The Story of a Hare

by J. C. Tregarthen

Thereupon they strive to reach the shelf, some by the overhanging wall, the rest by leaping; but all their efforts are in vain.

Meanwhile the leader has succeeded in gaining the higher ledge, from which by craning her neck she is able to see the hare beneath, who indeed is within a few feet of her.

The upper shelf is semicircular, and point after point of its circumference she examines in the hope of being able to get at her prey. Soon she discovers a notch. From this, twisting her lissom body, she tries to leap to the lower shelf, only to fail, and narrowly escape falling over the precipice. She is soon back for another attempt. Once and again she is near succeeding. Had the indent been a little deeper, had the under ledge projected but another inch, had it only been a little lower, she must have flung herself on to it; but as it stood, it was beyond her skill.

Her resources, however, were not exhausted. Resting her fore feet on the edge of the shelf, every toe extended and every claw gripping the rock, she lowered her long white body and swung it to and fro like a ghostly pendulum. Now this way, now that, it oscillated, till presently at the full extent of her inward swing she let go—falling on her back within a few inches of the hare.

Then he showed the wonderful grit that was in him. As she fell he rose, lashed out with his powerful hind legs and sent her flying by a kick that drove her over the edge, down, down, down to the raging waters far below.

The loss of their leader discouraged the rest of the pack. As if in distress, they kept darting up and down the track till a deluge of rain drove them off.

The hare was left master of the field. His flank rose and fell more quickly than its wont, the pupils of his eyes were distended as never before, but already he was planning his escape, and had chosen the retreat he would make for.

Hours of blinding rain followed, lightning occasionally lit up the blackness shrouding cliff and sea; it was no weather for any living thing to be abroad in, and indeed nothing appeared till near dawn, when a bedraggled white creature made her way with difficulty up the face of the cliff and staggered to the track. It was the leader of the stoats, who after struggling with the backwash which had nearly buffeted the life out of her, had managed to land, and after a long rest, come back for her followers.

Awhile she stood beneath the ledge and looked up. Too feeble to do more, she meant to return at dusk to pit her wit against the hare’s, in some way to get at him, drive her fangs into his great vein and drink deep of his blood: she was even thinking of the feast in prospect as she crawled away on the trail of the pack.

She was, however, reckoning without her host. In as wild a dawn as ever broke upon the Land’s End, the hare leapt from his sanctuary and stole over the rain-lashed moor to Chapel Carn Brea, where, happy in the thought that the downpour would destroy all trace of his trail, he fell soundly asleep, nor even dreamt of the terrible ordeal through which he had passed.