I resolved to accompany my mother in future as much as possible in her excursions, that I might profit by her prudence and observe her ways. She seldom went abroad till night, though sometimes she would venture in the dusk of evening. Upon one occasion I was much amused with an example of her engaging tricks. It was a bright moonlight night when I saw her go into a field, in which many rabbits and hares were feeding. On first seeing her, some of them ran away for a few yards, some sat up on their hind legs and gazed at her, and some squatted close to the ground. My mother at first trotted on gently, as if not observing them; she then lay down and rolled on her back, then got up and shook herself; and so she went on till the simple creatures, cheated by a show of simplicity, and never dreaming she could be bent on anything beyond such harmless diversion, fell to feeding again, when she quietly leaped amongst them and carried off an easy prey.
We were now fully able to gain our own subsistence, but not the less would she watch over our safety. One of my brothers having found a piece of raw meat had begun to devour it, which she observing ran forwards, and as if in anger drove him away from it. He became sick and lost all his hairs, owing to poison, which I afterwards learnt had been put in the meat. It was fortunate for us that we had left the breeding-earth, for we must otherwise have all been infected with the same noisome disease, the mange. By first smelling it, and then turning away, she taught us in future to avoid anything of the kind that had been touched by the human hand. Thus when we happened to be smelling with our noses to a bait covered over with leaves, moss, grass, or fine earth, she would caution us to let it alone by her manner of looking about, as if she were alarmed and expected to see our enemy the keeper. Sometimes the iron trap would be seen; and then she would lead us to look at and smell it. Our noses, however, would not always be a safeguard, for after the trap has been laid some days, particularly if washed by rain, the taint of the evil hand would be gone, and though we ourselves, thanks to the watchfulness of our mother, escaped the danger, hundreds of others, led on by hunger, have fallen into the snare, losing either leg or toes. Baits for catching stoats and weasels, set upon a stick some fourteen inches above the ground, we carried away without mischief from the trap below. At about six months old we were three parts grown, I and my brothers being something larger than our sisters, whose heads were thinner and more pointed. The white tip of the brush was not, let me remark, peculiar to either sex of us. I and one of my brothers, and also one of my sisters, had it whilst the other sister and the other brother were altogether without it, not having a single white hair. That brother has been known to profit by the exemption, when on being viewed in the spring of the year the hounds have been stopped with the remark, “It’s a vixen; there is no white on her brush.” I have since observed that old male foxes are of a much lighter colour on the back than are the old female ones, which are commonly of a dark reddish brown; and so it was with my parents. Our sire never helped to furnish us with food, although I have reason to think that I often saw him prowling about with my mother at night; instances, however, have been known where the sire has discharged such an office after the young had lost their mother. For a few weeks we went on living a rollicking kind of life, and fancied ourselves masters of the coverts.
There was a coppice of no more than two years’ growth, which enabled me to enjoy the beams of the sun as I lay in my kennel. This kind of shelter we all of us choose, especially when there are no trees of a large growth to be dripping down upon us in wet weather. Here as I lay one morning, early in October, I was roused from a sound sleep by the noise of voices, and of dogs rushing towards me. Away I ran, and had not gone above twenty yards before I heard the report of a gun, and instantly received a smart blow on my side, which nearly knocked me down, breaking however none of my bones, and causing only a little pain and loss of blood. “Ponto!—curse that dog; he’s after him,” cried a voice, when the dog turned back, or else he must certainly have caught me, as I had only power to run a short distance into some thick bushes, where I lay down and listened to the following rebuke.
“You young rascal, how dared you to shoot at a fox—here, too, above all places? Don’t you know that this is the very centre of the hunt? Had you killed him, you would have been a lost man, an outcast from the society of all good people, a branded vulpicide. Who do you think that has the slightest regard for his own character would have received you after that?”
“I really,” replied the offending youth, “mistook him for a hare.”
“Yes, and if you had killed such a hare, you should have eaten him, and without currant jelly too.”
Now, if an humble individual of a fox may venture to give an opinion upon such a momentous question, I will say that the practice of destroying our breed for the purpose of preserving the quantity of game, is, where it prevails, equally selfish and short-sighted. For every fox thus destroyed hundreds of men are deprived of a day’s sport, and sometimes more than that; and if none of us were spared, those hundreds of hunters would become so many keen shooters—how could the game preserver then keep up his stock as he did before? And where would the wealthy capitalist rent his manor? After this unlucky adventure I resolved in future to sleep with one eye open, and not without reason. I had scarcely recovered from the injuries which I had suffered, and had just settled in my kennel one morning about daybreak, coiling myself up for the usual snooze all day, and sticking my nose into the upper part of the root of my brush—the reason by the bye why the hairs there are generally seen to be standing on end or turned backwards—when I was startled by the voice of John Foster, whose name has been mentioned before: “Eloo in; e-dhoick, e-dhoick, in-hoick, in-hoick.” Disturbed by the unaccustomed sounds, I rose upon my fore-legs, and pricking up my ears listened for a moment or two, when I heard the rustling of the hounds running straight towards me, being led on by the scent that was left in the track of my feet, which parts, especially when heated by running, seem to leave more scent than any other part of the body. Thus the same organ becomes at once the means of inviting pursuit, and of escaping it. Off I went—the awful tongue of an old hound ringing in my ear, and having about it surely some charm; for no sooner had he opened than a score or two others of the pack came rushing from all sides towards him, and then such a horrible din as there was behind me. I ran—I flew, I knew not whither—I crossed a road in the wood—and then such frantic screaming and shouting—“Tally-ho! tally-ho!” mixed with the blast of Foster’s horn, that I was almost mad with fright, and must have fallen a victim to my savage pursuers, had not my brothers and sisters been disturbed by the clamour, and consequently been the cause of the pack being divided into several parts, thus enabling me to steal away towards the opposite side of the wood, where I remained. My state was such that I could not be still, as I ought, and I kept moving backwards and forwards and away from the cry of the hounds, which at times hunted us in several packs, then all together as they crossed each other, and then again separated. This had gone on for nearly half an hour when, to my great joy, they all went away with a frightful yell, leaving the wood and me miles behind them. I was congratulating myself on my escape, and listening to hear if they were returning, when I was startled by the sound of steps approaching, and a panting, as of some animal in distress; it was one of my brothers, evidently more beaten and terrified than myself, and who, on hearing something move and not knowing it was I, ran back out of sight in a moment, and I saw no more of him then. I remained where I was hidden until I had partly recovered from my fears, and not hearing the noise of hounds, had crept into some thick bushes, where I lay quiet, when to my horror I again heard the halloo of the huntsman, who seemed to be taking the hounds round the wood, with now and then the tongue of a single hound; then, all on a sudden the deep voice of Sawyer, the whipper-in, calling, “Tally-ho! there he goes; ’tis a mangy cub!” In a minute every hound was after him, and in full cry for a quarter of an hour; suddenly the noise ceased, and the fatal halloo, “Whoop!” was often repeated by the men with “Tear him, boys; whoop! whoop!” And that was the end of my poor, mangy brother. They then, not having seen any other of us for some time, thought we were gone to ground, and went away. Happy was I to hear that horn, which had before caused me such terror, calling away the hounds, that, to judge from their loud breathing as they passed near me, were not loath to go, for it was nearly ten o’clock, and the heat most oppressive. They were mistaken in thinking we were all gone away, although my brother and sisters had taken advantage of the hounds running in the open, and had gone across to the gorse-covert, from which my unfortunate brother just killed had often, in consequence of his mangy state, been driven by our mother. Again we had to thank that mother for our safety, for at the time when we were all nearly dead with toil and alarm, it seems she took an opportunity of running across the wood in front of the hounds, which soon got on her scent, and followed her as she led them away for some miles out of the covert. The huntsman then, convinced that they had got on an old fox, as soon as the men could stop the hounds, immediately brought them back to the covert where they had left us, hoping to kill one of us young ones.
Breaking Cover. By S. Howitt.