‘Do ’ee hear them, Mary? ’Tes the hounds. Hark! cheeld.’
‘I hear something, granfer.’
‘Wheere do ’ee make the cry to come from?’ and for answer she pointed with her free hand to the Kites’ Cairn. ‘Now keep an eye on the rocks, and tell me if you see anythin’.’
‘There’s something streaming through the Fairies’ Gap this minit. . . . Now it’s like a shadow, a moving shadow on the down. . . . They’re dogs. My word, such a passel of them, all in a bunch!’
Then they passed from sight and the weird cry almost died away; but presently the chorus swelled, and swelled, and swelled, and then the old man saw the hounds, like maddened things, come pouring over the brow and enter the brake full in his view.
‘You’re tremblin’, granfer.’
‘Iss, cheeld, all of a quake, like the yallow furze where the hounds are forcin’ a way. The moosic is ’most too much for me.’
‘Mary,’ said he, and the child raised her wondering eyes to the excited face, ‘’tes the line of the King Oter they’re spakin’ to, and—who can tell?—maybe the sun will shut down on a great day. But, lor me! what am I doin’ here on this rick, with hounds about to take the water? My place is in the Mary Jane.’ With that he scrambled down the rude ladder and bustled towards the spot where he had left the boat in the early morning.
As soon as he stepped in, the pack, which had been almost mute since entering the mere, broke out into a babel of music, proclaiming a find. The uproar so unnerved him that he was long in getting the oars between the thole-pins; but when he did, he pulled with might and main till, drawing near the hounds, he stopped rowing and kept a sharp lookout for the quarry repeating as he scanned the water: ‘Ef ’tes only he, only he.’ But not a sign of otter, big or small, met his eyes, either in the mere or in the creek, to which the chase presently shifted. There the fear that the game would land and reach the cliff suddenly possessed him. So all at once he urged the boat past hounds and island to the reedy corner, where he jumped to his feet and kept splashing the water to drive the otter back. The nearer the hounds approached the more frantically he wielded the oar, nor did he desist till they showed by their movements that the otter had left the end of the creek and was returning to the mere.
Whilst he watched them the squire and his followers came over the brow, and all made for the beach except the squire, who came tearing down the hill towards the boat.