At a distance of fifteen paces he blew such a blast as otter or hound has seldom heard.
For a moment farmer and constable were rooted to the spot, then together they took the gap, but that being small for two big men, they struggled as violently to get clear of one another as a few minutes before they had struggled to come to close quarters. Though convulsed where he lay, the Earthstopper heard the farmer banging at his door, for his wife had locked him out for her own safety.
A crash of glass which followed drowned the gasps of the constable as he bounded along Boscathna Lane, scaring the villagers who had come out to see the fun.
“Well, ef that doan’t keep the otter up,” said Andrew, “nawthin’ will”; and gathering up the lanterns and putting the horn in his pocket, he returned home the way he came.
CHAPTER VI
The Otter—Continued
THE OTTER AT THE LAKE
The otter had just landed on the island to eat his last trout before returning to the cliffs, when the first blast of the horn fell on his ears. Instantly the fish dropped from his jaws as though it seared them. It is true that he had heard that penetrating note a few months before when the foxhounds were drawing the cliffs, and, indeed, a far more hideous noise from the siren of a steamer whose hull, during a fog, loomed vaguely within sight as he peeped through a crevice of his holt; but at these times the ocean lay only four or five fathoms below him, and, conscious of his safety, he had curled himself up again and stopped his small ears with his paws. Far different are his feelings as he crouches under the pampas grass, peering across the lake in the direction of the Earthstopper. He is quite sure that his enemy knows at last of his existence and of his present whereabouts, and that the tooting is meant to alarm him and cut off his retreat to the sea. Unnerving though the noise is, he decides at once what to do. No thought of seeking shelter near the lake hampers his resolve to break through to the cliffs. His powers of stealth and phantom-like movements are all in his favour, and surely he will succeed in his purpose. Noiselessly he dives, silently he leaves the water, and steals over the bank to the dark channel below the moonlit fall, with lithest movements he slips over the shallows into the pools, his long supple body twisting and turning with the sudden bends of the narrow stream. In his great hurry he is nearly on the light ere he can check himself, for the lantern hung below a sharp angle and a flowering fern hid its rays.
The Otter. [Face page 64.