It was late when the little shooting party came back, their coming heralded by the screaming of a troop of jays that apparently kept pace with them as they plodded through the underwood. But the birds were not inveighing against the sportsmen. When my friend returned, he told me that as he passed under a pollard oak an owl flew out, almost brushing him with its wings. The jays, who were hanging about among the thickets on the edge of the wood, espied it in a moment. And, raising a hue and cry that was caught up by every finch and tit and blackbird within hearing, they chased the bewildered bird from tree to tree, scolding and storming, and buffeting it with their wings. Earlier in the afternoon a rabbit passed, unnoticed by the dogs, not running, but leaping, across the wood; and close at its heels a weasel, following in hot pursuit.
The rain was slackening a little as we turned into the hut. But a heavy fog was closing in from the moor, blotting out even the near woodland with its wall of grey. Pleasant, indeed, after the mist and the rain was the glow of lamplight. And pleasanter still the glow of roaring oak logs, as we sat that night, each with a terrier on his knee, before the great wood fire. The dogs have taken kindly to the casual stranger, and one of them in particular is fond of sitting by me on a chair at meal times, resting her head on my arm in the most engaging manner. The two are on the best of terms for the most part, but a little attention paid to one is apt to lead to trouble with the other. I am told that there is sometimes a good deal of jealousy shown in the retrieving of a rabbit—a circumstance which, as may readily be guessed, does not tend to improve the condition of the game. And the slippers which we threw to distant corners of the hut for the dogs to bring back to us suffered severely in the bringing.
As we sat by the fire I heard something of the dangers of the moor, and of the reality of getting lost at night or in a Dartmoor fog. The oldest hand, said the Master of the House, would be helpless in such a fog as now lay round the house. A good plan, he added, is to follow a stream if you are fortunate enough to find one. Sooner or later you are sure to come to a house. He himself was on the moor once, with two companions, far away from any path, when a dense mist came on. After long walking, he happened, by great good fortune, on the wall that bounded his own common, and came at length to a familiar gate that he knew was only half a mile from home.
The three wanderers drew a breath of relief. They were all right now. The haunting fear of having to pass a night upon the moor, as many a lost wayfarer has done, was forgotten in a moment. With confident steps they marched through the mist straight down the slope towards this bungalow. But after going steadily for three hours, with a gradually growing conviction that something after all must be wrong, they found themselves back at the same wall, and at the very identical gate. They had been walking in a circle—an experience only too familiar to travellers who have lost their way in the desert. They now followed the wall until it turned abruptly down the hill. My friend then walked close to it, while the others kept abreast of him, at a distance of a hundred yards or so, that they might avoid a bog which skirted the enclosure. In this way, shouting to each other now and then, they reached here in safety, not having seen each other since they parted company.
DARTMOOR—EVENING: TAKING HOME THE SHEEP. [ ImagesList]
Another man, well known in the district—a man who rather prides himself on his acquaintance with Dartmoor—will not soon be allowed to forget how he set off on horseback one day in the mist, taking a short cut across the moor, by which he expected in half an hour to strike the Princetown road, and how, after an hour and a half of pretty hard riding, he too, found himself at the spot from which he had started.