He parted the tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could have found foot-hold. Great gray and black gulls screamed against the jackdaws; the heavy-scented acres of bloom round them were alive with low-nesting birds, singing or silent as the shadow of the wheeling hawks passed and returned; and on the naked turf across the combe rabbits thumped and frolicked.
“Whew! What a place! Talk of natural history; this is it,” said Stalky, filling himself a pipe. “Isn’t it scrumptious? Good old sea!” He spat again approvingly, and was silent.
McTurk and Beetle had taken out their books and were lying on their stomachs, chin in hand. The sea snored and gurgled; the birds, scattered for the moment by these new animals, returned to their businesses, and the boys read on in the rich, warm, sleepy silence.
“Hullo, here’s a keeper,” said Stalky, shutting “Handley Cross” cautiously, and peering through the jungle. A man with a gun appeared on the sky-line to the east. “Confound him, he’s going to sit down.”
“He’d swear we were poachin’, too,” said Beetle. “What’s the good of pheasants’ eggs? They’re always addled, too.”
“Might as well get up to the wood, I think,” said Stalky. “We don’t want G. M. Dabney, Col., J.P., to be bothered about us so soon. Up the wuzzy and keep quiet! He may have followed us, you know.”
Beetle was already far up the tunnel. They heard him gasp indescribably: there was the crash of a heavy body leaping through the furze.
“Aie! yeou little red rascal. I see yeou!” The keeper threw the gun to his shoulder, and fired both barrels in their direction. The pellets dusted the dry stems round them as a big fox plunged between Stalky’s legs, and ran over the cliff-edge.
They said nothing till they reached the wood, torn, disheveled, hot, but unseen.
“Narrow squeak,” said Stalky. “I’ll swear some of the pellets went through my hair.”