Shaking and trembling all over, I crept up. But, no, I cannot tell you what I saw. They had all taken refuge in the nest, and their death must have been mercifully instantaneous.
CHAPTER IX
WAR DECLARED AGAINST OUR RACE
I think the shock of the disaster which robbed me at one fell swoop of wife, family, and home must have so completely stunned all my faculties that for a time I was unable to realize fully what had happened. I vaguely remember wandering round and about the still faintly-steaming ruins of the beech-tree, and calling piteously for Sable. Lucky for me that no enemy came near. Even a boy with a catapult could have made an easy prey of me, for all my senses were strangely dulled.
What first brought me to myself again was a low but familiar call which came from a small larch near by. Looking up, I could hardly believe my eyes when I caught sight of a small dark squirrel crouching on a branch at no great height from the ground shivering piteously.
‘Walnut!’ I exclaimed in absolute amazement.
I had felt so certain that the poor charred remains in my broken home comprised the whole of my family. Was it possible that one of them had escaped, after all?
The poor little chap was so shockingly frightened that it was a long time before he could give me any clear account of how he had escaped. It appears that when my poor Sable saw the storm coming she at once set to work to take her family from the summer drey in the larch back to the hollow in the beech-trunk. She had been afraid, Walnut said, that the wind might blow the drey away. The jump across the path from tree to tree being too much for the youngsters, their mother had led the way down to the ground, ordering them all to follow her closely. Walnut, however, who had never seen a thunderstorm, and who, of course, did not realize the danger, thought it would be a fine joke to remain behind. In the hurry of the moment Sable, no doubt, never noticed until too late that he was not with the others, and when the storm broke the darkness at once became almost impenetrable.
When the hail began, Walnut, terrified almost out of his senses, wished most devoutly that he had not been such a fool, for great lumps of ice beat through the roof of the drey, and the tree swayed so frightfully that he expected every moment the whole nest would be torn away and sent flying in fragments to the ground. However, it was too late for useful repentance, so he was forced to stay where he was. Then came the final fearful crash, and he remembered nothing more until he found himself clinging desperately to a bough a long way below the drey. When the weather cleared a little he had gone across to the beech-tree, but the smoke frightened him so that he had not dared to climb.
That night we two spent amid the dripping ruins in the larch. After the great heat the night breeze struck bitter cold, and we lay chilled and shivering, though too miserable to care much one way or the other. As soon as ever it grew light we left that part of the coppice for ever. I took my son to the extreme opposite end of the wood, and there had the good luck to stumble almost immediately upon possible quarters. These were in a vast oak, the boughs of which were beginning to decay from sheer old age. In the end of one branch, broken short off by some long past gale, was a deep hole which had evidently been formerly the habitation of a pair of stock-doves, for the remains of their nest were mouldering just inside the entrance. I had no spirit to build new quarters, so with sore hearts we took possession of this shelter. Later, when I recovered my energies a little, I collected moss to line it, and made a dry and fairly comfortable residence.