This morning dawn had surprised him miles away from his rocky stronghold. For hours before daybreak he had lain in wait with glowing eyes under the shelter of some rustling sedge that grew amidst the waters of a pool, for wildfowl. His listening ears caught the swish of their tantalising wingbeats as skein after skein circled above his lurking-place, but he had awaited in vain the splash of widgeon or teal on the lane of water he had opened in the thin ice as he swam to his “islet” ambush. Hunger and expectation had kept him there too long and, in the grey light that had quenched the green fires of his eyes, chilled and famished he had stolen away to the near brake, and under its thickest furze-bush shunned those hateful rays that jewelled the frosted spines above his lair and gilded the crags between him and his earth.
Scarcely had he curled himself up before the tread of human steps made him cock his ears, and when the Earthstopper bent over his clean-cut footprints the ominous silence had brought him to his feet. But as the footsteps died away he had settled himself down again, and it was out of a deep sleep that the warning voice of Troubadour had roused him. Once more, like an outlaw, he was driven forth under the eye of the wintry sun with hue and cry behind him, conscious that his safety lay in his own cunning and endurance and the stout heart that had carried him through before.
As he crosses the sward there is nothing hurried in his stealthy movements, despite the clamour in his ears. He is not sure that his earth is open—more than once he had found it closed—so he is husbanding his strength, and, if need be, every bit of it will be doled out under the direction of his vulpine brain in the attempt to outwit his enemies. Some fifteen feet from the cliff a slab of rock—outcrop of the granite formation beneath—brings back to his memory a ruse that the old vixen had taught him, when one August day at sundown she anxiously led her playful litter up to the great world overlooking their rocky nursery. This he at once decides to put into practice.
So to the amazement of the open-mouthed Tregellas he crosses and recrosses the rock as he had seen her do, hoping thereby at least to check his pursuers, if not to foil them altogether.
Leaving the tangled lines of scent for the hounds to unravel, he, by a single leap, reaches the verge of the cliff and for an instant clings to its dizzy edge as if to listen to the swelling cry, for his mask is turned that way. Then, gathering himself for a spring, with a whisk of his brush he is gone. This was too much for the spellbound Tregellas, good Methodist though he was: “Well, I’m dommed, that taakes the fuggan.”
The leading hounds were breaking through the furze at the foot of the hill, their voices ringing like silver bells.
Flashing across the open they checked at the rock, but only for a moment, and then, like an impetuous stream, poured down the cliff. Thither Tregellas, loosing the dog he had been holding, ran at the top of his speed and looked over. The scene below stirred his Celtic blood. The pack, with the fox a furlong ahead, was racing along the narrow beach, till, reaching a jutting point, pursued and pursuers took to the water and, skirting the rocks, swam out of his sight.
Knowing the line the fox would probably take, Tregellas, with the fever of the chase in his veins, climbed the steep hill leading to the Deadman and, though he bruised his knees through his corduroys, gained at length the topmost stone of the cairn that crowned it.
“Aal for nawthin’,” he gasped as he overlooked the stretch of silent moor beneath him. The only sound of the hunt was the distant thud of hoofs where the “field” galloped along the coast road. Yet with quick, restless eyes he swept the waste as from that very eyry a sparrow-hawk was wont to do, watchful for the slightest sign. The echo of the horn had kept hope alive, faint though it was, but now he has seen something which rivets his gaze.