Clive Phillipps-Wolley

“ The rabbit and the weasel are still restlessly wandering about as usual, but both have changed their coats, and assumed a white covering to match the snows amongst which they live. Almost everything sleeps: trees in their robes of snow, the bear in his cave, the streams in their bonds of ice; even the winds are still. Nothing stirs.
If you have ever made a long walk at night by yourself over some lonely road or moor you may know that feeling which grows upon you, that some one is following you, that you can hear other footsteps than your own behind you. ”

“ Now and again the trail rose or fell so much that it seemed to Ned as if he had passed from one season of flowers to another. Down by the lake, where the pack animals splashed along the bed of a little mountain stream, the first wild rose was opening, a mere speck of pink in the cool darkness made by the overhanging bushes. Here by the lake side, too, were numerous butterflies—great yellow and black "swallow tails," hovering in small clouds over the damp stones, or Camberwell beauties in royal purple, floating through sun and shadow on wings as graceful in flight as they were rich in colour. ”

“ The silence is one moment intense; then, before you have time to blink, the rush of wings is upon you and past you, and the birds are rattling and plopping down into the dark little forest pools, in the soft mossy places, or, best of all, amongst the young wheat of the luckless Persian. What a merry chuckling they make as every fresh flight comes in from its day-dreams and play on the sea. Each batch of new comers takes at least ten minutes to publish its budget of news and arrange for its places at supper. ”

“ It is most amusing to watch a young stag calling, the way he swaggers before his lady-love, tearing up the turf with feet and horns as if nothing could drive him from her, till his challenge is answered by a deeper note, when the youngster curls up at once, flees for his life to the thickest scrub he can find half a mile away and cowers among the bushes, while his mate in the most matter-of-fact way at once attaches herself to his lordly rival, who comes swaggering easily along the hillside with the sunbeams glancing from the burnished points of his glorious antlers. ”

“ Looking up they saw the Indians sullenly and in silence lift their hands above their heads, red statues of wrath glaring fiercely but helplessly at a tall, rigid figure in the moonlight, standing between them and their rifles, its right arm raised, its vigilant eyes noting their every breath, and in its ready right hand a revolver, on which the moonlight rested cold and chill. That little weapon held the lives of six men. If one dared to move, that one died before he could draw another breath. They knew that. At ten yards old Dick Wharton could not miss. ”

“ But when the sun went, everything changed. A great gloom fell like a pall upon man and nature: the glitter which made a gem of every lakelet was gone, and the swamps, which had looked like the homes of an ideal Father Christmas, relapsed into dim shadowy places over whose soft floors murder might creep unheard, whilst the balsam pines stood rigid and black, like hearse plumes against the evening sky.
"Ned, we can't get out of this confounded mountain to-night, can we?" asked Chance.
"No, old man, I don't think we can," replied Ned, straining his eyes along the trail, which still led upwards. ”

“ Even the sea is a noisy babbler compared to the depths of a forest at night. What a glorious moon that was that gleamed down through the network of creepers and wild vine above, throwing long shadows on the grassy opening below. But how slowly the moments pass! Is it possible I have only been here a quarter of an hour? I move restlessly, though silently, on my perch, and then the intense cold which is numbing my right leg calls for attention. ”

“ As long as all goes well, the quiet night betrays the bull’s every movement to the hidden man, almost as clearly as if the hunter could watch the whole play with his naked eyes. Now the bull comes crashing up from the swamp through the alder-bushes, now he is standing listening half in doubt as to whether to come on or go back, but the half-breed is prepared for the emergency. Good as he is, he dare not try a call at such close quarters, but he strikes the horn against the scrub and the bull comes on again, thinking that he has heard the rattle of his enemy’s weapons. ”

“ A tiger’s charge is an undignified display of arms, legs, and spluttering; the bison rushes blunderingly upon his foe; the bear’s attack is despicable; but the wild elephant’s onslaught is as dignified as it seems overwhelming; and a large tusker’s charge, when he has had sufficient distance to get into full swing, can only be compared to the steady and rapid advance of an engine on a line of rail. With all this, the sportsman who understands his game knows that there is a natural timidity in the elephant which often plays him tricks at the last moment. ”

“ Though he could kill him, Cruickshank dared not leave those death-sharpened features staring up to heaven appealing for vengeance against the murderer, so he had seized the corpse by its wrists and dragged it away from the camp-fire, away to where the dark balsams threw their heaviest shadows, and there left it, its arms stretched out stiff and rigid for the snows to cover and hide until it should melt away into the earth whence it came.
And what was Corbett to do? Men do not weep for men—their grief lies too deep for that—and, moreover, there is nothing practical in tears. ”

“ The weight of our rifles has doubled; never before were our coats so thick, never before did an old mossy trunk look so irresistibly tempting; and take it all in all, we begin to think a cigarette and castle-building, with the buzz of the woodland life in our ears and the languor of spring in our blood, would be infinitely better than this ceaseless toil for a boar who as little cares probably to be roused from his deep dreams as we care to rouse him. ”

“ In another minute Nares had the boy by the hand, the weary night-watch was over, and a match inserted amongst the twigs sent up a bright flame as cheering as the voice of his friends. Having partially thawed, and eaten as much as he could, Snap told Nares and his two companions what he had just seen, and as morning was just breaking, and active exercise seemed the boy's best chance of ever getting warm again, the four once more took up the trail.
Stooping down over the tracks made by the maniac as he crawled into the scrub, Nares uttered an ejaculation of horror. ”

“ Finally the ladder of benches is lost in the forest, which goes climbing away uphill in resolute fashion until towards nightfall the hunter reaches the land of stone-slides and burnt timber, and passing through that comes out upon the edge of the sheep downs, where the stream becomes no more than a succession of small pools amongst the moss, and the only trees still left are dwarfed, stunted, and twisted into all manner of forms by the violence of the mountain winds. If the sun has left the landscape when the hunter first sees it, the effect is weird and cheerless. ”

“ As the evening closes in over these wild waste lands, a stillness and peace seem to come with it of which one has no knowledge in the towns. The piping of the quails, the long soft wail of the coolik (curlew) , and even the notes of the German hunting horn on the other droshky far in front, all seem to make fitting music for the hour and scene; and as the stars begin to shine out from a sky of infinite depth and metallic blueness, the oojai domoi (home already) is spoken not without an accent of regret, though limbs are tired and steppe roads rough. ”

“ After all, in big game hunting half the charm lies in the mystery of the dark silent forests and the mist-hidden mountain peaks. Once well away from the haunts of men, you are in a land of romance, and if you do not actually believe in the eternal bird who broods upon Elbruz, at the sound of whose voice the forest songsters become dumb, and the beasts tremble in their lairs; if you don’t believe, as the natives do, that the tempests are raised by the flapping of her hoary wings; if you scout the camp-fire stories of the tiny race seen riding at night upon the grey steppe hares ”

“ After the gloom of the northern forests, the silence of the pack-trail, and the monotony of forced marches, they were ready to welcome any light however garish, any revelry however mad it might be. Life and light and noise were what both hankered after as a relief from the silence and solitude of the last few days, and it is this natural craving for change in the minds of men who have been too much alone, which accounts for half the wild revels of the frontier towns. ”

“ Now every high head was levelled, every tall grey spire laid low. Like a wheatfield beaten down in autumn lay the burnt forest, but, unlike that, no sun could ever raise it up again. When years should have passed and the dead trees returned to earth, another forest would spring up where the pines had stood—not a forest of bright larch and tall pines, but, oddly enough, a forest utterly alien to the one which had so long covered the ground. ”

“ Your road may lie through dense green timber at one moment, through half-lit mossy glades at another, and the next through hollows full of burnt timber, amongst which the elk tracks are thick, and the pink fire-flower blooms; but it is always uphill work, and almost always in places where still hunting is impossible. Now and again there is something to cheer you up and encourage you to make fresh exertions. Now it is a great track like a deer’s, but larger and blunter; now it is the stem of a young quaking asp with its bark hanging in ribbons, which makes your heart beat quicker ”

“ And so, with here and there a glimpse of the private life of its denizens, the long night in the forest passes away, growing colder and colder till near the dawn.
At last there is a sound that startles the whole neighbourhood, and the rustling of retreating feet tells plainly that, though we saw them not, every shadow had its tenant. A crashing of boughs, and a firm, soft tread comes direct to my hiding-place; and with straining eyes I watch, until the outline of the great beast shall slowly emerge from the shadow. ”

“ By the time you have reached the vicinity of the deer, the rays of the rising sun are tipping with a rosy tinge the high snow-clad peaks which form your horizon overhead, and the time when ‘shooting light’ will enable you to finger your trigger is near at hand. If the clearing on which the deer are disporting themselves—as yet only faintly outlined forms—is a large one, you will have more difficulty in getting close to your quarry than if it happens to be merely a glade or park-like opening in the forest. ”

“ The most typical beast of his class was one Job, a parti-coloured brute (or pinto as they call them in British Columbia) , with one eye brown and the other blue, and a nose of the brightest pink, as if he suffered from a chronic cold and a rough pocket-handkerchief. Job's bones stared at you through his skin, his underlip protruded and hung down, giving him an air of the most abject misery, and even a Yorkshire horse-dealer could not have found a good point to descant upon from his small weak quarters to his ill-shaped shoulder. ”

“ It was not a wise thing to do, for if anything will encourage a wild beast to attack, it is the appearance of flight in a man. And so it was in this case. As Snap gained the open he looked back, and as he did so, saw the long snake-like figure of the mountain lion come in long bounds across the snow.
As the boy faced about, the great reddish brute paused for a moment, crouching, its belly almost on the snow, for the last rush; its ears flattened back, its yellow eyes ablaze with murder, and its white fangs gleaming in the starlight. ”

“ This is the love song of the great bull, and for the moment he is careless of rustling leaves and snapped twigs, and, being in love, is as great a fool as a biped under similar circumstances. Nor is love the bull elk’s only excuse for imprudence just now. In summer the great woods are still, but for the hum of insect life; in winter they are still as death; but now, in late autumn, they are full of sounds. Winter is coming, and everything that has breath is busy laying in stores for the approaching snow-time. All day long there is a rattle among the brush as creatures bustle through it ”