Above stood two strong men, rigid, motionless as statues for the space of a full minute, locked in each other's grasp, and below, leaping, swimming, dashing, retreating, traversing to and fro, the noblest pack of hounds in Europe clamoured round the stag at bay!
[CHAPTER XXV.]
A BROAD HINT.
"Hold on, Parson! you've been and dropped your knife!" said a rough voice in Abner Gale's ear, while a dexterous snatch twitched the weapon out of his fingers. "Shame! gentlemen, shame!" continued Red Rube—for it was none other than the harbourer, who thus struggled up in the nick of time—"that two such noble riders should dispute about the honour of blooding a pack of hounds!"
Then stooping nimbly down, and seizing its branching antlers with one hand, while with the other he drew the Parson's hunting-knife across the stag's throat, he observed that in the huntsman's absence it was a harbourer's right to administer its death-stroke to the deer. Slowly, proudly, the stately creature's head drooped to the level of those eddying waters, already mantling in crimson circles with its blood. Fiercely, savagely, maddened by the work of slaughter, leaping and tumbling over each other in their eagerness to tear their prey, the hounds threw themselves on the carcase, and it required the efforts of all three men to preserve it from being foully mangled in their fangs.
Side by side, in silence, yet assisting each other and Red Rube, with all their skill in wood-craft, the foes who had but now been grappling in a death struggle, drew ashore, dismembered, and disembowelled the dead stag, as if their only consideration were the authorised distribution of its venison, and proper recompense of the hounds with blood.
It was not till the prescribed obsequies were fulfilled, till lights and liver had been set aside, the head sawn off, the "slot," or forefoot, carefully severed for preservation, in memorial of so fine a run, the paunch swallowed in eager gulps by the famished hounds, while Tancred and Thunderer growled at the two ends of a yard of entrails, and Red Rube, with bare, blood-stained arms, wiped the Parson's knife on a tuft of grass, but forbore returning it to its owner, that John Garnet, finding a moment's leisure, observed how three or four of the most fortunate riders had arrived, as though dropped from the clouds, in time to witness the finish before all was over. Amongst them he looked in vain for the pretty white pony and Nelly Carew.