He saw the movement; for at once, even with his head down in the grasses, he hesitated and came to a full stop. Suddenly, as my fingers felt for the trigger-guard, my heart began to beat like a hammer.
There lay my danger; and in a flash I knew it, but not the extent of it. This was no hog, but a man; by the start and the quick arrested pose in which the brute faced me, still with his head low and his eyes regarding me from the grasses, I felt sure of him. But what of the others? Were they also men? If so, I was certainly lost, but I dared not turn my eyes for a glance at them. With a sudden and most natural grunt the brute backed a little, shook his head in disgust, and sidled towards the angle of the building. "Now or never," thought I, and pulled the trigger.
As the musket kicked against me I felt—I could not see—the rest of
the hogs swerve in a common panic and break for the gateway.
Their squealing took up the roar of the report and protracted it.
They were real hogs, then.
I caught up a second musket, and, to make sure, let fly into the mass of them as they choked the gateway. Then, without waiting to see the effect of this shot, I snatched musket number three, and ran through the drifting smoke to where my first victim lay face-downwards in the grasses, his swine's mask bowed upon the forelegs crossed—as a man crosses his arms—inwards from the elbow. As I ran he lifted himself in agony on his knees—a man's knees. I saw a man's hand thrust through the paunch, ripping it asunder; and, struggling so, he rolled slowly over upon his back and lay still. I stooped and tore the mask away. A black-avised face stared up at me, livid beneath its sunburn, with filmed eyes. The eyes stared at me unwinking as I slipped his other hand easily out of its case, which, even at close view, marvellously resembled the cleft narrow hoof of a hog. I could not disengage him further, his feet being strapped into the disguise with tight leathern thongs: but having satisfied myself that he was past help, I turned on a quick thought to the gateway again, and ran.
A second hog—a real hog—lay stretched there on its side, dead as a nail. Its companions, scampering in panic, had by this time almost reached the head of the glade. Forgetting my promise to my father, I started in pursuit. The thought in my mind was that, if I kept them in sight, they would lead me to my comrades; a chance unlikely to return.
The glade ran up between two contracting spurs of the hill. As I climbed, the belt of woodland narrowed on either side of the track, until the side-valley ended in a cross ridge where the chestnuts suddenly gave place to pines and the turf to a rocky soil carpeted with pine needles. Here, in the spaces between the tree-trunks, I caught my last glimpse of the hogs as two or three of the slowest ran over the ridge and disappeared. I followed, sure of getting sight of them from the summit. But here I found myself tricked. Beyond the ridge lay a short dip—short, that is, as a bird flies. Not more than fifty yards ahead the slope rose again, strewn with granite boulders and piled masses of granite, such as in Cornwall we call "tors"; and clear away to the mountain-tops stretched a view with never a tree, but a few outstanding bushes only. Yet from ridge to ridge green vegetation filled every hollow, and in the hollow between me and the nearest the hogs were lost.
I heard, however, their grunting and the snapping of boughs in the undergrowth: and in that clear delusive air it seemed but three minutes' work to reach the next ridge. I followed then, confidently enough—and made my first acquaintance with the Corsican macchia by plunging into a cleft twenty feet deep between two rocks of granite. I did not actually fall more than a third of the distance, for I saved myself by clutching at a clematis which laced its coils, thick as a man's wrist, across the cleft. But I know that the hole cannot have been less than twenty feet deep, for I had to descend to the bottom of it to recover my musket.
That fall committed me, too. Within five minutes of my first introduction to the macchia I had learnt how easily a man may be lost in it; and in less than half of five minutes I had lost not only my way but my temper. To pursue after the hogs was nearly hopeless: all sound of them was swallowed up in the tangle of scrub. Yet I held on, crawling through thickets of lentisk, tangling my legs in creepers, pushing my head into clumps of cactus, here tearing my hands and boots on sharp granite, there ripping my clothes on prickly thorns. Once I found what appeared to be a goat-track. It led to another cleft of rock, where, beating down the briers, I looked down a chasm which ended, thirty feet below, in a whole brake of cacti. The scent of the crushed plants was divine: and I crushed a plenty of them.
After a struggle which must have lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour, I gained the ridge which had seemed but three minutes away, and there sat down to a silent lesson in geography. I had given up all hope of following the hogs or discovering my comrades. I knew now what it means to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, but with many prickles I had gathered some wisdom, and learnt that, whether I decided to go forward or to retreat, I must survey the macchia before attempting it again.
To go forward without a clue would be folly, as well as unfair to my father, whom my two shots must have alarmed. I decided therefore to retreat, but first to mount a craggy pile of granite some fifty yards on my left, which would give me not only a better survey of the bush, but perhaps even a view over the tree-tops and down upon the bay where the Gauntlet lay at anchor. If so, by the movements on board I might learn whether or not my father had reached her with his commands before taking my alarm.