He has judged wisely, for Challenger unmistakably has the line and speaks to it confidently, just as the huntsman gets near enough to put in with good effect, “Hark to Challenger!” and hounds, flying to cry, take up the running with a chorus which it does one’s heart good to hear. They have, however, only run about a hundred yards when they check quite suddenly, once more spreading out like a fan. But they are only momentarily at fault. Poor puss is down, her heart having failed her after coming about two miles straight, and she is up and off in view as soon as the hounds, who have slightly overrun the scent, spread back to where she has clapped. She heads for home, and hounds run fast for another fifteen minutes before checking on the island farm which they crossed in the first burst.
The sun is getting strong by this time, and scent does not serve so well on the arable land. Hounds slowly carry the line into the middle of a newly ploughed hillside field, and gradually come to a stop. Evidently the hare is forward, so, after leaving his hounds alone sufficiently long to enable them to recover the line, unassisted if they can, the huntsman resolves on a cast “forrard.” He whistles his hounds to him, and at a gentle double casts them round the fence from about opposite to where they checked, keeping his hounds in front of him, and giving them time to try as they go. Almost immediately one of the puppies speaks, and out pops a rabbit right under his nose. The huntsman rates “Ware rabbit!” and, very much to their credit, none of the old hounds break away. It is, however, altogether too much for the puppies, who every one of them courses the rabbit for about a hundred yards in full cry.
Luckily the interloper runs up hill along the fence, so the delinquents are easily stopped by the whipper-in, who is lying back, and turned to the master’s horn. It may here be remarked that it is comparatively easy to stop beagles from rabbits in the open. The pack the writer has in mind would always stop if rated when a rabbit got up in an open field; but in covert, where one could not easily get at them, the case was very different, and you might holloa yourself hoarse without producing much effect. Master Bunny, however, only caused a momentary diversion, and hounds, having struck the line in the bottom corner of the fence, are once more chiming away merrily over the heather in the direction of puss’s original form.
Will they catch her? Well, if she is a leveret her bolt must be nearly shot, but if she is an old hare—and she is big enough!—she will lead the pack a merry dance for another good half-hour before giving in. So is the fight fought between poor puss and her enemies the beagles. Sometimes a circle; sometimes a straight bolt and then as a rule clapping till hounds are over her, and getting up behind them, making her way home again; sometimes, though not often, making a long point and dying some five miles from home. I once recollect a hare being found close to the brook near which hounds were thrown off, as above described, making a point of five miles over the heather, and being eventually killed in the grounds of a well-known public school situated in that district. This is, however, an exceptional occurrence.
Many and varied are the incidents which occur during the chase of a hare. Often have we been hopelessly at fault on that common, when, to our joy, we have beheld a hat held aloft on some neighbouring hill. We know that hat well. It belongs to the most arrant poacher in the neighbourhood; he is the best hand at seeing a hare sitting in the whole countryside, and he knows a hunted hare when he sees her. We tried at one time to reclaim him by paying him more for every hare he found for us than he could get for one dead in the public-house. No use! the instinct was far too strong, and only a week or two after the beginning of the compact “the Long ’un,” as he was called—for he was a tall fellow—was caught setting a snare one Sunday morning.
When we were drawing for a hare he would walk with his hands behind him, and, turning his head slowly from side to side, would cover all ground within fifty yards as well as any setter. Probably before very long he would suddenly stop, and, indicating a certain spot perhaps twenty yards away, would quite quietly remark, “There she sets!” Surely enough there she did sit; though as often as not his eye alone could discern Madam Puss crouched in her heathery form. A wonderfully observant man he must have been, and great fun we used to have about him; but as to reclaiming him, you might as well have asked him not to eat—or drink, for it must be regretfully admitted he was at least as fond of liquid as of solid nourishment.
He was often in gaol—always for poaching—and, as the keeper used to say, “The Long ’un always came out fatter than he went in!” so his home fare was probably neither plentiful in quantity nor of an Epicurean quality. He never bore malice, as the following incident shows. He had been in gaol for poaching on the common above described. His sentence expired on a Saturday, and as a party of us were walking on the following Sunday afternoon along one of the footpaths which thread the common, who should appear round a corner but our friend, just fresh from gaol?
What did he do? Why, he lifted his hat, and wished us good-day in the cheeriest manner possible, just as if he had met us by appointment to help find a hare for the beagles.
Probably he was there for no very legitimate purpose, but at the moment he was, of course, on the footpath, where he had as much right to be as anyone else; and one could hardly help sympathising with the love of sporting adventure which was doubtless the main cause of his poaching proclivities. At any rate, he found us many a hare, and was an important factor in bringing not a few to hand.
No attempt has been made to describe in detail the different methods of hunting beagles, or the different stamp of beagle which is suitable for different countries, as all these points have been dealt with in the Hunting volume of the “Badminton Library.” The writer has merely attempted to place before the reader a picture (very imperfect, doubtless) of such leading episodes in this sport as he has himself witnessed many and many a time; and if the picture should by any lucky chance induce any reader of these pages to be “up and at it” by six o’clock in the morning, and test for himself the enjoyment of watching a good pack of beagles at work, he will, if he has any hunting instinct at all in him, assuredly be well repaid, and the writer will not have written in vain.