It was ‘betwixt the lights,’ as he would have said, when the miller closed the door quietly behind him and made his way among the nut-bushes to the ford where his search for the otter usually began. No track marked the ground by the water’s edge, nor was there a sign on any of the likely spots all the way to the stranded alder, where he sat to rest awhile before resuming his beat. The pine-tops were then aglow and the birds in full song, but they meant nothing to him in the mood he was in; his thoughts, as his words showed, were all for the otter.
‘Not a trace. Pools full of fish, too, and everythin’ as keenly as can be. Yet I’m sure he’s up, and sartin he’ll be spurred afore the day’s much older. Wonder who’ll be the lucky man?’
At the thought of his rivals he sprang to his feet and soon had reached the precipitous bank above the shelving strand where, though so many landing-places were undisturbed, he had every hope of coming on the tracks. Most carefully the eager eyes examined every foot of sand visible between the rowan-trees as, slowly on hands and knees, the miller advanced towards the bend which commands the likeliest spot of all. There twenty feet below he saw a salmon lying and, with the same glance, marked the tracks beside it. The descent of the scarp was nearly as perilous as the crossing of the current, but he accomplished both without mishap, and a few seconds later was crouching beside the footprints.
‘By the life of me they’re his, and not many hours old.’
His face, no less than his agitated voice, showed the wild excitement that possessed him as he rose and made down the wood as fast as he could lay foot to ground. When he reached the mill he was almost at his last gasp, but he bridled and mounted the pony, which he urged to a gallop through the open gate and up the stony lane. He was on his way to the squire.
As he rode through the hamlet, where the clatter of the hoofs brought the villagers to door and window, his cries of ‘Tracked un!’ roused man and boy to a fever of excitement, and sent the sexton in hot haste to the belfry to apprize the country-side. The miller, however, leaving them behind, was soon at the lodge gates. There he nearly frightened old Jenny into hysterics by his shouts; but she took her revenge, for after letting him through she shook the keys in his face and screamed after him, ‘Mad as a curley! mad as a curley!’ until he rounded the bend where the mansion comes into view. The whole house seemed asleep; but as the miller crossed the bridge over the moat the squire appeared at a window and, in a voice that betrayed the tension of his feelings, called out:
‘Where?’
‘Longen Pool, sir.’
‘Fresh?’
‘Last night’s.’
‘Rouse the men, Hicks; we shall need every hand we can muster.’
Before he had got through the plantation on his way to the kennels the clang of the fire-alarm broke on the still morning air, and when he returned from his round, squire, whipper-in and hounds were making their way through the park with a small retinue of servants in their train. At the hamlet they were joined by the parson, the parish clerk, the landlord, two sawyers, and six or seven others, and between the pound and the river by a few crofters, whom the church bell had summoned from outlying homesteads.
They crossed the water below the pool, the squire examined the tracks, the hounds were laid on, and the rocky gorge with all the wood about it immediately resounded with their wild music, while the squire and every man behind him thrilled at the prospect of at last coming up with the creature whose movements had so long baffled them. The ground was very rough, and in parts swampy, yet not a man turned back. That active, hard-conditioned followers made light of the obstacles and the pace was, of course, not surprising; but that the landlord, the clerk, and the chef—short-legged, eleven-score men every one of them—should scramble over rocks and fallen timber, flounder through thickets and boggy places, and still hold on, bedraggled and breathless though they were, testified to the fascination the pursuit of the giant otter had for them.
Some two miles above Longen Pool the squire caught sight of spraints on a boulder in the middle of the river, and knew at once from their position at its upper end that the otter which had dropped them was travelling down-water. At once he recalled the hounds and began drawing anew the reaches he had passed. He tried every holt he came to, but without result.
‘Do you think he’s gone down?’ shouted the squire to the miller across the river.
‘I don’t, sir. I didn’t find a trace from the ford up, and, as you know, the hounds didn’t give a sign.’
‘Well, there’s no holding worth the name between here and Longen. Where can he be?’
The puzzling question was answered by the deep note of Dosmary from an overgrown watercourse that served to drain the morass. No need was there for the squire to cry out, ‘Hark to Dosmary’; for the hounds, on hearing the summons they knew so well, flew to her where she threaded the reed-bed before taking the steep leading to the moor. Then up the all but bare face the twenty couple made their way in a long winding line. Close after the hindmost pressed the squire, the parson and five others, all sound of wind and limb, capable of holding on to the end of the promontory, if need be. Not a word passed until the hounds had crossed the stream where it was thought the otter might have laid up, and then only ‘Liddens, men,’ and ‘Ay, sir!’ from the moorman in response. Even the sight of the otter’s footprints in the next hollow drew no remark; though it caused an unconscious quickening of the step up the long, heathery slope, from whose brow the sea showed beyond the hazy outline of the land. Wide on either hand rose grim piles of rock, where down this avenue of cairns the seven, comrades on many a trail, sped in the wake of the pack towards the Liddens, shimmering in the distance.
But if the seven were elated as never before, there was one on the far side of the moor who was suffering a bitter disappointment. It was the old marshman. He too had discovered the tracks of the otter and, full of his tidings, had driven to the mansion as fast as his Neddy could cover the ground, only to learn from the butler that squire and hounds had already been summoned and gone off to the river. Staggering though the blow was, he bore up till beyond the gates; but on the open moor he broke down, said it was a judgment on him for tracking the varmint in the snow, and let the donkey find the way home as best it could. When they reached the cottage he set the animal loose, tried in vain to shake off his trouble by overhauling the trimmers, and finally sat down on a bench, with his back to the mud wall and his face to the marsh. It was green and gold with the swords and banners of the iris; the air was drowsy with the hum of bees and the sea murmured on the bar; yet the old man noted nothing of it. His thoughts, too, were all of the otter; he was busy trying to reconcile the seemingly contradictory discovery of the tracks in two places so far apart. ‘’Tes a job to piece ’em together with leagues—iss, leagues—of moor between. Why, look here. ’Tes all eight miles from the revur to the Liddens, and a good three as the hern flies from the Liddens to the ma’sh; a long journey, an unaccountable long journey for a crittur that edn framed for travellin’. On a midsummer night, too, and he more afeard of the glim o’ day than a cheeld of the dark. And then to turn his back on the salmin for the pike, and they poor as can be from spawnin’. Why, the thing edn in reason. But, theere, what’s the use of wastin’ breeth when he’s done it? For the prents are hisn and none other, and nawthin’ could be fresher.’
The marshman was right: the otter had crossed. At star-peep the creature had slipped from his holt in the side-stream and floated down to Moor Pool, where he killed a grilse, took a slice or two from its shoulder, and left it on the pebbles. Thence, contrary to his habit, he passed down-water, throwing the fish into a panic at every pool. Waves in the shallows showed where the most timid fled at his approach; some however remained and here and there, as the water favoured his purpose, he gave chase. Twice the formidable marauder landed with victims which he left uneaten on the bank where he laid them, for lust of slaughter, not hunger or love of pursuit, possessed him, and he was moved by a restlessness greater than he had ever shown. True, he climbed at times on snag and boulder; but that was only for an instant before taking again to the water or bank, as fancy led.
HIS LAST SALMON.
From a painting in oils by Edgar H. Fischer.
To face p. 173.
At Longen Pool his coming caused a general exodus, but he singled out one salmon, and by his wily tactics prevented it from fleeing with the others to the rapids below. The long chase which followed was for a while in favour of the fish; yet the otter, who was not to be denied, in the end wearied it out and carried it to the bank, where he bit viciously at the shoulder, as if to wreak his vengeance on the prey that had caused him so much trouble. Presently he re-entered the water, cleansed his blood-stained muzzle, and making upstream turned aside into the wet ditch and traversed the morass.
On gaining the high ground above it he stood awhile, as if asking himself whether at the late hour he might venture across the moor. The instant his mind was made up he set out at a rapid pace, glancing at the keeper’s lodge as he went by, and again at the sleeping hamlet before crossing the road and entering on the waste, over which he held on his way till nearly abreast of the cromlech. There he halted whilst he sounded the call and listened. Twice he uttered the shrill cry, his mask turned in the direction of the lone pool to the north; but there was no answer in the mocking whistle of the curlew, so he moved on again under the fading stars, and at last came to the Liddens.
He kept awhile to the open water, cruising restlessly about, as he had done before in the creek and mere, raising himself at times and gazing round, as wild a looking creature as imagination can conjure up. Thence he passed into the thick fringe of reeds, and remained hidden so long that it might be thought that he had laid up there. Later however he appeared on the far bank of the westernmost pool, and though the pale primrose streak in the east warned him of coming day, the outlawed animal, alarmed by the taint of human footprints he had happened on, at once forsook the refuge and set his face for the marsh.
His hurried movements showed that he had full knowledge of the risk he ran in the open, where he looked a monster as he crossed the patches of sward amongst the bilberry. Indeed, so fast did he cover the ground that no sprinter could have kept up with him, especially when he breasted the long, boulder-strewn ascent to the Kites’ Cairn. There old Ikey must have viewed him had he been on his way to the pools at his usual hour; but he was late, and soon the otter was amongst the crags. His feet were here delayed momentarily by the rising sun, whose light he dreaded as much as did the witches of Crowz-an-Wra. But there was no staying where he was: he must press on to marsh or sea, now both in his view; and at panic speed he made his way down the bare slope and up the opposite rise to the great furze brake that runs down almost to the margin of the mere. Leisurely he threaded his way through the close cover to a point where he stood and listened to the crowing of a cock before slipping into the water and crossing to the old hover on the edge of the reed-bed. He made his careful toilet as usual, and before the marshman discovered his tracks he had curled up and fallen asleep.
But whilst the otter slept in untroubled security, heedless of his enemies, they had passed the Liddens and come within earshot of the old man, who had scarcely finished his soliloquy when he started to his feet with the exclamation, ‘What’s that?’ and stood listening as intently as the otter a little earlier had listened for a reply to his call. This time, however, the reply came. ‘Surely theere ’tes again,’ and a few seconds later, as the cry rose afresh, he shouted ‘’Tes they’ so loudly that he attracted the child who joined him on the furze-rick he had hurriedly climbed.
‘Do ’ee hear them, Mary? ’Tes the hounds. Hark! cheeld.’
‘I hear something, granfer.’
‘Wheere do ’ee make the cry to............