Afoot in England

by W. H. Hudson

At first we thought he had been in a big fight—he was inclined that way, his master said—but we could discover no tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises. Perhaps, we said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to die on the moor or crawl home if he could. His master looked so black at this that we said no more about it. But Jack was a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered, though I'm quite sure that if his injuries had been distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would have killed them all. A morning came when the kennel was empty: Jack was not dead—he was well again, and, as usual, out.

Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, back again, I went out one fine morning for a long day's ramble along the coast. A mile or so from home, happening to glance back I caught sight of a black dog's face among the bushes thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me. It was Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening among the bushes—a black head which looked as if carved in ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze blossoms. The beauty and singularity of the sight made it impossible for me to be angry with him, though there's nothing a man more resents than being shadowed, or secretly followed and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without considering what I was letting myself in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly he bounded out and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well pleased to lead the way.

"I must suffer him this time," I said resignedly, and went on, he always ahead acting as my scout and hunter—self-appointed, of course, but as I had not ordered him back in trumpet tones and hurled a rock at him to enforce the command, he took it that he was appointed by me. He certainly made the most of his position; no one could say that he was lacking in zeal. He scoured the country to the right and left and far in advance of me, crashing through furze thickets and splashing across bogs and streams, spreading terror where he went and leaving nothing for me to look at. So it went on until after one o'clock when, tired and hungry, I was glad to go down into a small fishing cove to get some dinner in a cottage I knew. Jack threw himself down on the floor and shared my meal, then made friends with the fisherman's wife and got a second meal of saffron cake which, being a Cornish dog, he thoroughly enjoyed.

The second half of the day was very much like the first, altogether a blank day for me, although a very full one for Jack, who had filled a vast number of wild creatures with terror, furiously hunted a hundred or more, and succeeded in killing two or three.

Jack was impossible, and would never be allowed to follow me again. So I sternly said and so thought, but when the time came and I found him waiting for me his brown eyes bright with joyful anticipation, I could not scowl at him and thunder out No! I could not help putting myself in his place. For here he was, a dog of boundless energy who must exercise his powers or be miserable, with nothing in the village for him except to witness the not very exciting activities of others; and that, I discovered, had been his life. He was mad to do something, and because there was nothing for him to do his time was mostly spent in going about the village to keep an eye on the movements of the people, especially of those who did the work, always with the hope that his services might be required in some way by some one. He was grateful for the smallest crumbs, so to speak. House-work and work about the house—milking, feeding the pigs and so on—did not interest him, nor would he attend the labourers in the fields. Harvest time would make a difference; now it was ploughing, sowing, and hoeing, with nothing for Jack. But he was always down at the fishing cove to see the boats go out or come in and join in the excitement when there was a good catch. It was still better when the boat went with provisions to the lighthouse, or to relieve the keeper, for then Jack would go too and if they would not have him he would plunge into the waves and swim after it until the sails were hoisted and it flew like a great gull from him and he was compelled to swim back to land. If there was nothing else to do he would go to the stone quarry and keep the quarrymen company, sharing their dinner and hunting away the cows and donkeys that came too near. Then at six o'clock he would turn up at the cricket-field, where a few young enthusiasts would always attend to practise after working hours.

Living this way Jack was, of course, known to everybody—as well known as the burly parson, the tall policeman, and the lazy girl who acted as postman and strolled about the parish once a day delivering the letters. When Jack trotted down the village street he received as many greetings as any human inhabitant—"Hullo, Jack!" or "Morning, Jack," or "Where be going, Jack?"

But all this variety, and all he could do to fit himself into and be a part of the village life and fill up his time, did not satisfy him. Happiness for Jack was out on the moor—its lonely wet thorny places, pregnant with fascinating scents, not of flowers and odorous herbs, but of alert, warm-blooded, and swift-footed creatures. And I was going there—would I, could I, be so heartless as to refuse to take him?

You see that Jack, being a dog, could not go there alone. He was a social being by instinct as well as training, dependent on others, or on the one who was his head and master. His human master, or the man who took him out and spoke to him in a tone of authority, represented the head of the pack—the leading dog for the time being, albeit a dog that walked on his hind legs and spoke a bow-wow dialect of his own.

I thought of all this and of many things besides. The dog, I remembered, was taken by man out of his own world and thrust into one where he can never adapt himself perfectly to the conditions, and it was consequently nothing more than simple justice on my part to do what I could to satisfy his desire even at some cost to myself. But while I was revolving the matter in my mind, feeling rather unhappy about it, Jack was quite happy, since he had nothing to revolve. For him it was all settled and done with. Having taken him out once, I must go on taking him out always. Our two lives, hitherto running apart—his in the village, where he occupied himself with uncongenial affairs, mine on the moor where, having but two legs to run on, I could catch no rabbits—were now united in one current to our mutual advantage. His habits were altered to suit the new life. He stayed in now so as not to lose me when I went for a walk, and when returning, instead of going back to his kennel, he followed me in and threw himself down, all wet, on the rug before the fire. His master and mistress came in and stared in astonishment. It was against the rules of the house! They ordered him out and he looked at them without moving. Then they spoke again very sharply indeed, and he growled a low buzzing growl without lifting his chin from his paws, and they had to leave him! He had transferred his allegiance to a new master and head of the pack. He was under my protection and felt quite safe: if I had taken any part in that scene it would have been to order those two persons who had once lorded it over him out of the room!

I didn't really mind his throwing over his master and taking possession of the rug in my sitting-room, but I certainly did very keenly resent his behaviour towards the birds every morning at breakfast-time. It was my chief pleasure to feed them during the bad weather, and it was often a difficult task even before Jack came on the scene to mix himself in my affairs. The Land's End is, I believe, the windiest place in the world, and when I opened the window and threw the scraps out the wind would catch and whirl them away like so many feathers over the garden wall, and I could not see what became of them. It was necessary to go out by the kitchen door at the back (the front door facing the sea being impossible) and scatter the food on the lawn, and then go into watch the result from behind the window. The blackbirds and thrushes would wait for a lull to fly in over the wall, while the daws would hover overhead and sometimes succeed in dropping down and seizing a crust, but often enough when descending they would be caught and whirled away by the blast. The poor magpies found their long tails very much against them in the scramble, and it was even worse with the pied wagtail. He would go straight for the bread and get whirled and tossed about the smooth lawn like a toy bird made of feathers, his tail blown over his head. It was bad enough, and then Jack, curious about these visits to the lawn, came to investigate and finding the scraps, proceeded to eat them all up. I tried to make him understand better by feeding him before I fed the birds; then by scolding and even hitting him, but he would not see it; he knew better than I did; he wasn't hungry and he didn't want bread, but he would eat it all the same, every scrap of it, just to prevent it from being wasted. Jack was doubtless both vexed and amused at my simplicity in thinking that all this food which I put on the lawn would remain there undevoured by those useless creatures the birds until it was wanted.