“Well, I’d give a good deal to know what became of our fox,—how was it he could have beaten us? There is nothing I should like better than to invite to supper all the foxes that have escaped from packs by which they have been respectively hunted to-day, and then persuade them to declare to what cause they owed their escape. To tempt them there should be rabbits at top, rabbits at bottom and sides, rabbits curried, fricasseed, and rabbits dressed in every imaginable way, by the best French cook.”
The thought pleased me, and resolving to gratify my own curiosity, I invited all of my friends who had at any time beaten some pack of repute.
It was a fine moonlight night, in the middle of summer, when ten of my guests, besides an interloper, a stranger to us all, arrived at the place appointed, beneath an old oak tree in the New Forest.
For the foundation of my feast, nothing could be better than the bill of fare projected by the hospitable hunter; but as I knew that my friends would prefer everything au naturel, I dispensed with the services of M. Soyer, and merely added, for the sake of variety, some fine rats and mice, a profusion of beetles, and a bird or two for the few whose taste might be depraved enough to choose them. Our repast being over, it was agreed, that for our mutual instruction and entertainment, each in his turn should with scrupulous fidelity relate by what arts and stratagems, or by what effort of strength and courage, he had eluded and baffled those ruthless disturbers of our repose, the huntsman and his hounds. I was first called on to tell the story of my life, and thus began.
T. Smith, Esq., del. page 2. Wily addressing his friends.
WILY’S STORY
I am descended from the ancient family of the Wilys, and was born on the 25th day of March, in the year ——. Within three or four weeks from that day of the year every fox of us in this country is probably brought forth; and it seems especially designed that the female should thus produce her only litter in the year at a season when our favourite food, young rabbits, are most abundant. The spot in which I first drew breath was a breeding-earth, carefully chosen by my mother, in a well-known covert, called Park Coppice, situated in the centre of the Hampshire Hunt. It was not until the tenth day after my birth that I first saw light, or acquired sufficient strength to crawl with safety to any little distance round our nest. Had I earlier possessed the use of sight, I might have strayed beyond my warm shelter, and for want of sufficient strength to return to it, have perished with cold. Thus Nature goes on to care for us. I had two brothers and two sisters, and we all throve and grew rapidly with the nourishment of our mother’s milk alone, until we were six weeks old, when she began to supply us with other food, such as rabbits, and rats and mice, which she tore to pieces and divided amongst us in equal shares, not however so much to our satisfaction as to prevent our snarling and quarrelling with each other thus early over our meals. That part of the earth where we lodged was between two and three feet square, with several passages just large enough for our mother to crawl along; several of these crossed each other, and of two that terminated outwards one only was used by our mother, who stopped up the other for times of emergency. In these several passages we daily amused ourselves with chasing each other round and round. On one occasion we were interrupted in the midst of our gambols by the sudden entrance of our mother, who seized us with her sharp teeth, and carried us to the back of the earth. It seemed that she had been watching outside, for immediately after this we were alarmed by a sound hitherto unheard by us. It was the voice of a man crying out, “Eloo in, Viper! fetch ’em out! hie in there, hie in!” The light was instantly shut out by the intrusion of a dog in a low and narrow part of the passage, which compelled him to crawl along with his head to the bottom. Our mother waited for him, where she had the advantage of higher space, and as he approached with his head thus low, she fixed her teeth across the upper part of his nose and pinned him to the bottom of the passage, where she held him so that he could not bite her, which he would have done had she attacked him after he had got beyond the lower part, when he might have raised his head up.[1] Whilst bleeding and howling with agony, he drew her backwards to the opening, where she let him go. It was in vain that the man tried to make him go in again, and so he left the place, declaring his conviction that there were cubs within, and that he would have them out another day. He was, however, disappointed, for our mother that night took us one by one to a large earth in a neighbouring wood. We were now two months old, and ceased to draw our mother’s milk, which we no longer needed, as we were able to kill a rabbit or pluck the feathers of a fowl when she brought it to us, as well as she. Some of these feathers, which in our frolics we had carried to the mouth of the earth, once betrayed us to a couple of poachers, who had been lurking about the wood, and who noticing them, procured a long stick and thrust it into the earth, nearly breaking the ribs of one of my brothers. When they pulled it out again, they found the end of it covered with his hairs. This satisfied them, and leaving us scrambling and huddling together up to the back of the earth, they went away, resolving to come back next day with tools to unearth us, and expecting, as they said, to sell us for half-a-guinea apiece.