The Story of a Hare

by J. C. Tregarthen

During this inclement time he continued to use the seat on Chapel Carn Brea, the retreat under the drooping fronds drawing him as did no other. True, he could have found shelter beneath the chantry, but since lying there he had seen Grey Fox brush close by the opening which was the only way out; from that moment he abandoned all idea of repairing thither again, for fear of being cornered. He did give a thought to the cave in Brahan Croft, but could not bring himself to sit there; to the hut by the fowling-pool and to the linhay on Brea Farm, which presented themselves to his mind, he had still greater objection; whilst the rabbits’ holes which proffered their shelter were altogether beneath his dignity, and indeed against his nature, to which no other roof but the sky was acceptable.

At last he had to abandon Chapel Carn Brea, on account of the water which lodged in the form and rendered it untenantable.

It was in pouring rain that the hare ransacked the country in search of new quarters, which he at last found in a plantation on the western slope of Sancreed Beacon. On reaching it, he remained awhile on the outskirts hesitating to commit himself to such a strange place, for so the wood with its array of trees seemed to him after the naked hills and barren moorland he was alone used to. Presently, with tremulous steps, he moved in and looked about him for a suitable seat. In selecting it he showed that he had his wits about him, for the spot he chose was as free from the drippings of the pines as any within his ken. After scratching a slight hollow amongst the fallen needles, he sat with his face to the hill taking in his surroundings. No undergrowth impeded his view, nothing save the stems and a tree or two blown down by the gale.

He soon felt at home, for the spirit of the place soothed him and banished the sense of strangeness. At first the fall of a pine-cone would startle him; by and by he took no more notice of it than he had of the popping of the furze-pods in the heat of August. He loved to listen to the soughing of the wind in the lofty tops, where the goldcrests were to be seen flitting to and fro. He believed them to be his only neighbours, till one night, just as he had risen, an owl came to the mouth of the hole in the next tree and called. The cry caused him to start, but at sight of the bird he regained his composure and finished stretching himself; in future if he happened to be by when the owl hooted, he did not even trouble to look up. One day was monotonously like another, so much so that the visit of a woodpecker, or the arrival of a wood-pigeon, was quite an event. Small wonder then that the hare, with his hermit-like tastes, felt happy in this peaceful solitude, and soon abandoned all thought of the intruders his imagination had conjured up.

Yet, before many more dawns had broken, the wood was visited by a pine-marten, a dangerous marauder, who resembled the hare in this respect that she too was the sole survivor of her kind. She came early; the stars had hardly begun to pale when, with scarcely a rustle to announce her coming, the hare saw her making as straight towards him as the trees permitted. Indeed, she threatened to overrun him, but stopped a dozen yards away near a patch of gaudy orange-red fungus, and sat scratching an ear till a shout from the glebe farm suddenly arrested her attention. At the sound she stood erect and listened with ears acock. She was an elegant creature with a bushy tail, resembling, save for her dark-brown colouring, a dwarf fox; and, like reynard himself, the moment she was satisfied that the shout, twice repeated, was not the hue and cry that had pursued her again and again, she relaxed her tense attitude and fell to play. She ran with bewitching grace and activity along the trunk and branches of a fallen tree, rested at the end of the longest branch, and, after brushing a feather from her muzzle, renewed her frolics, as if for the hare’s entertainment. Then back she jumped to the ground, sprang to the nearest bole, climbed up and up, was plainly visible at the dome against the now reddening sky, and finally lay at full length on a horizontal branch scanning the scene below. Her quick eyes were everywhere—now on the jackdaws astir on the church tower, now on a labourer faring to work, now, as the light grew, on the vessels wind-bound under St Michael’s Mount, and presently on the sun when its bright face showed above the Lizard and laid a golden pathway across the waters of the bay. Soon the rays fired the pine-tops, and turned to brightest crimson the tongue of the marten as she licked her glossy forelegs and buff-coloured breast. When she had finished grooming herself she lay awhile with her head between her paws, blinking and enjoying the genial warmth that dried her coat, and at last sought the deserted hawk’s nest in the fork, where she had often curled up during her forays.

Her fastness was in the Land’s End cliffs. Never was castle wall so stately or so majestic as the mural face of the precipice that furnished her a refuge some thirty feet above the Atlantic, whose roar was her lullaby.

R. H. Preston & Sons.] [To face p. 100.
Mount’s Bay from the Beacon.

There she slept away most of the hours between grey dawn and night. Awakened either by the scream of homing seafowl or by the level rays penetrating her lair, she watched through the narrow portal of her retreat the sun set, the glow die out of the west, and darkness spread over the face of the waters, before sallying forth to execute the raid she had planned. She was the wiliest of marauders, pilfering here to-night, elsewhere to-morrow, and, save that she avoided Boscawen-Un—the lurcher’s home—ranging in all directions. She took toll of seafowl on the dizzy ledge, she robbed the farmers’ henroosts and beehives, she stripped the squire’s strawberry beds and plundered the crabber’s bait, hang it where he might. Few places were inaccessible to her; she was as much at home on the crags of the Kites’ Carn as on the loftiest pine of Sancreed Beacon.

It was a wonder that those quick eyes of hers had not descried the hare, but probably that was owing to the shouts which distracted her attention just as her gaze was being directed towards the spot where he sat motionless. As for the hare his eyes never left the strange creature. Her character he had read at sight. He read it in the feather on the muzzle, the blood-stain on the whiskers, and above all in the apprehension she showed on hearing the shout. To his view that was an infallible sign of a felon. He was glad when she ascended the tree and the length of the long stem separated them, for he believed that the marten had seen him and might have pounced on him at any moment. As he was far from being assured that she would not attempt to get at him before the day was out, he made a point of keeping awake and on the look-out for sign of movement in the eyrie between him and the blue vault.