Out of the far distance now, as I lingered over the carving in that mood of moralising sentimentality, there came creeping up the hollow stillness of the glade a murmur of voices, and, in a little, the tramp of heavy feet. I recognised the gang of woodmen carrying the tools of their craft; and behind them a little rabble of village-folk, mostly children. I drew off some way up the hillside, and sat me down on a stump, to look on at the now imminent, as well as inevitable spectacle.
To watch a great tree felled, especially when such a giant as this lovers’ tree was in question, is one of the most exciting things to be met with in country-life. There is ever growing suspense for the onlooker from the moment when the first axe-blow sends its echo ringing through the aisles of the wood, to that last stunned feeling after the mighty tree is down. The speed and workmanlike dexterity with which the gang now got to their task only served to intensify this sensation. One buckled on a pair of climbing-irons and carried aloft two long ropes, securing them to the trunk at its highest point of division. While he was still up there, like a perching crow black against the sky, another took a great glittering axe, and, stepping slowly round the tree, dealt it a succession of downward and inward blows, cutting out a deep ring all round the bole some six or eight inches above ground-level. On the side towards which the tree was to fall, this cut was now widened and deepened until it laid bare a good foot breadth of the solid heart of the wood. And while the amber chips were still flying under the axe, the rest of the gang were carrying the ropes away at two sharp angles, and binding them securely to neighbouring trees.
And now began the crucial part of the business. The great wood-saw was got to work, with four strong men at it. Cutting close to the ground on the far side of the tree, the shining blade tore its way steadily into the wood. Inch by inch it drove its ragged teeth forward, and at every lunge it gave forth a savage gasping scream, and a spume of yellow sawdust spirted from the cut, gathering in an ever-growing heap on either side. No other sound broke the stillness of the glen for a full ten minutes or more. No one among the mute, expectant crowd, nor any of the woodmen, seemed to move hand or foot. All watched and waited, as it appeared, breathlessly. There were just these four strong men labouring to and fro, the flash of the hungry saw-blade in the sunlight, and the harsh sudden screech of the direful thing every time it ripped at the vitals of the tree. The gang of woodmen had divided at a sign from their chief, and stood, three or four of them bearing on each rope. The leader watched the saw, a hand on each hip. Once he raised a hand the saw stopped; a row of steel wedges was driven in behind it; the saw began once more its old rasping melody. At last the hand went up again. The work was done. I could see the black line of the cut reaching within an inch or so of the deep axe-cleft on the face of the tree.
Long ago, on shipboard, I had been present at the firing of one of the heaviest guns that ever put to sea; and what followed now reminded me strangely of that deafening experience. The leader marshalled his men, and directed operations with short, sharp words of command, much as the gun-lieutenant had done. There was the same busy preparation and skurrying to and fro, the same moment of suspense, the same terrific outcome. Every available man was now set to haul on the ropes, while the leader of the gang himself took a mallet and, with mighty blows, drove the wedges in. Thick and fast the blows fell, and their echoes went chevying each other down the ravine. The vast-spreading tree quaked, lashed its branches wildly about overhead. The crowd of waiting children and old women were ordered farther back from the zone of danger. Now the great mallet redoubled its blows, and the two gangs of men bore on the ropes with all their might and main. Still, though the commotion overhead increased to the force of a hurricane, no other sign of movement other than a faint shudder, was visible in the trunk of the tree. One last blow of the mallet, and one last pull all together, and then a sharp crack sounded, as it were, from the bowels of the earth. The ropemen leant back in one huge final effort, then dropped the ropes, and ran for their lives. There came a slithering, tearing noise as the mighty beech toppled forward, tearing itself from the clinging, cumbering embrace of its age-long fellows, then down it came to earth with one long, rolling, thunderous, crackling roar.
Where I stood, I felt the solid earth quake and shudder. Between the moment when the uppermost branches of the great tree began to force their way in a wide, descending arc through the thicket of intercepting branches, and the moment of the last terrific boom, as the trunk struck the earth, there seemed a strangely long interval of time. Another thing struck me with all the force of unimaginable novelty. All the undermost branches of the tree as it fell were splintered into a thousand fragments, and these, flying upward and outward, in a great cloud, gave an effect as if the mighty trunk had fallen into water.
And now I learned for the first time why all the poor folk had followed the woodmen with their baskets. The tree was no sooner prone on the ground, and the last soaring splinter come rattling out of the sky, than a rush was made to the spot by all. Here was firewood in plenty for every one, as much as each could gather or carry. And it was firewood already chopped.
II
It was Tennyson who first set us looking for kingfishers in March, though, indeed, the ‘sea-blue bird’ makes the riverside beautiful at all seasons. There is a little creek here, winding away from the main current of the river through a thicket of willow and alder, where, coming stealthily along the shadowed footpath, you can always hear the shrill, creaking pipe of the bird, and generally catch the glint of his gay plumage as he darts down-stream, or sits on some branch overhanging the clear, brown water.
But it was from the stern-seat of the old ferryman’s boat that I learnt whatever I know about kingfishers and river life in general; and these secret excursions seldom began until March was well under way. For me, therefore, the kingfisher, as for all Tennyson lovers, is most clearly associated with the still barren hedgerows and brakes, the song of the thrush mounted high amidst leafless branches, and that wonderful array of crimson tassels and brown bobbins, all set in a mist of pale green needles, which at this time makes the larch one of the sights of the country-side.
I have said secret excursions; and, indeed, all my relations with old Runridge during recent years have necessarily taken on this furtive character. It was not always so. In happier days, when the old man was a widower, I used to drift down to his cabin by the water-side for a quiet pipe at all seasons of the day and openly, whenever the mood seized me. Then, if tide and the weather served, we would take the little skiff and go off for hours together exploring the shiest nooks of the river, either with or without the ancient fowling-piece that hung over his kitchen hearth. At these times the ferry was left to take care of itself, which it did sufficiently well, there being often quite a little collection of pennies on the thwart of the boat when the old man got back from these unpremeditated truantries.