Quick as lightning, he whips round again, betraying his alarm by breaking the water. Leaving the stream some thirty yards above he makes his way aslant the furzy croft to outflank the flickering flame, but oh, horror! again a terrifying light is there behind a thick bush awaiting him. He retreats in earnest this time. Ignominious conduct, it cannot be gainsaid, for a creature with the jaws of a bull-dog, for a creature heedless of the fiercest lightnings or of the phosphorescent glow of the waves, and tolerant of the glare of the midsummer sun when basking on the rocks at the foot of the towering cliffs. He is not, however, at the end of his resources. Stay at the lake he will not, and why should he? There are other avenues of escape. In the next valley there is a stone drain, very safe, though close to a lonely homestead, and he may possibly reach it before dawn. He knows too well that there is no time to lose, so leaving the lake he hurries up the hill and gains the crest of the cairn without mishap. Now why, when every moment is precious, does he dwell in that clump of bracken near the Giant’s Cradle? and at what object can he be peering so intently through the fronds? Does a lantern’s light confront him? or is it, perhaps, the flame of a candle shining from the keeper’s window in the clearing amidst the pines?
It is no paltry glimmer behind a pane of glass, that holds him there. Afar off, in the cleft between two dark hills, lines of vermilion streak the amber East.
Full well the otter knows these harbingers of the sun that will expose him to the eye of man, whose voice he dreads, whose footfall he shrinks from, whose smell taints the air and chills the blood. He turns his lissom head and looks back at the valley of terror. The deep-cut bottom lies in gloom. Banks, creeks, island and marsh invite him to their dusky shelter. He can discern tree, bush, reed-bed and the sinuous outline of the placid lake, as he shifts his gaze from blot to blot of darkest umbrage. Differences of shade there are, but not a vestige of colour, save on the dome of a giant pine, the hue of which awakes as he gazes. Instantly the faint green flush catches his eye, and to the East he turns his mask again: “umph!” the rim of the sun shows in the trough of the hills: it is day. Even then he dreads to return to the lake; after all it is early for man to be stirring and he may reach the drain unseen. Skirting the plantation he slinks along lanes in the boulder-strewn gorse, gains the edge of the waste land, and looks over. A cow is grazing in the rough pasture that runs up to it. He can smell her sweet breath, but he does not fear her. He is about to jump from the wall down on the grass and creep along a ditch leading to the drain. “Shep boay.” It is the shout of the crofter he hears, and then the dog comes through the open gate and runs up the hill towards the spot where he is crouching. The cow takes little notice of the noisy lurcher, but the otter steals back along his own tracks towards the cairn.
The garish hues of furze bloom, lichen and pine stem, the dewdrops that jewel every blade, disconcert the belated wildling of the night, as with reluctant steps he steals towards the lake whose shelter instinct has warned him to shun. It is true that he knows its wild surroundings well, its hollow banks, its reedy hovers; and this knowledge brings him such solace as familiar fastnesses bring an outlaw expecting hue and cry after him. How he wishes, as he decides where to lie up, that the valley contained one impregnable stronghold, a network of forgotten drains, a clitter of rocks, a labyrinth of half-flooded mine-workings. He has reached the foot of the hill, and is stealing like a shadow down the strand of a little bay athwart which lies a fallen tree. Look! he is scrambling over the trunk: now he has dived. You will not see him again, watch you ever so intently. Without once coming up to vent he has crossed the lake some sixty yards in width and entered, by a submerged hole in the trunk, the hollow willow on the bank opposite. It is night in there save for the ray which shoots through a crevice of his sanctuary, and glows and fades at the will of the trembling leaves outside. The valley is awakening. The sunbeams that slant over the lichened cairn now bright as with outcropping gold, bathe stem, leaf and petal, and dance on the rippled surface of the lake. Hushed, indeed, are the weird voices of night; but from spinney and brake come the songs of finch and warbler, moor-hens call amongst the reeds, doves coo in the pines, and a robin sings on a branch of the willow. Even the midges, inspired by the joy that moves all creatures at the return of brightsome day, have resumed their gambols around the gladdening ray up in the turret of the otter’s lair. Why, look! the old vixen, who had been puzzled at the midnight tooting, lies blinking at the mouth of her earth under the gnarled pine on the sunny slope above; but fear possesses the otter as it never did before. Five years ago—he was a cub then—the footfall of a coastguard on the cliff above awoke in him the sense of fear, and from that night he had never been able to throw off the dread of man that haunted him, that made him steal abroad at dusk and lie hidden by day. Yet man had never injured him—it was in a life-and-death struggle with a huge conger that he lost his claw—as far as he knew, man had never seen him. But fear was his heritage as it was the price of his freedom. As he lies curled up against the sloping trunk of the willow he gets a glimmering of what had been a mystery to him—how it was that some of his tribe had disappeared from their haunts, and why he had failed to find the skittish little otter with whom he had mated, though he had sought her everywhere around the coast and along the streams. A vague apprehension of impending danger kept him awake, and before the sun was high in the heaven he knew all.
CHAPTER VII
The Otter—Continued
THE HUNT
The Earthstopper, having snatched a little sleep in his arm-chair, has returned to the lake to await the hounds. There he is, sitting on the fallen tree over which the otter passed three hours ago. Its footprints are marked on the sand between the lines of drift that tell of dwindling springs on the moorland, and of the winds that ruffled the sinking lake. In shape, the three acres of water resemble the shadow of a hand with outstretched fingers. The rhododendrons cover the triangle of ground between the narrow channel of the inflow and the creek next it; the fingers of stagnant water are fringed with reeds. The old man is wondering where the otter, if it has not returned to the cliffs, may be lying up. His eyes wander to the likely places; to the island, to the hollow banks, to the clump of bushes, to the reed-bed over which a mist hangs, half veiling the blush of morning on the stems of the pines beyond. He does not waste a glance on the bare bank opposite, or its solitary willow whose tender green foliage stands out against the sombre hillside. Turning his head he sees the hounds coming down the hill below the cairn. They are not very wide of the line taken by the otter at dawn. Only a small field is out. With Sir Bevil, who carries the horn, are the parson, the doctor, and half a dozen others, keen sportsmen all of them. Following in their wake are old Sir Lopes and Nute the huntsman. Let me introduce the pack to you. Those rough-haired hounds are Taffy and Gellert; the foxhounds are Troubadour, Merlin, Cunoval, Vivien, Dawnsman, Padzepaw, Sweetlips, Jollyboy, Bucca, and Dozmary. Better hounds never drew for an otter; but the terriers are the wonder of this little pack. The one running alongside Dozmary is Vixen, who never finds a drain too long or too wet. What battles she has fought underground, her scarred head testifies. Then there is Venom. She is in her usual place at Sir Bevil’s heels. A treasure she is, for she can dive and enter the submerged mouth of a drain, and many an otter has she thus dislodged from its holt.
“Well, Andrew,” said Sir Bevil, “did the otter come up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you manage to keep him up?” This with a smile, for he too had heard the midnight tooting. “I hope so, but there’s no knowin’, he’s bin heere,” said he, pointing to the tracks on the sand.