Lamorna showing Cairn Dhu Headland. [Face page 52.
At dusk the otter had left his holt near the base of Cairn Dhu. Ravenous after the long day’s fast, he hurried down the steep face of the rock, and reaching a ledge which the waves lashed, dived through the surf in quest of his prey. The sea teemed with fish, but a ground-swell that stirred the bottom and discoloured the water baffled his attempts to seize them. A greyhound might as well have hoped to catch a hare in a fog as the otter to capture peal in the cove or turbot on the sandy bottom near the Bucks. Ever vigilant against such raids, the fish were only scared by the dreaded and indistinct form of the marauder as he glided past them in the clouded depths. Convinced at length of the hopelessness of his efforts, the otter landed on the Mermaid Rock to consider where he should go to get his supper. He is within reach of two streams and the lake; and their waters are as clear as crystal. Lamorna stream is close at hand; but the trout, owing to frequent raids on them since the gale, are very wary. Newlyn stream is some four miles away, and attracts him because of its larger fish; but what appeals to him most is the lake with its bright Loch Levens, then in the pink of condition. It was several days since he feasted on them, for the taint of human scent on the iris had alarmed him; but, as he rested on the rock, hunger proved stronger than fear, and despite the distance he decided to go there, fully intending to be back in some coast fastness before dawn. By skirting the base of the cliffs, and running along the shore where a beach invited him, he at length reached the mouth of Newlyn stream. There was nothing to arouse his suspicions: the last loiterer had left the old bridge, candles were out, and the moonlit village lay wrapped in slumber. Passing under the arch, the otter stole up the coombe, keeping to the shadows of the bushes that fringed the stream. Within winding distance of the clump of iris he paused, but detecting no taint, passed between the flags, made his way up the hill, and dropped down to the Lareggan stream, on the bank of which the Earthstopper lay in ambush. Threading his way among the reeds at the upper end of the mill pool, he disturbed the moorhen, but heedless of her cry, crossed the stream, and pressed on at his best pace towards the lake. A few moments later—for the creature’s progress was rapid—the Earthstopper, who has been shifting his glance from track to pool, becomes as rigid as the stems about him. His gaze is fixed on a shadowy patch, no bigger than your hand, under the lowest bar of the gate. He has not a doubt that it is the mask of the otter, for a minute ago that patch was not there. He tries to make out its long body, but the bars, and the shadows they cast, conceal it. What dread of its enemy the beast must have, to hesitate thus on the skirt of this rude track in the depth of night! It cannot be that it winds the Earthstopper, for the breeze that rustles the leaves of the ash, fans his flushed face, and stirs his bushy eyebrows. At length the creature comes noiselessly across the open space, as if making for the furze-bush, the moonbeams catching the glossy hair on its arched back, and lighting the dust it raises. Human eye has never seen it before, so well has it kept the secret of its existence. In the shadow of the tree it is almost lost to view, and then as it brushes past the furze, the Earthstopper gets a glimpse of its long glistening whiskers, and is sorely tempted to lay hold of its trailing tail. Why it did not wind him is, like other mysteries of scent, beyond the power of explanation.
Far from being scared back as the Squire feared, the otter, unconscious of a lurking foe, pursues its way to the lake. Not for some minutes does the Earthstopper back out of his ambush. “What a beety! ef I can only keep un up, we shall see summat to-day: ef!” says he under his quick breath as he brushes himself down with his hands. Then he lights his clay pipe and tries to calm himself, for he has seldom been more excited. Unable to stand still, he walks up and down the grassy bank above the footbridge, as a sailor paces to and fro on a jetty, only more hurriedly. It is nothing but his nervousness that makes him puff so vigorously at the ’baccy, that stops him every few minutes to listen. Not a mouse may move in the hedge or a cricket chirp in the crofts above without his thinking it is the otter returning, though the raider is at the time seeking its prey in the depths of the lake and spreading terror amongst its finny tenants.
At length tired of his pacings, the Earthstopper feels that he must be doing something towards keeping the otter up. So he gets the two lanterns, stinging his fingers as he gropes for them. Notice, as he lights them, the change in his face since we saw him sitting over his tea. Had he committed a crime he could scarcely look more agitated. Even his uncertain stride as he moves along the track betrays his disquietude, and the blind way he stumbles over the wall of the croft is as unlike him as the smothered oath he vents on the unoffending stones. One lantern he suspends from a rude granite slab spanning the stream, so that it hangs within a few inches of the rippling water. The other he fastens to a branch of a blackthorn on the far side of the croft. This done he climbs a mound amidst the furze and looks towards the lake now barely a furlong away. The surface is like a sheet of silver. No glimpse of living creature does he get, no sound reaches his ears but the voice of the fall and the song of a sedge-warbler. Retracing his steps he takes up a position on the rugged slope near the corner of the park.
It was close on two o’clock, judged by the stars, before he took the horn from his pocket. He might well have postponed blowing it a little while, but he could stand the strain of waiting no longer. Only by great self-restraint had he prevented himself from beginning an hour earlier; for more than once he thought he heard the otter breaking back, and each time his trembling hand had sought the horn. It was a relief to him when at last he raised it to his lips.
Now the Earthstopper is deep-chested and sound of lung, and he was so fearful that the otter might not hear the notes, that he blew with needless vigour and frequency. How groundless his fears were! In the stillness those blasts were heard for miles. So near did they seem to old Jenny at the park gates that she thought they came from the plantation behind the lodge. The Earthstopper had not handled a hunting-horn since his boyhood, much less blown one in the dead of night; and it never entered his head that his noisy proceedings could alarm the countryside and lead to a breach of the peace between his harmless neighbours. But so it was. Presently he heard the door of the farmhouse violently slammed. “Hullo, T’wheela’s movin’ early thes mornin’.” Certainly, unless the farmer suspected that a poaching hedgehog was the cause of the falling off in the cow’s milk, it was early for him to be moving.
Old Jenny and farmer Trewheela, however, are by no means the only persons in the parish roused by the untimely music, which had made the Squire’s hunters prick their ears and set all the cocks a-crowing. “Maddern” Churchtown is less than a mile away as sound travels, the wind was not unfavourable, and the notes of the horn were so penetrating that the Earthstopper might nearly as well have been serenading the villagers from the heaping stock of the “One and All.” Little wonder that the heavy sleepers were turning under their blankets before he had been blowing many minutes, and that the old men were lifting their stiff limbs out of bed and opening their windows.
“What be et, Jim?” said the parish clerk, whose white-nightcapped head was set in a framework of thatch, to a silver-haired veteran across the narrow street.
“Caan’t saay, I’m sure. Ef et happened when I wore a boay I should ha’ ben afeerd that Boney had landed.”