Читать книгу Wild Adventures in Wild Places - Stables Gordon - Страница 2

There was something about Fred Freeman which is difficult to describe, but which caused everybody to like him. He had the manners of a high-bred English gentleman, but that did not, of course, constitute the something that made him a favourite, because bon ton, manners are happily not rare. However, there’s no harm in my trying to describe him to you, because he is one of our three heroes. Fred wasn’t much, if any, above the middle height; he had a short dark beard and moustache – they were not black, however. He was very regular in features – handsome, in fact, handsome when he was in his quiet moods, which he very frequently was, and even more so when merry, for then he was simply all sunshine, and it made you laugh to look at him. He was very unobtrusive. He was a capital shot, and a daring hunter and sportsman, but never boasted about his own doings. His constitution was as tough as india-rubber, and as hard as nails. If there be anything wanting in this description, the reader must supply it himself. Anyhow, Fred was a genuine good fellow. He had hitherto travelled a good deal, sport-intent, chiefly on the Continent; but he jumped at the proposal to go round the world on “a big shoot,” as he called it.

Freeman was a bachelor, and said he would always remain so; Chisholm O’Grahame was also a bachelor. Perhaps he was seen to the best advantage when his foot was on his native heath, and a covey of grouse ahead of him. He was one of the so-called “lucky dogs” of this world. On the death of an uncle, he would come into a fine old Highland estate. Meanwhile he had nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in. After his visit to Frank, he went back to see Frank’s father, who was delighted at the success of his mission.

“Ah,” said he, “I’m so pleased! And so you must take the young dog off, and show him the world. But look here, he’s in your charge, mind you; and if you take my advice, you’ll show him some shooting in England before you go abroad. He’s only a hot-house plant as yet; he wants hardening off.”

Chisholm laughed. “I’ll harden him off,” he said.

And so the hardening-off process commenced at once. Frank was not sorry, after all, to leave the gloom of Epping Forest, and commence a sportsman’s life in earnest. The plan adopted by Chisholm and his friend, Fred, to “break young Frank in, and to harden him off,” was, I think, a good one. They were to travel a good deal in England, be here to-day and away to-morrow, and visit any of the fens or moors or shores where there was the chance of a week or two of good shooting.

That was one part of the plan. The other was that they were, as Fred called it, “to forswear civilisation, and to live in tents;” in other words, to do a deal of camping out, instead of living in hotels or houses of any kind.

“How do you think you will like that kind of thing?” asked Chisholm.

“Oh, I think it will be perfectly delightful,” said Frank, enthusiastically.

“But Frank is a bit of a shot, isn’t he?” asked Fred.

“Always during vacation times,” said Frank, speaking for himself. “I used to potter around my father’s property. I have done so ever since I was a boy.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Chisholm. “Why, you’re only a boy yet.”

“All stuff,” said Frank stoutly. “I’ll be twenty next birthday.”

“Well, well,” said Chisholm; “but tell Fred what you used to shoot.”

“Oh, anything about the farms, you know, bar the song-birds; father thought it cruel to kill them. But there were rats, such lots of rats, and sometimes a hawk or a rabbit, or even a hare. Then there were the wild pigeons – wary beggars they are, too; I used to wait for them under the fir-trees.”

“What, and kill them sitting?” asked Fred.

“Well,” said Frank, “it isn’t sportsman-like, I know; but I could hardly ever get near them else. Then the young rooks were great fun in spring; and mind you, there is many a worse dish to set before a hungry man than rook-pie.”

“I believe you, lad,” said Fred.

“Well, I’ve shot stoats and weasels by the score; and I once shot a polecat, and another day an otter, and another day an owl.”

“Well, well, well,” cried Fred. “What bags you must have made, to be sure! Never mind, you’ve got the makings of a good sportsman in you. Chisholm and I will bring you out, never fear. Did you often go owl-shooting?”

“No,” replied Frank; “I only remember one owl, and I don’t know which of the two of us had the bigger fright – Ponto the pointer, or myself. I had killed nothing that day but one old rook, a few field-mice, and a snake or two, and we were coming home in the dusk, when some great bird flew heavily out of the ivy-covered old tree near the churchyard. ‘Down you come, whatever you are,’ says I; and bang! bang! went both barrels. He flew a goodly way, but finally fell; and off went Ponto, and off went I in search of him. Ponto was in a way, I can tell you; he wasn’t pointing half prettily. ‘Hoo! hoo! hoo!’ the owl was screaming. ‘Come a bit nearer, and out come both your eyes.’ ‘I’ll stand here, anyhow,’ Ponto seemed saying, ‘till master comes up.’ Well, Chisholm, when I came up and saw the creature, it looked so like one of the winged images you see on tombstones, that, troth, I thought I’d shot a cherub of some sort.”

“Well done, Frank,” cried Chisholm, laughing. “Now,” he continued, pulling a letter from his pocket, “How will this suit? It is from a farmer friend of mine in Berkshire, a rough and right sort of a fellow. He farms about five hundred acres close to the Thames. He invites us down for a rabbit shoot, shall we go?”

“Oh! by all means,” cried Frank.

“I’m ready,” said Fred quietly.

And that “rabbit shoot” began Frank Willoughby’s sporting adventures. They had a whole week of it, and very much they enjoyed it. Chestnut Farm was a dear old-fashioned, rustic, rumble-tumble of a place, with a rolling country all around it, and the river quietly meandering through its midst. They pitched their tent not far from the river; under canvas they lived and ate and slept. Fred Freeman was a capital cook; he built his fire of wood and hung his kettle-pot gipsy fashion on a tripod, and the curries and stews he used to turn out were quite delightful. The farmer and his wife would fain have had them to live in their hospitable dwelling, but being told that Frank was undergoing the process of hardening off and general tuition in camp and sporting life, the good farmer looked at the young man for a moment or two from top to bottom, just as if he had been a colt.

“Oh!” he said, with a grunt of satisfaction, “bein’ broke, is he? Well, a rare, fine, upstanding one he be. He’ll do.”

But the farmer’s wife sent to the tent every day the freshest of butter and sweetest of creamy milk, with eggs that never had time to get cool, and so, on the whole, they were very well off.

It was deliciously comfortable, so thought Frank, this camping out. His bed was a hammock, and, though there were at first some things he looked upon as drawbacks, he soon got used to them. If a heavy shower came on it made noise enough to waken the seven sleepers, and large drops used to ooze in through the canvas. The gnats’ bites were hard to put up with, but Chisholm comforted him by bidding him “just wait until he went to India and had a touch of the jungle bugs.” Early to bed and early to rise was our heroes’ motto; early to bed to calm and dreamless slumber, such as your dwellers within brick walls never know; early to rise to have a header in the river, and to return to breakfast as fresh as a jack; early to rise to get the lines and punt clear and ready for a few hours’ fishing; early to rise if only to hear the birds singing, to watch the squirrels skipping about aloft among the trees, or to observe the thousand-and-one queer ways of the tiny dwellers by the river side, friends in fur and friends in feather. Why, in one week Frank felt himself growing quite a naturalist.

They had come down to shoot rabbits, but it must not be supposed that this was all the sport they had down by the charming river; for many wild-fowl fell to Frank’s gun, and he procured a good many beautiful specimens of birds, which he took the pains to skin and preserve for the purpose of having them stuffed. A good deal of their time was spent in fishing. They did not catch a Thames salmon, it is true, and grayling were not in season; but there were trout and perch and jack in abundance, and one day, greatly to his joy, Frank landed a lordly pike.

“I must tell you this, Mr O’Grahame and gen’l’m’n all,” said the farmer to our friends on the very first day of their arrival, “I have an order to kill five hundred to seven hundred rabbits, so there is plenty of sport for you all, and ’specially for the young ’un that’s bein’ broke; but mind, gen’l’m’n, ’ware hare, that’s wot I says, ’ware hare. My man’ll go with ye and see it is all right like, and my boys will carry the bags.”

“Whatever does he mean by ‘’ware hare’?” asked Frank afterwards.

“Why, that we mustn’t shoot a hare on any account,” replied Chisholm; “rabbits and nothing but rabbits.”

“Gearge,” the farmer’s man, went with them every day to help to carry the rabbits our sportsmen killed. On the other hand, there were boys in the rear to help Gearge. Besides Gearge and the boys, there were two dogs – a beautiful setter and a pointer, but good useful country dogs – dogs that did not think it beneath their dignity to retrieve as well as set and point. The most curious part of the whole business to young Frank, was the fact that these dogs knew a hare from a rabbit at first sight far better than he did. Well, to a young sportsman, to see a beautiful hare pass within easy shooting distance was a great temptation to fire. Frank had his doubts whether Gearge always knew one from the other, or t’other from which, because, no matter what it was, if Gearge saw only a bit of brown fur flitting from one bush to another, he sang out in stentorian tones, “’Ware hare.”

So it was “’Ware hare” all day long with Gearge. But once Frank did make a mistake, or his gun did, for the latter seemed to rise to his shoulder of its own accord, and next moment a hare was dead.

The pointer brought it and laid it solemnly down at Frank’s feet, and looked up into his face.

“See what you’ve done,” he seemed to say; “here is a pretty kettle of fish. What do you think of yourself? and how do you feel?”

And when Gearge came up and saw the result of the accident, his red, round face, which, as a rule, was wreathed in smiles, got long, and his jaw fell, while his eyes seemed wanting to jump out of their sockets.

“Well, I never?” said Gearge, rubbing the palms of his hands nervously in his cow-gown, “and I warned ye sir, too.”

“Bag him,” said Frank, “and never mind.”

“Bag ’im!” cried Gearge, aghast. “Bag he, bag a hare! No, sir, not if I knows it. Master’d give me the sack myself. We’ll leave ’im to the blue-bottles and the beetles; but oh! sir, in future, ’ware hare.”

“You seem fond of hare-shooting,” said Fred that evening, when Frank told him his adventure, or rather misadventure. “Why, if you had been where I was last winter you would have had hare-shooting to your heart’s content.”

“Beaters was it you had?” asked Chisholm.

“Yes, we had no dogs; but good sport, mind you – right and left sometimes, and one to each barrel if you only chose to hold straight.”

About the third morning, when Gearge came to the tent as usual, his face seemed rounder and redder than ever; his eyes, too, were so wreathed in smile-begotten wrinkles that they had almost disappeared. It was moreover observed that the pockets of his cow-gown were more bulky than usual.

“We’ll have a rare lark to-day,” said Gearge, pulling out first one polecat ferret and then another.

And so they had; for what with working the banks all the morning and shooting the rabbits in the open that succeeded in running the blockade, they had wonderful bags. Though Frank didn’t say much, he was glad to get back to the tent; his feet were swollen, and he could hardly carry his gun. He was certainly “bein’ broke” with a vengeance.