, 88, 91, 165
Cave, 37, 59, 117
Clitter, 72, 142, 145
Conger, 110, 149
Constable, 45
Cormorant, 66, 89
Couch, 23, 116
Creek, 35
Cubs taught to swim, 11
taught to fish, 21
Curlew, 92, 174
Deadman’s Pool, 42
Decoy, old, 72
Dragon-flies, 41
Druid’s Arms, 74, 155
Duchy, the, 157
Eels, 23, 122
Estuary, 40, 152
Fairies’ Gap, 176
Fight with terrier, 31
with rival, 115
Flintlock, 132
Fox, 16, 28, 47, 124
Frogging, 19, 153
Geese, 123
Gipsies, 61
Glow-worms, 50
Goldcrest, 18
Gull Rock, 58, 152
Gulls, 59, 148
Harbourer, 91
Haunted House, 62
Headland, 108, 152
Heron, 36, 40
Hounds, 77, 95, 169
Keeper, 9, 50, 74
Kennels, 65
Kestrel, 23
Kieve Pool, 86, 156, 165
Killick, 68
Landlord, 155, 164, 184
Liddens, the, 73, 126, 170
Limpets, 127
Lone Tarn, 26, 84
Longen Pool, 78, 168
Magpie, 33
Marsh, the, 60, 104, 118, 174
Marshman, 67, 123, 130, 159
Miller, 79, 102, 164, 167
M.O.H., duties of, 154
Moorhen, 48
Moorman, 25, 159, 170
Moor Pool, 86, 94, 106, 172
Mullet, 53
Mussels, 39
Night-jar, 51
Otter, the King, 179
Peel, 51, 85
Pillar Rock, 118
Pike, 69, 87, 122
Piskies’ parlour, 141
Plaice, 43
Poacher, 106, 159
Polecat, 130
Pollack, 112
Pollard, 137
Porpoise, 57
Quagmire, 1, 116
Rabbit-burrow, 27
Rabbiting, 47
Raftra, 155
Raven, 18, 33
Reed-bed, 25, 66, 71
Reeve, 156
Salmon, 55, 75, 173
Sanctuary, 63
Sea, 58, 142
Seal, 55, 117
Seal Rock, 110, 147
Shag, 118
Sharks’ fin, 108
Sheep-dog, 46
Snowdrift, 135
Spring, 18
Squire, 64, 98, 105, 161, 168
Stag, 83
Terrier, 17, 30, 78
Tide End, 152, 155, 164
Trackers, 154, 162
Trail, an old, 35
the long, 171
Trammels, 163
Traps, 51, 105
Trekking, 22, 29, 73
Trimmers, 123
Trout, 22
Water-bailiff, 106, 157
Water-mint, 72
Weasel, 34
Wild swans, 123
Will-o’-the-wisp, 73
Woodman, 29, 100, 160
Wrasse, 59, 112
THE END
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
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ALSO BY J. C. TREGARTHEN.
WILD LIFE AT THE
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RECORDS AND OBSERVATIONS OF THE HABITS AND HAUNTS OF THE FOX,
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation and obvious type-setting errors have been corrected without
note. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Some
illustrations have been relocated slightly to keep paragraphs intact.
* * * * *
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