Before attempting to describe it, I must mention the sufferings we endured in the days following our adventure down the cliff, through the gradual drying up of the water that supplied our drinking-place. Night after night, when we repaired to the basin that the falling water had hollowed in the rock, I had noticed that the stream, which came from some hidden source beneath a pile of boulders, got smaller and smaller, and, after the very hot weather set in, dwindled to a mere trickle. To such a thin thread did it shrink that from the mouth of the earth, which was not many yards away, we could no longer hear it splashing into the basin. Now and then, especially when some animal, generally the badger, had been there before us, we were driven to such an extremity as to be compelled to lick the dew off the turf to cool our tongues until the water had collected again.
It was a terrible time. To this day we speak of the year of my birth as the Dry Year, and indeed I, who was a May fox, was nearly three moons old before I saw rain, which fell on the afternoon of the day when the curlews' whistling scared us. I remember, though not as vividly as the rainbow seen that day, the embrowned turf of our playground being dotted with slugs which the downpour had enticed out of the sunless crevices of the rocks.
The rain had ceased before nightfall, and the following day the sky, which had been black and lowering, became as cloudless as before, whilst the heat, previously intense, became well-nigh unbearable. Hour after hour we lay in the deep shade of the bracken fronds at the entrance, panting for breath and longing for the water we were not allowed to get before dusk. At the first sign of twilight, and even whilst the after-glow suffused the sky, we rushed to the drinking-place, our three masks completely filling the basin, which we soon lapped dry. Almost as refreshing as the water we swallowed was the cool spray—despite the rain it was no more—that fell on our heads from the lip of the rock above.
For several days from dawn to dusk we thus endured the agony of parching thirst, till at last, when our tongues lolled out, and one of my sisters showed signs of utter exhaustion, the vixen so far yielded to our entreaties as to permit us to slink out, one by one, to drink.
Unfortunately we could not reach the reeds about the water without exposing ourselves to the eyes of the magpies overhead. On spying us they set up such a clamor that every bird and beast for a great distance along the cliffs must have known that a fox was moving, and rejoiced at our misfortune.
"THESE BLACK AND WHITE PESTS."
We have many enemies, but none whom we despise so much as magpies, crows, and jays. Their treatment of us is as unprovoked as it is insulting. We have never injured them, and yet, as I shall tell later, the pariahs of the wild, that gorge on our unburied kills, seek every opportunity of betraying us.
Those cliff magpies, at whose tongues we suffered such indignities, must have spent their days in watching our movements. After my sisters had had their drink, it took hours for the basin to refill, yet as soon as my muzzle projected beyond the bracken when I went to take my turn, the hateful wretches would cry out, "There he is!"
I never grew indifferent to this daily annoyance, and in a rage I used to lap up what water there was in choking haste, so as to escape the mobbing of these black and white pests who flew just beyond my reach, and at times even brushed with their wings the tops of the tall reeds about the basin.