Читать книгу The Story of a Hare - J. C. Tregarthen - Страница 4

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EARLY TROUBLES

The Cornish Heights terminate near the Land’s End in four wild hills of singular charm, though of very modest altitude. Springing as they do from a treeless tableland, they look quite like a miniature mountain range, especially when seen through rolling mists or capped by the rain-laden clouds which, like birds coming weary from the Atlantic, settle on their summits. Man seldom intrudes there, though they offer a peerless prospect over promontory and ocean. The faint paths amongst ling and furze are not his: they have been traced by the foxes that kennel on this silent retreat, or by badgers going to and from the deep sett on the northern slope; for the desolate upland has long been given over to the outlawed creature, and furnished sanctuary to any wildling that sought it.

To these hills, in the late winter of a year long ago, there came a hare in search of a spot to which she might safely commit her young. She was hard to satisfy, rejecting for this reason or for that a score of harbourages that competed for her favour. One night she all but decided on a bramble-patch near the top of Caer Bran; the next she fancied first a heathery knoll on Bartinney, then an abandoned mine-heap on Sancreed Beacon; and at the last moment rejected both for the western slope of Chapel Carn Brea, partly on account of its uninterrupted outlook, but more because it was less overrun than the sister hills by the predatory creatures that infested the countryside. All through the month of March she had not seen a polecat or even a stoat upon the hillside; only once had she detected on it the trail of an enemy; so with a feeling of security the timorous mother entrusted her young to its keeping, laying them in a tussock of coarse grass near a ruined chantry.

They were pretty little things with wide-open eyes, distinguishable by only the white star in the forehead of the male and the greater restlessness that he displayed. The tiny fellow, as if eager to explore the world into which he had just been born, was all agog to be out and about in the afterglow, and had not his mother checked him till the impulse passed, he would have left the form and perhaps lost himself amongst the furze. He constantly renewed his struggles to have his way; but the moment he ceased, she removed the restraining pad and caressed him till, like his sister, he became drowsy and at length fell asleep.

When the stars shone bright, the hare rose, stretched her stately limbs, covered the little sleepers with the grass-blades, gathered herself for a spring, and leapt to an outcropping rock. On landing she leapt again and again and again, in order to prevent any beast of prey from following her tracks and discovering the form. After taking these precautions she made for the crest of the hill, and standing on the ruin, snuffed the wind and scrutinised the waste. Presently, assured that no enemy threatened, she set out for the feeding-ground. At the foot of the long slope she repeated her ruse of the leaps, and passed through a hole in the wall that separated the wild from the farm land, to which she had been attracted by the tender herbage of the young wheat.

Near midnight the leverets awoke and found her gone; yet in their loneliness they uttered neither plaint nor call, nor, strange to say, attempted to leave the form, but nestled close hour after hour awaiting her return. They gave no heed to the wind, for its sighing meant nothing to them; but at early dawn, though no sound broke the silence, the cocked ears first of one, then of the other, told they were all expectation for some signal. Soon there came the faint, low call which instinct whispered was their mother’s, followed by the soft beat of the pads, growing more and more distinct till with a last bound the hare cleared the wide space between the rock and the form, and at once gave herself to the hungry, excited mites. Whilst she suckled them, a lark rose and greeted the day with notes so rapturous as to drown the crowings of the cocks in the homesteads dotting the plain. The leverets fed and fed till they were satisfied, then settled down to rest against their mother’s side, where presently the sun, risen above Caer Bran, discovered them, and threw a bright splash of warm light across their russet coats.

C. Reid.] [To face p. 4.

“They Nestled Close.”

It was a lovely April morning. Towards noon a big black cloud came up out of the west bringing needed rain, whilst a rainbow arched land and sea; and then the first call of the cuckoo rang out through the stillness. Chapel Carn Brea faintly echoed “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” The joyous notes brought the housewife to the door, checked the frolics of the wondering lambs, made the field-mice sit up and listen and the leverets prick their waking ears. The far-flung message that told of kindly weather and plenty for man and beast cheered every living thing that heard it: it cheered even the hare as she sat and watched over her young, full of misgivings for their safety. Their helplessness, still more her own powerlessness to defend them against enemies, stirred her deepest feelings, and made her mothering instinct so much stronger than that of the vixen laid up with cubs in the croft beyond the wheatfield. She was haunted by the dread of being bereft of them; and incapable of defence though she was, her fears kept her ever alert and vigilant. She never slept. Even when she drowsed her open, wakeful eyes saw all that passed within their range—the farmer faring to his work and hastening to his meals, the cows driven to and from the fields, the pigs wandering up and down the lane, the donkey browsing on the furzy waste by the common with the large pool, and the geese who, towards sunset, waddled from it to the farmyard gate cackling to be penned, as if apprehensive of being carried off by the hill-foxes that came and sniffed at their door when man was abed. She noted too the ravens as they winged by on their way to the cliffs, and the kites as they soared high overhead; she watched with no little concern the buzzard whose shadow passed over her as he searched the hillside before alighting on the broken chancel of the ruin. His terrifying cat-like mew caused the leverets to stir beneath her, but she herself remained as motionless as the furze; indeed, till the sun had set, she never moved for fear of prying eyes.

Four days passed without disquieting incident, but on the fifth the vixen paid a visit to the hill and threw the hare into a fever of anxiety. The daring marauder came at high noon, during the farmer’s dinner-hour, when the land is forsaken and the peace of the waste spreads to the fields, enticing the nocturnal prowler to venture forth in broad daylight in search of food. Thus lured, the vixen, yielding to the importunities of her hungry cubs, stole from her earth and, keeping to the overgrown ditches, gained the boundary wall without exposing herself to view. But the instant her mask showed above the coping-stone the hare espied her, and from that moment followed every movement. She thought that the fox knew of her presence and was in search of her, as well as she might, for the hill harboured no prey save herself and her young, at least none worth the coming for. So while the vixen searched the lower slopes the hare watched with eyes starting from her head, anxious to learn whether the murderous creature would hit the line she had left at early dawn. Once she crossed it without checking; she flashed over it again near the Giant’s Bowl, and then the hare knew that the trail would not betray her; the hot sun had evaporated every particle of what little scent she had left.^[1] The hunter moved at an unusually quick pace, as if she had set herself the task of examining the whole hillside during the short time that man remained within doors. Now she threaded the bushes, now she leapt them; once she was lost to view in a patch of tall furze gorgeous with blossom, but in a few seconds she reappeared at the far end to continue the quest in the open. At last near the black shadow cast by a boulder she stopped, assumed a listening attitude, then plunged her long nose into a bush after a mouse, but apparently without getting it, for she did not lick her chops. Nothing disconcerted, however, on she went again, ranging to and fro without a pause till, half-way up the slope, she stood suddenly still and looked towards the homestead as if all at once alive to the risk she was running. A glance satisfied her that man was still indoors, and again she resumed the quest, if possible with greater keenness than before. Every stride now was taking her dangerously nearer and nearer to the hare, but whilst she was yet some five or six rods below the form a sheep-dog barked, and in an instant she was transformed from a lithe hunter into a craven creature. Crouching, she fixed her gaze on the dog expressing his delight at the reappearance of his master, who stood in shirt-sleeves at the open door. “Down, Shep.” At the sound of the man’s voice the vixen sank into the herbage as if turned to lead, and remained there motionless, save in heaving flank and lolling tongue. Presently the farmer withdrew; the vixen slunk down the hill, carefully avoiding the exposed places, climbed the wall, and vanished from sight.

Much as the hare was relieved by this retreat, she could not regain her peace of mind; for the visit left her with the fear that the creature would return at nightfall and renew the search, a thought which urged her to remove the leverets at dusk. But where? The nearest spot that commended itself to her was at the foot of Bartinney, about a mile distant; and the way thither led across the trails of fox and badger, who might surprise her with her burden, and have her at their mercy. Her position was a very difficult one; to stay was perilous, to shift was no less so. Uncertain what to do for the best, she remained irresolute till the stars began to peep; then, hoping against hope that the fox might not come after all, she decided to remain. In any case she must go and feed, yet setting-out time came and went whilst the hare kept to the form. She could not tear herself away from her young with this danger hanging over them. A sickle moon lit hill and plain and threw into relief the coping-stone of the wall on which the eyes of the anxious mother were fixed. Against the granite she could not fail to see the dark form of her enemy. The better to observe, the hare raised herself on her hind legs; and the leverets, thinking she was going to play with them, stood up too, resting their forefeet against her sides; but at a whisper from their mother they sank down again into a sitting posture. The night wore on, however, without sign of the fox, and at length the hare, feeling somewhat reassured, set out for the nearest feeding-ground. There she browsed until midnight, when apprehension for her young drove her back to the hill. Although she found all well, she stayed close by and fed on the rough herbage near the summit. When she returned to the form her fears had nearly subsided; by dusk they no longer haunted her, and in a day or two she dismissed the fox from her mind.

She thought that her enemy, satisfied that the hill was bare of prey, would not trouble her again, so that it came as a surprise when, a few mornings later, she espied a vixen at the foot of the slope, endeavouring to solve the puzzle of the scent the hare had left on her way to the form less than an hour before. It was strange how little the sight perturbed her, but when unaffected by her extreme anxiety for the leverets she knew from experience there was no real need for fear. Never once had she known a fox to succeed in tracing her from foiled ground, though in the past she had known many who had tried as the vixen was now trying. There near the wall the creature persisted in the almost hopeless task, following now this way, now that along the many lines of scent to discover the final course taken by the hare after her last leap. Over and over again she seemed on the point of giving it up: the network of trails maddened and bewildered her; and her irritation made her snap viciously at the long bramble spray in which her brush got entangled. Presently, in her despair, she made a cast at random; as luck would have it, she hit the true line. At once she was all alive; her brush, which had hung lifeless, now wagged furiously, and at the sight of her enemy’s success the hare grew uneasy. Slowly, very slowly, the vixen advanced along the trail as if fearful of losing what had cost her so much trouble to find. Anon she came to the place above the clump of blossoming furze where since the midday visit the hare had woven another maze of tracks before coming to the leaping-place by the form. On reaching it the vixen tried to follow the trail as it had been laid, but the criss-crossing it had received so confused her that presently she lost patience and made a short cast beyond. Here she happened on a part of the trail where the hare had returned on her foil, and on coming to the spot near the ruin where it ended she actually raised her mask as if she believed the hare had taken wing and might be seen in mid-air. For a moment she seemed to despair again; but the hunger caused by the night’s bad hunting and the thought of her five ravenous cubs goaded her on; she shook the dew from her coat and made another cast. This took her within a dozen yards of the spot where mother and young squatted flat on the ground. It seemed that the vixen must scent them; had there been a breath of wind she could hardly have failed; but the air was still; not a spray or blade moved save those disturbed by the vixen as she moved hither and thither with ears widespread to catch the slightest sound. A stifled cry, the faintest rustle in that silence must have betrayed them; through the trying, critical seconds, however, they never moved, they scarcely breathed.

The vixen seemed loath to leave the spot; but at length she quitted it for the summit, where she searched the fallen stones and scaled the crumbled walls, her form clearly outlined against the sky now tinted with orange by the coming day. On the stone lintel she presently came to a stand, arrested by the sight of the sun which peeped above the eastern hills and warned her that it was time to be seeking her earth. Reluctant as she was to obey, she dropped to the ground and made her way slowly down the shadowed slope. Half-way in the descent she suddenly turned her mask and scrutinised the ground in the hope of catching the hare with head raised watching her retreat; but bush, rock, and frond alone met her roving eyes. Near the Giant’s Bowl she again looked back, and by the expression on her face, now vindictive rather than perplexed, seemed to say: “Wily one, you’ve beaten me this dawn, but I’ll lick my chops over you yet, both you and your tender young ones.” Then, the rumble of wheels urging her, she hurried away, her beautiful coat all aripple with the play of her lissom limbs. As soon as she had crossed the wall, the hare, who had observed her from behind the blades, resumed the suckling of her frightened young, fondling them as she had never done before.

It had been a narrow escape, and the hare was now all impatience to forsake the hill. But that could not be before nightfall, so she and the leverets spent the long day unnerved by the rank scent left by the fox on the herbage. The slow sun at last sank beneath the sea. At once the hare took the doe leveret in her mouth and carried it along the southern flank of the chain for more than a mile to the foot of Bartinney, where she laid it in a patch of bracken bordering a little green. The next moment she was on her way back at her best pace, as though she dreaded that the vixen might forestall her. But no enemy was to be seen: the jack was as she had left him. Seizing him by the skin of the neck she bore him rapidly along despite his kicking, crouching whilst two stoats passed, dropping him thrice to rest herself, and finally depositing him in a clump of rushes by a rill some score yards from his sister. It was not without a reason that she laid them on opposite sides of the green, for by thus separating them she hoped that at least one might escape detection in the event of a visit from an enemy.

On collecting himself after his strange experience, the jack sat and listened to the music of the water, whilst through an opening in the rushes his eyes scanned the green, whose close velvety sward seemed to cry aloud to be gambolled on. There, so the country people aver, the fairies forgather to hold high revel on the inviting turf, tripping to the tinkling of the falls, in the dark-green ring lighted by innumerable glow-worms. No little folk appeared that night, however; nothing in fact came near until the hare returned to attend to her young, before vanishing like the wraith she seemed and ensconcing herself in some brambles on the lip of the green.

She had not been there long when a magpie left his resting-place in the hawthorn overhanging the turf and stood preening his feathers on the topmost spray. Presently, his quick eyes noted the marks left by the hare’s pads on the dewy surface, and examined them searchingly as if to learn the identity of the trespasser. He imagined that a badger or a fox had made them; the thought that a hare—he had only seen one—had crossed the green never entered his head, much less that a family of hares was at that moment lying hidden around it. The inquisitive bird was soon joined by his mate, and after a little chatter he flew away with her towards a homestead from which the smoke was just beginning to rise. They alighted on the elder-tree springing from the wall of the rickyard, the white of their plumage very conspicuous in the bright level rays which lit them up and fired the dormer-window of the thatched roof beyond. By and by they dropped into the yard, where amongst the straw they found an egg. They broke and ate it. Then the hen-bird came flying back in great haste to the nest, as if she feared her precious clutch might be chilled and become addled. Later the cock-bird returned to tell her what was happening in the farmyard, and at once flew back to the elder. He was back again in half an hour: indeed he kept flying to and fro until sundown. The hare rejoiced in the restlessness of this arch-mobber of vermin: it gave her a sense of security such as she had not felt since the birth of her young. For her the magpie was an untiring patrol, and further, one gifted with a tongue that would make the boldest fox shrink from the insults it was capable of raining on him. Her fears fled in the presence of this sentinel of the wild, so that for a few minutes during the afternoon she actually fell asleep. “If only there were some night-bird to watch over us,” she thought while she sat awaiting dusk. And as soon as darkness fell an owl began hooting. At once, as if she took it for a signal, she stole from the form to attend to her young.

Her visit was most welcome to the jack, who was very sorry when she withdrew. He listened to her retreating steps, and as they died away tried to combat the feeling of loneliness that beset him. In the weary watch that followed he sorely missed the companion of his waking hours. He felt forlorn without her soft, warm side to nestle against; but in a night or two he found something to occupy him. He took to grooming himself, and off and on spent hours brushing his ears and licking his coat, especially the snow-white fur on his belly, which had looked so ghostly as his mother bore him through the dusk. He made himself as clean as a pink, and when the feeling of isolation wore off, as it soon did, he felt as happy as a strong, healthy leveret could feel. Soon, however, his muscles began to ache for want of exercise: they kept urging him to throw aside his fears and break his narrow bounds; but night after night he resisted the impulse. At last inaction became unendurable. Regardless of his mother’s monitions and the whispers of instinct, he leapt the rill and raced about the moonlit green like a thing possessed.

Instantly he was joined by his sister, and never perhaps did two leverets enjoy their stolen freedom more. They bounded over each other’s back; they leapt the rock by the thorn, clearing it by a good foot; they galloped round and round like performers in a circus. Tiring of this, they rose on their hind legs and sparred with their pads, moving about the fairy ring and patting each other’s face like boxers. But whilst they were thus engaged the snapping of a brier disturbed the night and sent them to their seats. With wildly beating hearts they sat till the clumsy badger who had trodden on the spray passed out of hearing; then out they came again and renewed their frolics, which lasted without further interruption till the moon began to pale.

Their mother found them in their seats looking as innocent as could be; but she knew of their escapade from the scent on the green and, recognising in this bid for liberty a token that the time was come for leading them out, she resolved to devote herself to this duty without further delay. So the following night, instead of returning at early dawn, she hurried back in the small hours and surprised the culprits, not, as she expected, in the midst of their games, but nibbling the grass of the green. At the sight of their mother the guilty creatures scurried to their forms, only to bound out at her summons and follow frisking at her heels as she led past the spring to the hill. She breasted the slope at a slow canter, but soon quickened her steps. Half-way up she began doubling, the leverets imitating her twists and turns in a surprising way and with astonishing exactness. Towards daybreak, however, they flagged, and by the time they got back to the green they were so tired that they were content to remain in the form till the hour for exercise came round again.

The hare returned nightly at almost the same moment, and went farther and farther afield as their strength grew, without encountering even in these extended excursions any enemy more formidable than an old badger, who never dreamt of pursuit. It is true that he looked hard at them, but only because of his surprise at seeing survivors of a race which he thought extinct. The instant he satisfied himself they really were hares, he resumed his grunting and crossed the ridge on the way to his earth.

At the first faint blush in the east the hares sped towards the pool that fills the hollow between Bartinney and Chapel Carn Brea. There near the edge of the water the leverets confused their trails and chose their seats. This they did under the eyes of their mother, who watched interestedly from the slope where she lay amongst the heather. As it proved, no precautions were necessary, for no creature came near; indeed, nothing disturbed the drowsy stillness till late in the day, when a breeze sprang up that sent the water in tiny wavelets against the rushy shore. This immunity from molestation was the result of the hare’s knowledge of the ways of her enemies, of their retreats, and especially of the times of their coming and going. At every outing they crossed the foul line left by some marauder on its way to the lowland, but—those of the badger excepted—never a homing trail; for the hares were settled in their forms before fox, polecat, and stoat came slinking back to their lairs.

But not even the hare, with cunning quickened by the dependence of her young, could provide against every contingency. On the fourth day of their stay by the pool, when they were back in their seats around the green, they were discovered and attacked by a bloodthirsty little creature that was abroad foraging in the very middle of the morning. The hare’s suspicions were first aroused by the angry cries of some small birds in the corner of the nearest field. Soon the demonstration grew more and more distinct, showing that the birds were pursuing the object of their displeasure in the direction of the green. From the first the noise attracted the attention of the magpie. Immediately he saw the birds he cocked his head, now this way now that, as if beholding the most interesting sight of his life. And a strange sight it certainly was; for, accompanied by linnets and finches that fluttered over it, there came with the quick movement of its kind, a weasel, seemingly quite indifferent to the mobbing it received. As soon as it appeared the hare quivered in every limb; but there was no shiver of fear, for when presently the little miscreant scented the jack and stood on its hind legs screaming, to paralyse him with terror, she bounded across the green, and with a stroke of a forepad sent the animal flying into the water. Undaunted, and enraged at this treatment, the weasel now confronted the hare herself, only to be knocked over, trampled on, and spurned to the middle of the green, where it lay on its back kicking as though its last hour was come. Whereupon the magpie, who, considering the weasel too insignificant for his intervention, had hitherto held its tongue, chattered loudly as if to applaud the deed; whilst the hare, whose blood was up, remained within a yard of the weasel, ready to renew the battle should it again show fight. Braver still, the linnet whose eggs the weasel had been sucking, as was evident from the stain on its muzzle, stood within a few inches and upbraided it for the wrong done her, and, frail thing though she was, scarcely deigned to move when shortly it regained its feet and made for the hill. It was not allowed to sneak away unattended; birds and hare—strange allies—accompanied the discomfited little wretch past the spring to the heather, where it wormed its way amongst the stems and hid itself from view. Then the linnets and finches, having avenged their friend, flew back to their thickets; and the hare, crouching low as if frightened now by her own shadow, stole to her form. The magpie still perched on the spray from which he had witnessed the scene. The arch-rogue had thoroughly enjoyed every phase of it, and now that it was over he was all alive, quizzing the spots where the hare and the leverets lay, as if trying to get a view of them amidst the cover. At last he too flew away; then no trace remained of the participators in the drama but a tiny feather that lay where the linnet had stood.

The visit of the weasel had its consequences, for the hare, fearing that the creature would return when she was away foraging, resolved to take the leverets with her at setting-out time, and after she had regained her composure she sat planning the round she would lead them.

[1]	The doe hare leaves little scent whilst her young are helpless.