As we worked round a big field, we got into softer ground, a red sand and soil mixed; and here the holes were much deeper and often ran through the bank and out for yards under ground into the next field. Here Jack and I changed places, Jack doing the ferreting, and I going to his side with the garden spade. One, two, three, four, five yards the ferret went and stopped, and all was quiet. I listen, but not a sound. Jack pulls gently on the line and finds it tight, and for a minute we wait, hoping a rabbit may bolt from the hole the ferret went in at. But no such luck. I take the small ratting-spade, and with the spike end feel into the ground at the foot of the bank, and at once come upon the hole; this I open out and clear of earth, and Jack, who has crept through the hedge, kneels down and finds the line passing this hole in the direction of the field and going downwards. At that moment there is a sound like very distant thunder, and the line is pulled quickly four yards further into the hole, and the marks show six yards are in. I go about this distance out into the field, lie down and place my ear close to the ground. I shift about in all directions listening intently, and at last hear a faint thudding sound. I shift again a few inches in this direction, and lose it; in that, and recover it; again a few inches, and the sound is directly under my head, but pretty deep down. I take the big spade and open out a hole a yard square, and dig down as far as I can reach. I get into the hole and sink deeper. I have to enlarge it a foot all round to get room, and then I dig down again till only my head appears above ground when I stand up. Then I take the long spade, and with that sink two more feet, and plump I come on the top of the hole, and the ferret shoves a sand-covered head up and looks at me. I reverse the long spade and catch the line with the hook and pull the ferret up, and then calling Jack, I send him head first into the well-like pit, holding on to one of his feet myself as I lie flat on the ground to allow him to go deep enough. In a minute a dead rabbit is taken out and two live ones, whose necks Jack breaks as he hangs suspended, and then I pull him up with his plunder, and he rights himself on the surface, very red in the face, very sandy, spluttering and rubbing his eyes. Then the ferret is swung down again by the line, it goes a little way into the hole and returns, and so we know we have made a clean sweep. The big hole is filled up and stamped down, and after filling a pipe and resting a few minutes, on we go with our work.
On the high sandy part of the field we have several deep digs like the above, with varying success, and we rejoice when we reach the last side of the field and get into clay again, where holes are short and most of the rabbits bolt at once. During all the day we only stopped once for half-an-hour to get a snack of bread and cheese, and by the time the cock partridges began to call their families together for roost, and the teams in the next field to knock off ploughing, we are all, man, boy, dogs and ferrets, fairly tired, and are glad to tumble seventeen couple of rabbits into the keeper's cart that has been sent out for them, and trudge off home ourselves.
Now for another day's sport that was quite different. No dogs with us, only a bag of ready-muzzled ferrets, a bundle of purse nets and a spade. Success will depend on perfect quiet, and even the patter of the dogs' feet would spoil our sport, so they are at home for once, and Jack and I are alone. It is one of those soft mild dull days that now and then appear in mid-winter, a sort of day to gladden the heart of foxhunters and doctors, and to make wiseacres shake their heads and say "most unseasonable." It is a good day for Jack and me, and we feel confident as we steal into a plantation of tall spruce firs, placed so thick on the ground that beneath them is perpetual twilight, and not a blade of grass or bramble to hide the thick carpet of needle points. Softly we creep forward to a lot of burrows we know of in the corner of the wood, and then I go forward alone and spread a net loosely over every hole, firmly pegging it down by the cord. This done I stand quietly down-wind of the holes, and Jack comes and slips the six ferrets all into different holes, and then crouches down on his knees. All is quiet; only the whisperings of the tree-tops, the occasional chirp of a bird, or the rustle of a mouse in the dead leaves. Five minutes pass, and then out dashes a rabbit into a net, which draws up round it. Jack moves forward on tip-toe, kills the rabbit and takes it out of the net, and covers the hole again. While he is doing this, three more rabbits have bolted and got netted, one has escaped, and a ferret has come out. The captured ones are killed, the ferret sent into another hole, and for an hour this work goes on, and during all the time neither of us have spoken, for we know there is nothing that scares wild animals more than the human voice, unless it is the jingle of metals, such as a bunch of keys rattling. They dread the human voice because they have had too much experience of it, and the rattle of metal because they have not had experience enough of it, for it is a sound they have never heard, and nothing like, in the quiet woods and fields. On the other hand, animals pay but little attention to a whistle, for in one shape or another they are constantly hearing it from their feathered companions.
But to go back to our netting. An hour over, we pick up the ferrets as they come out and bag them, and then I go off to some fresh holes and spread the nets again, and we repeat the same performance; and during the day we kill, without any digging or hard work, about twenty-two couple of rabbits. In the above account I have written of a day's sport that took place in a fir plantation in a little village in Norfolk, where it would have been madness to work the ferrets without muzzling them, for they would have been sure to kill some rabbits in the holes and then have laid up; but I should mention that I have killed many rabbits in the same way on the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, and I was much astonished when I first got there to find men who thoroughly understood their business working their ferrets under nets without muzzling them. I adopted the plan myself, and have rarely had a ferret kill a rabbit underground. For some reason that I could never find out, a Cotswold rabbit will always bolt from a hole with a ferret in if it can. It is well known in Norfolk that if a rabbit is run into a hole by dogs, you may ferret it if you like, but it will never bolt, and it must be dug out. But in Gloucestershire I have seen the same rabbit bolt out of a hole, get shot at, be run by dogs, go to ground, and again bolt at once from a ferret. Few professionals ever use a line on a ferret on the Cotswold, one reason being that the burrows are nearly all in rocky ground, and there would be danger of the line being caught in the numerous cracks; besides it is not required, for a rabbit there is sure to bolt, and for this reason it is twice as easy to kill rabbits in Gloucestershire as it is in Norfolk, especially in the sandy or soft soil of the latter county.
Let me here beg of all my readers, especially students, never to keep a poor rabbit alive in their hands a second. I don't suppose any who read this book could be so unsportsmanlike and brutal as to keep a rabbit alive to course and torture over again with dogs, or for the fun of shooting at the poor little beast. Such ruffians should never be allowed a day's sport on a gentleman's property. They are only fit to go out mole-catching. No, directly you have a live rabbit in your hand, take it by its hind legs with your right hand, and the head with your left, with two fingers under its face; with these fingers turn the head back, and give the rabbit a smart quick stretch, and in an instant all its sufferings are over. Never hit it with your hand or a stick behind the ears: first, because you are not quite sure to kill it with the first blow; and secondly, if you do, half the blood in the rabbit will settle in a great bruise at the spot where it was struck, and make that portion unfit for table.
That is sufficient for this morning, and you may now turn to a little lighter work with some algebra.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
Fortunately I don't live by the sea. I say fortunately, because I look upon the sea as a swindler, for it robs one of just half one's little world and upsets all calculations by forcing one to live in a mean semicircle. I actually know a rat-catcher who is stupid enough to live in a village on the east coast, and half his time he and his dogs are at home in idleness and are half starved, because the ever-restless tiresome sea rolls about and disports itself over all that is east of the village, so the poor man can only go rat-catching in one direction. Now and then I go to the sea-side, but when I go there it is on business—not in my Sunday clothes and with a "tripper's" return ticket, but with my dogs, ferrets, nets (the long ones) and the boy Jack; he and I dressed in our well-worn corduroys, gaiters, and navvy boots; and instead of choosing a town to visit with Marine Parade, Esplanades, Lodgings to let, Brass Bands, Nigger Minstrels and spouting M.P.'s, we go to a little village unknown to "trippers," and put up at a small inn for a week or ten days. We sleep in a room not unlike a hay-loft, and take our meals and rest in the common kitchen, with its rattling latticed windows and sanded floor.
We go there twice each winter to kill rabbits on what are called the "Denes," which are great, wide, down-like lands on the top of the steep earth cliff, partially covered with the ever-flowering gorse, a cover dear to rabbits and all sorts of game. We reach the inn in time for an early dinner; and after we have housed the ferrets in a big tub and the dogs in a warm dry shed with heaps of straw to sleep on, Jack and I despatch our food and then start off to inspect the field of our future operations. We have not far to go. First down the street, past two or three dozen flint-pebble cottages; past the church, with its square tower so high that it makes the really big church look small in proportion; past the rectory; past the schools, where some forty or fifty future fishermen and sailors have just finished their tasks for the day and come rolling out, dressed all alike in dark, sea-stained, canvas trousers and thick sailor jerseys; past the low one-storied cottage where the old retired naval captain has lived for many years, and then up a sandy lane between high crumbling banks and out on to the open Denes. We take a path that runs close along on the top of the cliff, mounting a steep hill as we go till we reach a spot half a mile further on, where the sea cliff is four hundred feet high and nearly perpendicular; and here among the ruins of an old church, part of which has fallen with the slipping cliff into the sea many years ago, Jack and I halt and take a look round. We are on the highest spot within miles, and spread out in front of us, as we face inland, are, first, the down-like hills, dotted over with patches of gorse and with turf between as fine and soft as a Persian carpet; then cultivated fields intersected by thick hedges; and in the distance we could distinguish a clustering village here, a homestead there, an old manor-house in its well-kept garden and park-like grounds, and in all directions the square, solid, picturesque towers of village churches peeping from among the trees, that became thicker and thicker the further the eye travelled from the sea. Close to our left, just under the shoulder of a hill which protects it from the keen east wind off the sea, is a tiny village of some ten cottages, all different, all neat and snug-looking, each in its own garden. There is a stand of bee-hives in one, a honeysuckle-covered porch to another, and, though it is mid-winter, there is a warm home-like look about all. Then there is the one farm-house, well kept and well cared for, but old and belonging to other days, as its gables and low windows denote; and from our high hill we look over the house into a garden and orchard beyond, both enclosed by grey lichen-covered walls. On either side in front of the house are the farm buildings, all, from the big barn to the row of pigsties, thatched with long reeds, which give the whole a pleasant English home appearance.