Yes, the badger had dug his way out and escaped.
Hue and cry and search till nightfall proved of no avail. He had sought a cairn that overlooks the ocean, drearier and safer than Cairn Kenidzhek. Had he been content to stay in the Squire’s pigstye, his would have been the life of a prisoner, pampered, but pining for liberty. He chose the bare subsistence and the freedom of the wild; and from that day to this, the eyes of cliff-owl and fox alone have seen his white form as he wanders mid gorse and bracken and fallen cromlech, within easy reach of his lonely refuge.
CHAPTER XI
The Hare
LIFE STORY OF THE JACK OF BARTINNEY
It is difficult to imagine a wild creature making a harder struggle for existence than a hare in West Penwith. From beginning to end its life is one of persecution. As a leveret it can hardly escape falling a victim to the stoat, carrion crow, or magpie; or, when full grown, becoming the prey of the polecat or the fox. If it be objected that puss has to run the gauntlet of these enemies elsewhere, it may be answered that in few parts of England is vermin so abundant. This is only in a measure due to the many strongholds which this wild country affords. In the Land’s End district game is not preserved, and the absence of the gamekeeper and his traps accounts for the prevalence of predatory creatures, furred and feathered. It is curious too, to note how interest in the hare and the protection afforded it, have declined before the popularity of fox-hunting. Time was when it was highly esteemed as a beast of the chase, and when money was freely spent on the destruction of its enemies, though to a much less extent than is now lavished on poultry-funds for the perservation of the fox. In those days, as parish registers attest, the churchwardens paid with an easy conscience five shillings for a fox, a shilling for an otter, a shilling for a grey or badger, twopence for a fitcher or marten, and a penny for a hedgebore or kite. Whether the register of Buryan Church contains entries referring to the payments of these fees, I do not know; but there is evidence that in this, the largest parish of the Land’s End district, the hare formerly flourished, its pursuit forming the chief diversion of the local gentry. Of these, Squire Levelis of Trewoofe was, perhaps, the most enthusiastic sportsman, and it is related of him in an old Cornish romance, that one day after a very arduous chase, at the moment his hounds were on the point of running into a hare, the astonished Squire suddenly found himself confronted, on the spot where the scent failed, by a witch. The belief that witches at times assumed the shape of a hare lingered in West Cornwall at least as late as the early part of the last century, for it is related of Sir Rose Price that on his entering a cottage into which his hounds had driven their quarry, he found to his astonishment not a hare but a haggard old woman, whose torn hands and face removed all doubt as to what he had been in pursuit of. This occurred at Kerrow in the parish of Zennor. Squire Levelis’ uncanny adventure took place in the Lamorna valley; and within the memory of those still living, this wild “bottom” has resounded with the merry music of “hare-hounds.” No pack of harriers exists in West Penwith to-day, but the greyhound is very much in evidence; and all things considered, the latter state of poor puss is far worse than the first. What with “long dogs,” foxes, vermin, snares, and cheap guns, this most timid of creatures lives in a state of perpetual apprehension. Nevertheless, it makes a stubborn struggle for existence on the lone upland wastes, where it enjoys partial immunity from its natural four-footed enemies, which, for the most part, harbour in the wild overgrown valleys that tin-streaming has rendered worthless for agricultural purposes. It says something for the keenness of the miner and the crofter that they should search miles and miles of bleak moorland on the remote chance of finding a hare which will, if found, in all probability run their dogs to a standstill. Small wonder that to these men the few surviving hares should seem to bear a charmed life, and that those remarkable for stamina and endurance and recognisable by some slight distinguishing mark, should be as well known as a bob-tailed fox to the members of a hunt.
St Buryan Church. [Face page 130.
Of such none was more famous than the little Jack of Bartinney, whose life history was typical of that of his race. His first home was amidst a clump of rushes bordering a lonely pool on the high ground between two of the Cornish heights. Even when maternal instinct is strongest, fear of detection kept doe and leveret apart during the day; but she never failed to suckle him at nightfall and before sunrise, on her way back from the feeding-ground on the lowland. From dawn to dusk the leveret lay in the snuggest of couches in the trough between the hills, and when not asleep would watch the reeds waving over the shallows, or the moor-hen, whose nest was on the opposite bank, swim on the open water. One morning he saw her issue from the reed-bed with four fluffy little red-billed creatures following in her wake. This novel sight aroused his curiosity, and when the moor-hen and her brood skirted the little bay near him, he jumped out of the nest and ran to the edge of the water. At that instant a raven flying overhead, on the look-out for food for its young in Bosigran Cliffs, espied him, and the next minute the ominous shadow of the marauder darkened the bright grassy margin, scaring the leveret and making him flee for his life. Quick as the moor-hen and her chicks had dived, before the depredator could transfix him with its powerful beak, he made for the thickest of the rushes, squatted and, though the raven made careful search, escaped. This was the one fright of the happy days spent by the side of the pool. There he got to know the varied voices of nature—the carol of the lark, the scream of the gull, the hum of the insects, the murmur of the wind, and the music of the ripple in the reed-bed; the chief sounds that broke the silence of the upland. From below came faintly at times the bark of the dog, the crowing of the cock, and at night the yelp of the fox, the snarl of the badger, the whurring of the night-jar, and the song of the sedge-warbler. Once he heard, from the direction of the Land’s End cliffs, that mysterious roaring of the sea, which when the farmers hear they say “G’envor is callin’.” His growth was very rapid, and when a month old, a spirit of restlessness and a desire to roam possessed him, and thrice he accompanied the doe in her night rounds and got a knowledge of the lay of the country.