The Way of the Wild Part 16

Right in front of the polecat, within spring, still as the very ground, the huffish, whitish check of a peewit, lap-wing, or green plover would have been mistaken for one of the many stones; the thin, curving top-knot for a stem of the thin, harsh gra.s.s: the low curve of the dark back, with its light reflections in green, for no more than the natural curve of the close-cropped turf. And she was on her nest, which was no nest, but a sc.r.a.pe, backing her natural a.s.similation with her surroundings to see her through.

And the polecat knew she was there, and he knew she was on her nest--she would not have been fool enough to keep there otherwise. His nose told him--not his eyes, I think, for that was nearly impossible.

The thing was, he wanted her to move. That was what he was waiting for. No more than the twitch of an eyelid would do to show which end was head and which tail; for he could only smell her, and, in a manner, would have to pounce blind if she did not move.

She did not move, however, and in the end he had to pounce blind, anyhow, so suddenly, so unexpectedly, when it did come, s.h.i.+fting like a streak, that there seemed to have been no time to shout even, or gasp.

Yet that peewit found time in that fraction of a second to rise, open her wings, and get two feet into the air. And then the polecat took her, leaping with unexpected agility, and pulling her down out of limitless freedom and safety. There was just a rush, a snap, a wild-bird squawk, and down the pair went, to the accompaniment of furiously fluttering wings and in a cloud of feathers.

She had made a slight mistake in her calculations, that peewit, a matter of perhaps a quarter of a second, but enough. Nature has not got much room for those who commit slight mistakes in the wild, I guess; they mostly quit the stage before pa.s.sing that habit on, or soon after.

For a moment there was a horrible, strenuous jumble of fur and feathers on the ground, and then the polecat's flat head rose up on his long neck out of the jumble, his eyes alight with a new look, and his lifted upper lip stained with a single little bright carmine spot. The peewit was dead.

He pivoted upon his shanks and examined the nest. It was empty.

He got to his feet with rapidity, and, in great excitement, dropped his head and began hunting. In a minute a mottled pebble seemed to get up under his nose and run. He snapped at it, and it fell upon the gra.s.s, stretching out slowly in death--a baby peewit.

He circled rapidly, stopped, swerved, and, at the canter, took up another scent. Suddenly, in a tussock of marram, his nose and he stopped dead. Nothing moved. Then he bit, and a second buff-and-black-mottled soft body stretched slowly out into the open as death took it--a second baby peewit. He circled again, fairly racing now, and so nearly fell over a third pebble come to life that it scuttled back between his legs; but he spun upon himself like a snake, and caught it ere it had gone a yard. He snapped again, held it, dropped it, and another downy, soft, warm chick thing straightened, horribly and pathetically, in the unpitying sun, and was still--a third baby peewit.

But there were no more. He hunted around and around for the next ten minutes, but never struck a trail. Evidently there had been only three. And all the time father-peewit, who had just come back from dinner, swooped, and stooped, and dived, and rocketed, and shot down and around, his wings humming through the still air above as he went clean mad, and seemed like to break his neck and the polecat's back in any and every one of his demented abysmal plunges, but somehow never did quite.

And all the time, also, the polecat, without seeming to take the slightest notice of him, was watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting, hoping for a chance while he hunted.

But this was not intended as an exhibition of "frightfulness," though the beast had slain far more innocents than he could eat. It was part of his duty; and though men have accused his kind of being possessed of a joy of killing, the accusation is by no means proven. And, in any case, the accused might reply to civilization, "Same to you, sir, and many hundreds of times more so."

Anyway, he now picked up a young peewit and made for the nearest dike; then along this, and presently into the water and across to the other side, swimming strongly and well; then along a smaller dike, hugging the reeds as much as possible, and pursued by a running fire of abuse from the sedge and marsh and gra.s.shopper warblers, from wagtails, meadow-pipits, reed-buntings, larks, and all the small-bird population of those parts, till he came to the sea-bank, called by the natives "sea-wall." This was a high, gra.s.s-bearded bank designed to constrain the waters of the estuary, and there, in a hole, curtained by a dandelion and guarded by the stiff spears of the coa.r.s.e marram gra.s.s, he stuffed his victim.

The burrow was not empty when he came to it, for it already contained two moorhens' eggs; but there was still room for more, and one by one he fetched the remainder of his victims, mother and all, that way, and stuffed them into the burrow, with a plodding, steady, exact doggedness of purpose that was rather surprising in a mere wild beast who, if seen casually, would have appeared to the ordinary man to be merely aimlessly wandering about the landscape. And, mind you, this was not quite such a simple and "soft" job as it looked. Grit was needed to accomplish it, even.

There was, for instance, the sudden, far too suggestive, swirl in the water as he crossed the dike for the third time, loaded, that gave more than a hint of some unknown--and therefore the more sinister--haunter of those muddied depths of pollution, who took a more than pa.s.sing interest in the smell of blood, and must, to judge by the swirl, have been too big to be safe. And that was probably a giant female eel, as dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size--though he ate eels--might care to face. Then there was the marsh-harrier--and the same might have been a kind of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk--who flapped up like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only waiting--he felt sure of it--for the polecat to slip, or meet a foe, or have an accident, or something, before breaking its own avine neutrality.

Then, too, there was the stoat, or, rather, not the stoat only, but the stoat and his wife, who would have murdered him if they had dared, and took to shadowing and watching him from cover in the most meaning sort of way. And, finally, there was the lean, nosing, sneaking dog, the egg-thief, who had no business there with his yolk-spattered, s...o...b..ring jaws, plundering the homes of the wild feathered ones--he who was only a tame slave, and a bad one at that. But the dog followed the polecat into a jungle-like reed fastness, and--almost never came out again! When he did, it was to the accompaniment of varied and a.s.sorted howls, and at about the biggest thing in the speed line he had ever evolved. He was no end glad to get out, and the distant haze swallowed him wonderfully quickly, still howling every yard of the way--for, mark you, that polecat's teeth, once felt, wore nothing to laugh at or forget.

These things he accomplished as the night was beginning to fall, and the solemn eye of the setting sun--such an eye of such a setting sun as the estuary alone knows; bloodshot, and in a sky asmoke as of cities burning--regarded him as he finished and stood back outside as one who considers. He was a grim figure of outlawry and rapine, alone there in that lonely place, amidst the gathering, dank gray of the marsh mists, the red rays touching his coat and turning it to deep purple, and his eyes to dull ruby flame; a beast, once seen, you would not forget, and could never mistake.

But his work was not yet done. He was hungry again, but for him there could be no more food yet, and he turned with the same immutable and dumbly dogged air that characterized so many of his actions, and made off down the "sea-bank." Once he hid--vanished utterly would better express it--to avoid the pa.s.sage of an eel-spearer, an inhabitant of the estuary almost as amphibious and mysterious as himself. Once he very nearly caught a low-flying snipe as he leapt up at it while cutting low over the top of the "bank"; and once--here he sprang aside with a half-stifled snarl and every bristle erect--he was very nearly caught by a horrible steel-toothed trap, set there to entertain that same dog we have already met, by reason of the small matter of a late lamb or two that had suddenly developed bites, obviously not self-inflicted, in the night. Then he crossed the dike at the foot of the sea-wall, shook himself, sat down to scratch, and straightway hurled himself backwards and to one side, as something that resembled a javelin whizzed out of six straggling, upright, faded, tawny reeds at the water's edge, by which he had sat down. The javelin struck deep into the little circle of lightly-pressed-down gra.s.s where his haunches had rested, and he caught a glimpse, or only a half-glimpse, of weird onyx eyes, and heard strange and shuddery reptilian hissings. Eyes and noises might have belonged to a crocodile, or some huge lizard thing, or snapping turtle, but the javelin was clearly the property of no such horror, and was very obviously a beak--now, by the way, withdrawn.

Followed the harsh rattle and the swish of big feathers and vast wings--he felt the draught of them--the dim outline, as it were, of a ghost, of some great shape rising into the gloom, and as instantly vanis.h.i.+ng over the sea-"wall," and he was alone, _and_--there were now three upright and faded reeds in the clump near which he had sat him down by the water's edge to scratch, _not_ six. The Thing, the portent, the apparition, or whatever you like to call it, had been the _other_ three; yet you could have sworn to the six reeds before it moved. And the worst of it was that he did not know from frogs and fresh water what the Thing was. He had never glimpsed such a sudden death before, and had no burning desire to do so again, for he was shrewd enough to know that, but for that fling-back of his, the javelin would have struck him, and struck him like a stuck pig, perhaps through the skull! Oh, polecat! The bird was a bittern, relation of the herons, only brown, and if not quite so long, made up for it in strength and fiery, highly developed courage.

Caution is not the polecat's trump card, as it is the cat's, but if ever he trod carefully, it was thence onwards, as he threaded the dike-cut and pool-dotted gloom. He came upon a lone bull bellowing, and gave him room. He came upon something unknown, but certainly not a lone bull, bellowing too; it was the bittern, and he gave that plenty of room. He came upon two moorhens, fighting as if to the death, but _he_ was the death; and slew one of them from behind neatly, and had to go back with it, past both bellowings, to a second burrow in the sea-bank, where he put it; and later he came upon only seven great, mangy, old, stump-tailed, scarred, horrible ghouls of sh.o.r.e rats, all mobbing a wounded seagull--a herring-gull--with a broken wing.

The gull lived, but that was no fault of the polecat's, for she managed to run off into the surrounding darkness what time he was dealing warily but effectively with one of those yellow-toothed devils of murderous rats--whose bite is poison--in what dear, kind-hearted people might have said was a most praiseworthy rescue of the poor, dear, beautiful bird. (The poor, dear, beautiful bird, be it whispered, had herself swallowed a fat-cheeked and innocent-eyed baby rabbit whole that very day, before she was wounded; but never mind.)

The polecat, after one wary sniff, did not seem to think the rat worthy of a journey to the sea-bank and decent burial, and pa.s.sed on, the richer for a drink of rat's blood, perhaps, but very hungry. He came upon a redshank's nest in a tuft of gra.s.s.

The redshank, who has much the cut of a snipe, plus red-orange legs, must have heard or seen him coming in the new, thin moonlight, and told all the marsh about it with a shrieking whistled, "Tyop! tyop!" But the nest contained four eggs, which the polecat took in lieu of anything bigger, carrying two--one journey for each--all the way to the sea-bank, to yet another hole he had previously sc.r.a.ped, or found, therein. One of the other two eggs he consumed himself, and was just making off with number four, when something came galloping over the marsh in the moonlight, splas.h.i.+ng through the pools, and making, in that silence, no end of a row for a wild creature.

The polecat stood quite still, with his long back arched, his st.u.r.dy, short forepaws anch.o.r.ed tense, and his short, rounded ears alert, and watched it come, not because he wanted to, but because there did not happen to be any cover thereabouts, and to move might give him away.

When he saw that the beast was long and low, and short-legged and flat-beaded, his long outer fur began to bristle. Those outlines were the trade-marks of his own tribe--not his own species only--and were, he knew, more likely to mean tough trouble than anything else. Then he realized that the path of the new arrival would take it right towards him, and that was bad, because to move now and get out of the way was hopeless. Also, he could see the size of the beast now, and that was worse than bad--some ten inches to a foot worse.

The beast held a wild-duckling in its jaws, and the little body, with its stuck-out webbed feet, flapped and flopped dismally from side to side, as the animal cantered along with a somewhat shuffling, undulating gait. And then the polecat became transfixed. He had recognized the new-comer. He knew the breed, and would have given a lot not to have molested that redshank's abode and be found there.

The strange beast--palpably a large, sinuous, and wicked proposition--came right up to the polecat, standing there rigid, erect, motionless, and alone in the moonlight, with the fourth egg between his paws, and then stopped dead, almost touching him. Apparently, it saw him for the first time. Certainly it was not pleased; it said so under its breath, in a low growl.

The polecat said nothing, perhaps because he had nothing to say.

The beast was an otter, and an old one. Also, it appeared to be suffering from a "grouch."

The polecat felt uncomfortable. He was eyeing the other's throat, and marking just the place where he meant to take hold, if things came to the worst; but he knew all the time that the otter, although its eyes had never been removed for a fraction of a second off his face, was really watching the egg. The otter was a female; probably she had young to feed; the presence of the duckling darkly hinted at it. If so, so much the worse for the polecat.

Then the otter put down her duckling, and growled again; but the polecat might have been carved in unbarked oak for all the sign of life that he gave. Then--she sailed in.

It was really very neatly and prettily done, for, as an exponent of lithesome agility, the otter is--when the pine-marten is not by--certainly quite It. The polecat seemed to side-twist double, making some sort of lightning-play with his long neck and body as she came, and--he got his hold. Yes, he got his hold all right. The only thing was to stay there; for, as he was a polecat and a member of the great, the famous, weasel tribe, part of his fighting creed was to _stay there_.

When, however, hounds fail to puncture an otter's hide, any beast might be pardoned for losing its grip; but he did not. Between the tame hounds' fangs and his smaller wild ones was some difference--about the difference between our teeth and a savage's, multiplied once or twice; and the old she-otter, who had felt hounds' teeth in her life, realized the difference. Also, it hurt, and the polecat did not lose his hold.

Then, maddened, wild with rage, the rage of one who expects a walk-over and receives a bad jolt instead, that old she-otter really got to work.

She recoiled like a coiled snake, and the polecat felt fire in one loin.

It looked like the contortions of one big, furry beast twisted with cramp, by the moonlight. You could not possibly separate the combatants, or tell that there were two. But the polecat only fought because he dared not expose his flank with the foe facing him. Now, however, as they both rolled he--

Hi! It was done in an instant. At a moment when the roll brought him on top, and when the otter was s.h.i.+fting her own hold for another, and more deadly, which might have "put him to sleep" forever, he miraculously twisted and writhed, eel-fas.h.i.+on, and with one mighty wrench--a good strip of his skin and fur had to go in that pull, but it couldn't be helped--he had broken the other's hold, leapt clear of the clinch, and was gone.

The otter was up before you could guess what had happened, and was drumming away on his heels; but she soon pulled up, realizing that a polecat may be slow in the books, but not so slow in real life, with her to a.s.sist speed. Anyway, she seemed slower; and, in any case, she could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of holes and cover he was sure to take to, like a fish to water. Moreover, she was spitting up blood, result of friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her throat, and felt more in need of the egg--which she had won, at any rate--than a wild-goose chase.

Like a thin, wavy line through the night, friend polecat betook himself to the sea-bank, to a hole in the sea-bank, to the very depths of that hole; and there, in the shape of two angrily smoldering, luminous...o...b.. s.h.i.+ning steadily through the pit-like dark, he stayed. Most of the time, I fancy, he used up in licking his wounds. They needed it, for, though clean, the punctures from the otter's canines had gone deep, and a red trail of drops marked the polecat's route to his lair--one of his lairs.

Not, be it noted, that he was entirely ignored. Blood-trails are always items of interest in the wild, especially in the dark hours while man sleeps. Thus there once came to the mouth of the hole scufflings, and the noise as of an eager, inquisitive crowd--rats, who hoped for a chance to get their own back on a detested foe. But one evil snarl from the wounded beast removed them, convinced that the time was not yet.

Once, also, something sniffed out of the stilly night, and that was a fox; but one snap from within, a perfectly abominable smell, and the narrowness of the accommodation proved too much for brer fox, and he, with an insolent c.o.c.k of the brush, retired.

Then, too, there was a rabbit, not looking where he was going, who got half-way down the burrow before he realized the awful truth, and went out backwards, like a cat with a salmon-tin on its head.

But along towards dawn there came an altogether different sort of sound, somehow--a sort of a little chuckling sound; and the polecat, answering it, came out. He looked rather less awful now than when he had gone in. A form was standing outside--a dark, low, long form, like himself; and, like himself, you could easily become aware of it without seeing it, even with your handkerchief to your nose.

It was his wife, smaller, but no less dangerous, than he. She was carrying an old hen-redshank in her jaws, its long beak and one of its wings clearly silhouetted against the moon. And apparently she would be very pleased if her husband would come out of the hole and make room for her to stuff the redshank into it.

Then, together, they moved at their indescribable, undulating gait--they looked like a snake between them in the moonlight--along the sea-bank, till they came, with caution and many clever tricks of vanis.h.i.+ng, in case anybody might be watching, to yet another burrow, screened completely and very neatly guarded by the splayed leaves of a bunch of frosted sea-holly.

Both beasts went into the burrow, at the end of which was a nest containing live things, which squirmed and made little, tiny, infant noises in the darkness. They were the polecats' children, four of them, all quite young, and all very hungry and very lively indeed; and they explained a good deal of the reason for the stores of food set by in other burrows in the "sea-wall."

But they did not explain quite all, for, unless Mrs. Polecat liked her dinner high--and there was nothing I could find in her methods to show that she did--or unless Mr. Polecat had got a craze for collecting specimens and eggs, or forgot where half of his trophies were hidden as a natural habit of absent-mindedness, one cannot quite see the reason for hiding so much so soon, before the young could feed upon the "specimens."

However, I suppose the two beasts knew their own business best. The old male polecat seemed to, anyway, for just as the first flicker of dawn was paling the eastern sky he went off down to the mist-hidden dike, and, in no more than ten short minutes, returned with an eel, protesting violently in that horrible way eels have, which he promptly proceeded to decapitate and eat.

The afternoon had still some little time to run, when the waving gra.s.s down the side of the sea-bank and the half of a glimpse of dull tawny gave away the male polecat leaving his "earth" for the war-path once more. Was he ever anything else than on the war-path if he moved abroad at all?

That, even from above, was, I swear, all the indication he gave of his exit. Now, although it is a rule in the wild that self-advertis.e.m.e.nt is most unhealthful, there may be times when a beast like the polecat may not advertise itself enough. And this was one of those times.