The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

by S. L. Bensusan

Four years of keen observation had made the Roebuck more wary than ever, and, aided by his protective colouring, he passed lightly from plantation to pine-wood, unheard and unseen, while the doe was equally successful in escaping pursuit. For days together they would leave the hunter’s boundaries, but they always returned when they thought the place was quiet; and in the meantime the roebuck’s antler’s grew, and the velvet stripped, and he was becoming a splendid buck with haunch and head alike at their best.

Many men would have been baffled, but the hunter was unlike most people, and did not know when he was beaten. His experience had been gained in many countries, his store of woodcraft was very large. He made a very careful study of the tracks by which the roedeer left the plantation for pine-wood and feeding grounds, and then, after leaving the place quite quiet for several days, took advantage of a strong wind, and stole up to a point where Donald had dug a pit and put a screen of heather. There were other dummy screens round the sides of the plantation, and the roedeer had ceased to fear them.

That evening the doe came out and made her way to a small patch of sweet grass that the trees had sheltered from the snow. She seemed very suspicious and ill at ease, and many times stood for a moment with head erect and fore-foot raised as though to sniff the breeze. At last she was within sixty yards of the pit, and broadside on, and even as the hunter pressed the trigger that sent the notched bullet speeding to her brain, he knew that his aim was true. Quickly as possible he carried off the spoil, glad at heart, for he knew that her mate must soon be his.

For two days and nights the snow fell, and then on a clear afternoon he sallied forth again, taking advantage of wind and cover to reach his pit unobserved. The woodland was desolate and still, no sound of life was to be heard. He laid his rifle gently down and took from his pocket the little call given to him by an old deer-stalker of the Austrian highlands. He put it to his mouth.

In the heart of the plantation the Roebuck, who walked now with clean horns of splendid growth, heard the music that the doe makes in the most pleasant season of his life. True to his predominant instinct he forgot the claims of caution, and rushed headlong in the direction of the sound. It came from behind a little mound of snow, where the heather patch had stood. The separating distance became eighty, sixty, forty yards, and then a long barrel peeped out towards him, and with a mighty effort he checked his gallop and prepared to turn.

In that brief moment of change the rifle spoke, and he tumbled dead in his tracks.

THE WATER-RAT

Many people know the river in and round the market-town that stands upon its banks, but very few have seen the parent stream where it passes rippling for some hundreds of yards between narrow banks in the shadow of old willow trees, for here it is on private ground. You could not wish to see more beautiful country. There are high hills crowned with woods and level meadows where grass is always green, and the willows share with the poplars the custody of the water. Tiny little tributaries enter the main stream here and there, but Jock the water-rat looked upon these with some contempt, as though he thought they were suburban. He had his home in the roots under an old willow tree. You saw one hole in the bank just above the water, but there were others under the water, and in the meadow.

When the summer day was fine and long, Jock would sit at the edge of the hole that was made in the bank, and would survey the world with a cautious eye and a contented expression. He was no longer a young water-rat, and he had not passed through his life without learning that he had enemies, but in this part of the river the trout were few and of small size—far too small indeed to trouble water-rats, and the eels that collected lower down by the mill seldom came in his direction, the feeding was not good enough. Of great coarse fish like pike there was little need for fear, the water was too shallow to tempt them to come so far up. If we except the old heron who was no longer as smart as he had been in the days of his youth, and now stood on one leg as often as he did on two, and missed his stroke as often as he made it, Jock had no enemies in the water, and this is as it should have been, for there never was a more harmless little animal.

He wore a brown coat well oiled, and carried a black tail with a white tip, of which he was absurdly proud, for such a decoration in water-rat land denotes that the wearer is of good family, and Jock had cousins and distant relatives by the score who could not boast such an adornment. He was proud of the many doored home he had made for himself, and still more proud of the river which, he believed, had been put there for his benefit. He would sit for hours where the light could just reach him and listen attentively to the soft song of the water, and the louder note of larks that sang in the sky above him.