I had had enough. Exhausted and benumbed, I made for the ice, now a long way off, and fighting the current with all my strength, had got atlength within a few yards of the jagged edge when, to my horror, I heard the swan coming up, and gaining on me at every stroke. I did my very utmost to reach the ice, but in vain; he was on me before I could land. Again I was immersed; twice I planted my feet on the edge, only to be pulled back. I had caught a Tartar, and escape seemed impossible; even if he did not drown me, I feared I should be sucked under the ice. The thought of losing my life roused me to a supreme effort. With gnashing teeth I turned on my persecutor. My onset must have terrified him, for he quailed before it and retreated a few yards into the mere. With the help of my brush I whipped round, gained the rough edge, and, putting forth my last bit of strength, dragged myself on to the ice, and fell, utterly spent, just beyond his reach.
For a time I lay there motionless, but by-and-by fear moved me to turn my head and look for my enemy. There he was, proudly swimming up and down before me with blood-stained breast and drooping wing, still defiant. It was the most humiliating moment of my life. Presently I rose and shook myself, but to no purpose. My bedraggled coat had frozen, and hung stiffly onme. I exchanged looks of vengeance with my terrible foe and slunk away.
What a weary journey it was over the snow! How I floundered through the deep drift that separated me from my cover, and how glad I was to reach the friendly shelter of the brake! It was good to be screened from the eyes of the countless wild-fowl who had watched the fight, and whose cries had sounded like jeers as I tottered across the wide ice-field. There is little bark left in a fox when the quacking of ducks disconcerts him and makes his brake a welcome refuge.
I sat down under the furze, brushed the bloody feather from my muzzle and licked my paws, which had been cut by the sharp-edged ice in my mad struggles to get out of the water. Though dawn was some two hours off, I had no heart for any more hunting; so I made for my lair, which I reached by way of the brambly thicket above the quarry, and, after shaking my coat again, crept to where my snug kennel lay under its double roof of gorse and snow. There, hidden from all eyes and from the bright lights of the frosty sky, I curled up in the cup of dry spines with my brush about my nose, and heedless of the gale that raged above but could not reach me, forgot my troubles in sleep.
The hounds drew the tor wood once, and only once, after the thaw, and did not pay a single visit to our brake, though the earth was stopped three times before the end of the season. The explanation is probably to be found in the heavy rains which flooded the fen and made the country unfit for hunting; big pools were found where none were seen before, and the springs which broke out in many new places, together with the surface-drainage of rain and melted snow, not only kept them full, but seemed to turn every bit of spongy ground into a quagmire.
Left to myself, I was as happy as a fox can be, and, forgetting the hardships I had passed through, looked forward with pleasurable anticipation—as, indeed, every wilding does—to the golden days of summer, when troubles are few and delights many. Yet the tamarisks had hardly begun to feather before there was brought into the countryside a hound which proved the most terrible enemy that ever shadowed my life.
That the farmer had need of a more watchful guardian for the poultry yard than old Shep I knew well enough from the serious losses he had sustained. Besides fowls and ducks, even geeseand turkeys had been carried off, some by day under cover of mist and drizzling rain, but mostly at night. I had seen foxes returning from that direction with birds in their mouths; I had actually come on the caches, both inside and outside our brake, where they had buried what they could not take away; and this wholesale plundering caused me great anxiety, because I knew it would lead to reprisals. But I never dreamt in my most troubled moments of the scourge that was being prepared. Even had I known that old Shep was to be superseded and another farm-dog put in his place the news would not have alarmed me in the least, because of the contempt I felt for the few specimens I had seen. But I was now to learn that there are farm-dogs and farm-dogs.
As soon as the new dog was led home I came on evidence of his work. I found the body of a fox near the gap of a reclaimed field that had recently been filched from our cover, and could see by the fang-marks in his chest that he had been murdered. Now it was impossible that old Shep should be the culprit. He was always asleep at midnight, and bore a good character amongst us for utter harmlessness; yet everything pointed to his guilt. A double trail ledfrom the warm carcass towards the farm buildings, and one was the trail of a dog. I walked slowly up the hill, trying to unravel the mystery, and had scarcely passed over the crest when a loud bay, very different from old Shep's, broke the stillness of the night and explained everything. Whilst I listened it was repeated again and again, and its meaning was unmistakable. It was a warning to the fox from the new guardian of the farmyard that the days of robbery without punishment were past, and that a new régime had begun. I yapped no reply, for it was best to let this dangerous customer believe that the fox he had killed was a stranger to the district, and that none frequented the wild within reach of his voice.
I was very miserable now. Putting all together, I was convinced that the newcomer would prove a dangerous enemy; and yet I felt that I ought to see him, for I recollected my mother's story of the fox who, like the otter in the quaking bog, judged the jackass by his bray, and suffered agonies until he cast eyes on him.
The opportunity offered a few days later without my seeking it. On a lovely spring morning such as Nature often lavishes on her wildlings, Ilay stretched out amongst the scattered furze-bushes enjoying the warmth of the sun, without a thought of any intrusion on the peaceful scene. The lambs were bleating in the field next the dunes, the rooks cawing in the leafing elms, and the farm-boy, whom I could not see for the thicket of blackthorns at the foot of the croft, was singing the drowsy song he sang always at his work. A magpie on the tallest of the blackthorns seemed unusually interested in either the boy or his work; but I thought nothing of that. Presently, however, to my surprise, it began mobbing some creature. Then I rose to my feet, almost expecting to view a fox, when, to my amazement, I saw a huge dog leave the thicket and come into the open. It was the new hound, and the sight of him made me catch my breath. What struck me most—for without it, size and strength of jaw signify nothing—was the speed I read in his long muscular limbs. He moved with an ease I had never seen in any other dog. Had his hind-quarters sloped like mine, I should, like the magpie, have taken him for a denizen of the wild; but the defect betrayed him as the servant of man.
My curiosity was excited, and I would notsteal away to the near brake until I had discovered what his business was. It was of the simplest. He stopped about half-way up the hill at a spot full in the hot sun, turned round two or three times as I do to make my bed, and laid himself down amongst the tussocks of grass. I watched his bloodshot eyes blink in the blazing light; noted his restlessness, the twitching of his cropped ears, and the quivering of his great nostrils, even whilst he seemed to doze; studied his huge bull-terrier head, raised when a yellowhammer settled on the golden bush behind him; shuddered at the array of crowded teeth when he yawned.
He may have lain an hour amid the bright new herbage before the boy whistled. His ears showed that he heard, but he took no further notice. When the whistle was repeated he growled. Then the boy screamed, as I have heard the huntsman scream after me; and the great brindled brute leapt to his feet and bounded down the hill at a pace I had not thought any creature capable of. I knew then that no fox could get away from him in the open, or escape with his life when overtaken.
"No more stealing of old gobblers," said Iunder my breath as I slunk away to the earth.
For some days I scarcely slept on account of the worry; and the more I thought it over in the quiet of my kennel, the surer I felt that this great restless hound would render life unbearable by invading my cover. Was it likely that a creature pricked by pride of limb and of fang would be content to wander within the narrow confines of a dozen fields criss-crossed with trails, and never trespass on the environing wilds to which the trails led? Impossible! Is there not an eternal feud between the tame and the wild canine? This half-wild protege of man, free to wander at will and wreak his vengeance on us hated dwellers in the brake, able too by speed and strength to carry out his fell designs, was certain, sooner or later, to follow the cursed scent that lingers where we tread, and track me to my hidden lair.
The days went by, however, and I was not molested; though night after night, as I heard his threatening bay, I asked myself, How long shall I be left in peace? When a fortnight passed without a sign, I began to think that this sharer of man's hearth might, after all, be nothing more than a noisy farmyard braggart, brave enough,perhaps, on grass or plough-land, but afraid to trespass on the waste. Rudely was my mistake brought home to me.
Now what I am going to tell is not something I have heard: I saw it with my own eyes on the moor which rises from the head of the fen. I was trotting along at the time, planning how best to work the ground on such a still night, when a fox—a stranger to me—came over the brow on my left, and dashed across my front at a gallop. At first I thought he must have some game in sight; but as neither hare nor leveret was to be seen, I could not help, in the absence of any apparent reason for his conduct, imagining that he must be mad, like a fox I once saw crossing the bar. Strange fancy, perhaps; but then, what sane animal, and, above all, what fox, would waste his speed after nothing? And what in the world was there for the fugitive to fly from? Suddenly I thought of the hound, and as suddenly, just when the fox had disappeared where the land dipped, I heard the thud of heavy feet. Peeping between two boulders that concealed me from view, I saw him come over the crest at the spot where I first caught sight of the fox. He was running by scent, but at so tremendous apace that I feared the fox could not live before him.
His silence chilled me more than his loud bay; but though I could not detect the faintest whimper, every moment there was a strange clicking sound—a noise foreign to the moorland. When he came abreast of me I saw it was caused by the broken chain that hung from his neck and struck the steel collar he wore. In a twinkling the dusky fiend had disappeared in the gloom, his head set for the tor. I listened. After a time I heard him crash through a long bramble thicket. Then a long interval. Then the owls, which had been very noisy, suddenly ceased their midnight chorus. They were watching the tragic chase between the boles of the pines. How it ended I never knew; but I am inclined to think that the fox reached the rocks and escaped. If he had been killed, the foxes which lodged on the western slope of the tor would have forsaken their coverts, at least for a time; and this they did not do.
That night it was useless to try to hunt, as I kept looking back every dozen strides for fear the hound might be following me. At last I gave it up; but I did not return along my usualtrail, laid when the night had no fear for me. I avoided open ground as much as possible, to steal along tangled dips and gullies. Before crossing a ridge I halted to peer through the darkness, fearful of seeing the sinister green eyes that would apprise me of the hound's approach.
On reaching the double trail, I cleared it at a bound, as though it had been a line of fire, and made for the river at the spot where it spreads over the marshes; for I hoped by swimming it at its widest part to add to the difficulties of the hound if he should follow me. Although the precautions I took proved unnecessary, I mention a few of them to show the fear the creature had inspired in me. After that I used to foil the runs in the brake for the purpose of puzzling him if he chanced to strike my night's trail and tried to trace me to my lair.
But of what avail were all my wiles against a creature so endowed? At length the marvellous powers he possessed enabled him not only to find my kennel, but to approach it so noiselessly as almost to surprise me in my sleep. Had it not been for the slight rustling of the furze, caused by his grim protruding muzzle, he must have taken me where I lay as a fox takes a rabbit inits seat. As it was it was a close call. Enraged at my escape, he came crashing after me. I led him to the cover beyond the quarry, where the furze was close and stunted, and where the runs were so small that he had to force a way along them. In these unfavorable conditions I thought he would soon tire of pursuit; but to my surprise he persisted hour after hour, despite the stifling atmosphere of the brake on such a close, hot day. Could he have driven me into the open I should have been at his mercy; I knew this as well as he, and never gave him the chance he longed for.
In the end I wearied him out, and none too soon, for I was almost spent before he relinquished the chase. I had escaped, but my dread of the fiend was greater than ever—so great, indeed, that I never went near the brake again as long as he lived.
The silence of the night at this time was painful. A dog-fox dared no longer call to his mate for fear of betraying his whereabouts to the hound, now abroad at all hours. I hardly dared sleep two days following, in the same place, lest in his wanderings he should have come upon my couch and be there awaiting me. I lived under a reign of terror, and the gloom that broodedover brake, tor, and fen spread to the higher moors, where the hound had once been seen. But, gloom or no gloom, I had to have food though every journey I made to the fen was at the risk of my life.
Generally I was through early enough to enable me, by hurrying, to be back in my couch in gorse or heather before dawn. One morning, however, I was so late that I decided to lie up for the day in the fen rather than risk crossing the moors after daybreak.
Through the mist that lay over the heart of the bog I could just make out the tall clump of rushes where I meant to lie up if the slough should yet prove firm enough to bear my weight. On striking the river, which was much above the previous summer's level, I waded into the water, and, to throw the hound out in the event of his following me, floated some distance with the current before landing on the opposite side. As I rustled through the flags and the belt of reeds, whose dew-laden plumes were sparkling in the first rays of day, a heron rose lazily and, skimming a reed bed, flew away towards the half-risen sun, leaving me, as far as I could see, thesole tenant of the silent marshland. Only the bare, flat quagmire now lay between me and my harborage, and, anxious to be hidden from sight, I lost no time in setting out across the treacherous surface.
I selected a line which seemed to promise the firmest footing, and stepped with all possible lightness. Yet, in spite of every care, I sank deep in places, and midway the crust was so thin that for a while I was in great danger of foundering. However, by putting forth all my strength, I was able, at last, to free myself from the clutches of the more liquid mire and reach the drier, sounder surface between it and the rushes. I was indeed glad to feel the solid ground under my feet once more.
Had I realized the peril before setting out I should not have attempted to cross. I ought, perhaps, to have turned back on striking the dangerous zone; but, once embarked on an undertaking, it is not in my nature to retreat, for there is that in a fox which makes him go through with his purpose at all hazards, though it may compel him to pass between the legs of the huntsman's horse or traverse a bog that threatens to swallow him up.
At last, exhausted and bemired, I entered the clump, whose shadow lay like a wide road across that part of the quagmire where it fell, and chose for my couch a tall heap of dead reeds just inside the wall of pale green stems. It seemed to have served for a nest of the captive wild swan, and had probably been floated to the spot by the subsiding flood.
To reach my bed I had to cross the stream which drained the pool within the dense ring of bulrushes; and as I waded through it a well-known scent reached my nostrils, and told me that the wiliest creature of the night had also sought this isolated retreat to hover in. I watched the sedgy islet whence the scent proceeded, expecting to get a glimpse of the otter couching there; but he lay low and did not expose a hair, despite the crackling of the reeds as I made my bed.
I was free now to attend to my toilet and prepare for the rest I so much needed. With my pads dirty as they were, sleep was out of the question; so I licked them and my legs as clean as I could, and, thus refreshed, soon dozed off, with a sense of security to which I had long been a stranger.
I slept soundly, without the horrid dreams of the previous weeks, and was awakened at last by the hum of insects. A year before, when I often lay in the fen, my ears would not have noticed this loud undertone of noonday life; but latterly I had, for the most part, kennelled in the moors, where were only noiseless butterflies and lizards, silent as sphinxes. I was not really sorry to be disturbed, for it was delightful to lie there, vaguely conscious of the warmth of the sun and looking about me in a drowsy way. I turned my blinking eyes now to the distant mere, sparkling at the end of a vista in the reeds, now to the hoary summit of the tor seen against the blue sky, and again to the water-insects at sport on a small pool just beyond the black shadow which had crept up well-nigh to the foot of the bulrushes.
Presently, tiring of the view, I was about to drop asleep again, when I heard a noise which, if it had been less violent, I should have thought to be caused by an animal shaking itself. It was followed by a commotion on the river-bank, and then, to my horror, the hound burst through the reeds. He had followed my trail to that point, and guessed where I was, for he kept looking at the clump, and even at the part of it where I wascrouching. He threw up his nose and sniffed the air, as I could see by the working of his gleaming nostrils; but there was no wind to carry the scent across the morass—not enough, indeed, to stir he light feathery tops of the reeds behind him.
Soon he advanced to the very edge of the bog and looked longingly at the clump, as if he were eager to reach it but dared not risk the crossing. At last, after running up and down the edge several times, apparently in search of a hard place, he decided to brave the danger, and with cat-like steps, ludicrous to watch in such a monster, began the perilous passage. He was soon up to his knees, and the deeper he went the greater my excitement grew. Every instant I expected to see him sink out of sight. So sure of it did I feel that I almost ventured to show myself and fling at the fiend the reproaches that crowded to my tongue. But though his progress was very slow, he was inch by inch reducing the distance that separated us.
Before long he was near enough for me to hear the sucking noise made by the slough as it reluctantly released its grip on the long muscular legs. He did not pick and chose his way, or deviate by a reed's breadth from the straightcourse that would bring him to the gap in the belt of rushes made by the overflow. Now he was on the most treacherous part of the quagmire, which shook with the struggle he made to keep his head above the surface. With dilated pupils I watched what must be his last efforts. I noted the rise of the mire on his collar, till at last it rose no farther, but still he came on; and then I noticed the liquid mud raised in front of him like the ripple in front of a swan. Wading he must have been, though he looked exactly as though he were swimming; and his great red tongue lolled out with the frantic exertions.
When he got nearer his feet must have found the bottom, for his shoulders rose free of the surface; and I saw his hair bristle as though something had suddenly angered him. He had scented me or the otter, or both; and in his haste to add to the number of his victims, he ploughed through the last score yards of mud like a mad creature. Along the muddy bed of the overflow he toiled step by step; and the instant he entered the pool, I rose to my feet, doubtful whether to stay or retreat, and paused to listen before committing myself.
At that moment I heard a sullen plunge, thenanother, as two otters dived into the pool. Thinking there was safety in numbers, I decided to remain in hiding rather than trust to my slight chance of escape across the bog. The wild struggles of the hound told me he had viewed the otters; but he must have lost them again for presently all was very quiet, though I could hear him at times nosing the rushes and ferns round the pool, as if in search of them. My eyes were as alert as my ears, and soon caught a heave on the surface of the overflow and the gleam of an otter's back as the creature rounded the shallow bend leading to the river. A few seconds later I saw the other otter glide noiselessly away, and then a great fear seized me as I realized that I was left alone with the hound.
Scarcely were my eyes back on the pool before he landed on the islet, where he stood with the water dripping from his brindled coat, whilst with nostrils raised he sniffed the air. As I watched him through the stems, I became aware that he winded me; and when I saw him take to the water and head straight; for my hiding-place, I stole silently but swiftly away and, fearful of trusting to the muddy bed of the stream, committed myself to the bog.
I trod its treacherous surface as lightly as I could, but because of the smallness of my feet I kept breaking through the crust, and made only slow progress. Nevertheless I succeeded in getting farther than I expected before the hound sighted me. As soon as he did he burst through the rushes and, making a tremendous spring, landed within a few yards of where I was struggling with the mire.
This wild leap of his saved me. Had he been content to follow at his best pace, the chances are that he would have caught me before I could reach the bank of the river; but now, through the violence of his fall, he was so deeply embedded that I gained many yards before he could extricate himself. Indeed, by the time he had done so I had reached the more liquid part of the morass where I had all but foundered at sunrise. With the double danger threatening me, I exerted myself even more than then; but, madly as I struggled, my progress was not nearly as fast as that of the hound, now overhauling me. It was horrible to hear this murderous fiend whimpering and whining in his eagerness to get at me, and to feel that I was scarcely advancing at all. I was like a fox in a nightmare, only Iwas never more wide awake in my life. Fright however kept urging me on, and to my joy I at last felt firmer ground under my feet.
The bank gained, I turned my head for an instant, and saw my pursuer seemingly stuck in the treacherous mud-belt; but I did not waste precious time watching him. That he still reckoned me his I felt sure; that I should escape I had little hope; nevertheless, I meant to do my utmost to save my life. I galloped down-stream close to the water's edge, took the otter's path across the neck of the bend, swam the river, and on landing plunged into the great reed-brakes.
On, on I went at my full speed, driven by mortal fear. I knew I was not yet out of danger. Here a wild-duck rose in affright, there a moorhen scurried out of my way; but I kept straight on past clumps of osmunda ferns and flags, and across backwaters till at last, after swimming a maze of water-ways, I came to the grassy promontory that flanks the inflow of the river into the mere.
For a moment I stood there irresolute. Should I take to the water or trust to the bordering reeds? Whilst I hesitated, I thought I heard the hound coming, and the next instant dropped intothe stream. Partly by swimming, but chiefly by the aid of the current, I succeeded in reaching the nearest islet of the little archipelago that studded the rippled expanse. There I hoped to find refuge from my relentless pursuer.
I had arrived only just in time, for, peeping through the sedgy growth that covered my hiding-place, I saw the hound gallop to the end of the promontory and stand gazing over the wide surface. Then he withdrew to the brake that rose like a lofty wall about the mere. I could trace his progress by the rising of the wild-fowl whose sanctuaries he invaded, and later by the glimpse I got of the angered swan swimming defiantly across the narrow opening of a big creek about which the array of reeds was densest. I saw no further sign of the brute that had so rudely violated the summer peace of the fenland, but wisdom seemed to dictate that I should look elsewhere for a more peaceful home.
Transcriber's NotePage12: Changed "night" to "nights."(Orig: And how short those night were!)Page20: Changed "crusing" to "cruising."(Orig: crusing restlessly up and down the turf)Page23: Changed "noes" to "noses."(Orig: turned up our noes at such food)Page37: Changed "exhilirating" to "exhilarating."(Orig: It was most exhilirating to be wandering)Page40: Changed "thristing" to "thirsting."(Orig: stealthy enemy thristing for its blood)Page42: Changed "lucious" to "luscious."(Orig: every bit of the lucious morsel)Page53: Changed "malard" to "mallard."(Orig: a loud quack the malard disappeared)Page53: Changed "mallord" to "mallard."(Orig: How he enjoyed the mallord,)Page67: Changed "nothinginess" to "nothingness."(Orig: dwarf into nothinginess the annoyances)Page71: Changed "manteled" to "mantled."(Orig: skimmed the brake that manteled the steep slope)Page74: Changed "pursurers" to "pursuers."(Orig: I should be able to elude my pursurers)Page76: Changed "rocognized" to "recognized."(Orig: he rocognized the bedraggled cub)Page81: Changed "grievious" to "grievous."(Orig: Chief of these are the grievious losses)Page92: Changed "be" to "he."(Orig: killed by the pack; be was the man who,)Page103: Changed "waching" to "watching."(Orig: It was bitter work waching with the gale in your teeth,)Page132: Changed "pursurer" to "pursuer."(Orig: and saw my pursurer seemingly stuck)