Although we did all we knew to turn him, I do not think we forced him fifty yards from the course he would have taken had he been left to himself. Andrew Miles always declared that there was only one way to turn a stag, and it would have required an exceedingly well-drilled field, proof against the temptation to look at the stag, to carry out his plan. "Get right in front of the stag," Miles would say, "and ride as hard as you can go for the point to which he is making; he will dodge round you if you ride at him, but he will not deliberately follow you."
But now our stag, with an air of insulted majesty, turns his back upon us and sets out for his long last journey. He must rouse himself, for the soul-stirring notes of the hounds float towards us. The pack is at length laid on, the sweet scent fills the big hounds with delirious joy, and in long drawn file they race forward, and the chase begins.
We had a nice gallop over Skilgate Common and down a steep, root-grown slope, through the Bittscombe plantations. The stag turned down the valley to Raddington. Despite the blazing sun and intense heat, hounds ran fast, but Devonia's wilds are not everywhere to be invaded, and here the sobbing horses must pound along the road, while the hounds turn up over a grass field as steep as the side of a house; some riders indeed climbed up, some cast forward, others like myself cast back towards Skilgate, on the chance of the stag swinging round towards Haddon again; but we were wrong, as he went straight over the top, past Hove and Quarterly, into the Exe valley by Morebath, running through several little coverts. From this point I was beaten out of my country and hardly know how to tell of our wanderings.
The stag worked the line of a brook past Shillingford as far as Hockley bridge where he soiled, but the eager hounds gave little respite, and our new-found stag went away up a little valley to the left. Hounds ran on fast, keeping about a hundred yards from the lane, which helped us to get along, for Devonshire banks with the leaves on cannot be ridden over in September. The heat and dust were something to be remembered, but hounds pushed on, hovering a minute where bullocks had been over the line, and again where a mare and foal charged them in a most determined manner doing, luckily, no harm. Huntsham seemed to be the point, a good old-fashioned line often travelled by deer fifty years ago, but most unusual now.
Leaving Huntsham on the right, we went on by Cudmore to Hole Lake, hounds running on grass, horses again pounding along the road. Now we turn into the fields and gallop alongside the pack, which kept on in most determined manner, and with more music than is usually given on so hot a day. We soon got into a maze of small combes running down to the brook which passes under Huntsham Wood. From gate to gate, and gap to gap we hie, keeping as near hounds as may be, and passed a farm which I was told is Redwood. A patch of ferny gorse-covered ground is Bere Down, across which hounds ran fast, much disturbing a pony at grass, who jumped the fence down the biggest drop I ever saw anything except a deer come over in safety. The stag went down the line of the brook till its junction with the bigger Loman Water near Chief Loman. Here a long check refreshed us, the stag having worked first the road and then the water for a long distance. The pack puzzled it out slowly, both Anthony and Col. Hornby dismounting to keep close to them through the impassable places. Then we heard a holloa ahead, and hounds were lifted about a quarter of a mile to Land's Mill, when they hit off the line, just owning it down the road, and so recall us to the chase.
The field seemed hardly to diminish, though it kept changing; many of those from the Minehead and Dunster side stopped and went home, but every hamlet, every farm we passed, brought out recruits eager to see the hounds, for they do not often come this way. The whole country was in a wild state of commotion and excitement. A capital gallop over a ridge of hills, where the chase went through a field of roots, which some gentlemen were just beginning to shoot over (and much I fear we spoiled their sport), brought us to the Western Canal, where the stag swam over, while we crossed by a bridge, and went on again to the Halberton lane. In the field beyond, sheep had foiled the ground, but hounds cast forward, and were soon running again down to the canal, which here "ran a ring." Hounds feathered down the towing-path and over the railway, where we had to make a détour. We had just rejoined them when there was a burst of music, and the stag was seen swimming in the canal. He scrambled out, ran down the road a few hundred yards with the pack at his heels, and then jumped over the fence into ploughed ground, where he fell, and was rolled over a moment afterwards, when he was found to have a broken leg. The fatal stab to the heart was dealt as soon as our stag was taken, and now the hounds must be given their portion. "Look at that!" exclaims a sporting farmer as the body is turned over and the legs are seen standing stark and stiff in the air. "Ay, properly runned up, poor thing," answers the huntsman, who is busy anatomising. "Brisher, bother your old head, you'm always after the venison." And Brusher, who has stolen forward and began licking the haunch, beats a hasty retreat, not without a taste of whipcord. Then the hounds' portion is made over to them, the huntsman reserves his perquisites, and the head being claimed by the Master, all the farmers of the district account for the venison share and share alike. The run lasted exactly seven hours from the lay on; the last hour and a-half we hunted in the dark. Eight only of us saw the finish.
And now looking over my record of this memorable run how bare an itinerary it seems, lacking the mental eye to fill up the scene with luscious autumn tints, and lacking too the stir and movement of the chase. Then the blood boils in veins of horse and man, then a fierce energy urges on the pursuers. What can compare with it, but the wild charge of cavalry? The occasion past, however, our pulse resumes its normal beat, and presently in slumber the scene and all its glories fade away. But not the memory fades! Year by year while trouble, sickness, hopes and longings get blotted from our recollection, the printed page or glance at whip and spur, shall revive with more than pristine splendour, the memory of the chase.
And what of the stag? Well, the stag's life is not, I fear, a happy one; for him no sooner is one trouble past than another is upon him. During the summer his horns are growing and keep him in constant irritation and anxiety. The velvet is hardly lost when the fever of the rutting season consumes him. Then there is the hard winter to live through, and with the return of spring returns also the period for the shedding of old horns, and sprouting of new ones. Indeed, it is only for a few weeks in every year that the stag is his perfect self, and those weeks, with a small margin before and after, constitute what is called the stag-hunting season, a season of relief to the farmer whose turnip crops have been ruined by the herd's depredations, a season of anxiety to the master of the Devon and Somerset staghounds, a season of delight to him who loves the chase. Pleasure unalloyed, indeed, for so long as fortune favours him, but assuredly the day will sooner or later arrive when a grip or cart rut on Exmoor will turn horse and rider over, when the red grass or white bog flower that should warn the horseman to "take a pull" is overlooked or disregarded, with alarming results. The least of the ills that flesh is heir to, when stag-hunting on Exmoor, is to lose one's way twenty miles from home, and be found a solitary horseman wandering on the moor, soaked to the skin, out of hail of any living creature but forest ponies, and uneasily musing on the old nurse-tales of pixies. If, in such case, you are fortunate enough to stumble upon a moorland farm, do not fail to accept the shelter which will surely be offered; and so shall the congratulations of your friends sound sweet in your ears when you return safe and sound on the morrow. Your landlord also, if you are staying at an inn and hunting on a hired mount, will welcome you with such evident sincerity that you feel sure it is not unconnected with the recovery of his horse.
SPORT AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS