J. C. Tregarthen

“ CHAPTER VIII THE OTTER AND HIS MATE
Rather more than a year has passed since the hunt. The vegetation then in flower, after blooming again, has lost its glory, and is now withering and dying. In the marsh the reeds are sapless, the flags stained by decay, the tall-stemmed flowering plants shrivelled to skeletons, disarray and discoloration appear everywhere, save perhaps in the velvet spikes of the mace-reed, whose hue yet rivals in its rich umber the pelt of the otter curled up below them on the spot where he lay in the days of rebellious cubhood. But what a huge fellow he has grown! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The twice-hunted otter dreads that sound above all sounds save the cry of the hounds, and before it has died away she and the cubs are in full retreat to the holt in the salmon pool. Only at long intervals do they rise to vent before reaching the rapids, where they leave the water and gallop up the bank, as if fear itself were at their heels. ”

“ She could not find a hover quite to her liking, but in lack of a better, she chose a ledge where, in an angle of the stream that drained the bog, the bank furnished a screen from the biting wind which blew up the valley and soughed over the uplands. After enlarging the ledge into a shelf, she shaped the excavation for the nest, which she fashioned out of dead rushes and withered grasses, and which she lined with the softest products that Nature offered her—tattered reed-plumes and seed-down of the bulrush. ”

“ Then the morass and all the hills about it were bathed in the glow, and the swollen stream, visible over the edge of the nest, glistened like silver. Quick to accept Nature’s bounty for the winterlings, the otter, when satisfied that no eye observed her, took them between her lips, carried them from the gloomy hover, and laid them on a tussock which screened her where she crouched, ready to protect them. There the cubs stretched themselves and basked with quiet content in the health-giving rays. ”

“ At nightfall both otters, apparently on good terms, were fishing near the inflow, when the shrill summons of a female reached their ears and set them aflame with passion. They swam as fast as their legs could propel them to the spot whence the call proceeded, and as soon as the otter had landed and licked the face of the skittish little creature awaiting the rivals, he turned to face his enemy. Like two furies they fought in the shallows churned with their incessant movements. ”

“ They landed at the turn below the mussel-bed to quench their thirst, then took to the water again, and were soon busy disporting themselves in Deadman’s Pool. On leaving it, they moved forward, climbing every rock, and resting there as if they enjoyed the warmth till, two miles beyond the pool, they came to where the creek broadens between marshy flats given over to wild-fowl. As it was in this reach that the otter intended to hunt when the coming tide had brought up the fish that came there to feed, she and the cubs landed and played about on the bank to while away the time of waiting. ”

“ More than one otter, appalled by his great bulk and terrible jaws, had shrunk from tackling him: even the father of the cub was glad, after a tussle that convulsed the little bay, to reach the rocks and escape with his life. But famine had effected what no enemy could effect—a famine caused by the ravages of otter, of heron, of cormorant, of the pike themselves, reducing the fish one by one till only the monster of the reedy bay remained. Whilst strength lasted he made a daily circuit of his wasted realm for prey to satisfy his maddening hunger. ”

“ So the hours of darkness were spent, and when the grey light told of coming day otter and cubs slipped into the stream and drifted towards the mere. On reaching the choppy water they fell to swimming, turned up the sheltered creek, skirted the island where two of them had kennelled the day before, and landed near a bramble brake, in which they curled up side by side. The cubs soon slept, but the excitement of the journey to the salmon river kept the otter awake longing for dusk, so eager was she to cross the moors and reach the pools. ”

“ They ate three or four fish apiece before their hunger was satisfied, and then began chasing one another over the rocks, from which the sea stretched like a plain of beaten silver. Soon they returned along the overflow to the pond, where they gambolled as fearlessly as they had done in the creek and other lone spots in their wanderings.
To the surprise of the cubs, the taint of man on the path caused their mother no disquietude; not once did she stop her play to listen or peer into the bosky gloom about her. ”

“ The rapid pace at which the animals travelled soon brought them within sight of the low, thatched building beneath its sheltering oak, but as nothing stirred they passed close to the garden fence and into the gloom of the pines beyond.
A happier little band of nomads could not be found than the otter and her cubs, quite unsuspicious of danger, though they were running straight into its jaws. At a sudden turn of the mossy track where rocks contract the way they came face to face with Venom, the woodman’s terrier. ”

“ Yes, it is a man! He is clear of the rocks now, and is picking his way across the current. Now he has landed, and look, look how he hurries up the strand, and how suddenly he drops to the ground on the crest! Strange conduct in this lone place and at such an hour! He must be under the ban of his fellows, a fugitive, maybe, from hue and cry, and fearful of discovery.
Nothing of the kind. That man is Grylls the harbourer, from the deer forest; but otter, not stag, has drawn him here this morning, and eagerness to examine the ground below is the reason of his haste. ”

“ On, on the untiring creatures sped, more like agents of darkness executing some urgent commission than beasts of prey speeding to a new fishing-ground. Mile after mile of the desolate upland they traversed: at one spot skirting a cairn whence came that weirdest of all wild cries, the shrill chattering of badgers; at another, passing the only road over the moor, where they left their footprints between the fresh wheel-marks of the doctor’s trap. ”

“ Then the cubs hear it too: they begin to share their mother’s alarm and, when the swelling clamour tells of the close approach of their enemies, seek the inmost recess of their refuge. Soon the hounds enter the pool and cluster like maddened things about the holt. ‘A good solid mark,’ shouts the doctor to the squire. ‘He’s there right enough.’ The foremost hounds can see the otter where she stands hissing through her white teeth, but they cannot reach her. So the hounds are called off that a terrier may get at the quarry, and after a terrible fight he compels the otter to take to the water. ”

“ Watching his opportunity, the woodman managed to pull Vic out almost at once, and Venom after a while. Both were terribly cut up. The sight of their wounds angered the squire, who at once called out: ‘Now, men, build a dam, and look lively; that otter shan’t live another hour.’ All set to work. Except the whipper-in, who had as much as he could do to look after the hounds, every man lent a hand. Some brought big stones, others armfuls of heather, others stone-crop stripped from the rocks, whilst Geordie the gipsy, the parson, the miller and the water-bailiff constructed the dam. ”

“ Round and round the big pool swims the otter, rising now under the bank, now amongst the hounds, narrowly escaping their jaws. Time after time she returns to the cubs, but only to be ejected by one or other of the terriers. At last, after being badly shaken by the hounds, she lands, gallops round the line of men with the white terrier at her rudder, and gains the water beyond. At amazing speed she follows the winding reaches to the rapids, and even succeeds in gaining Longen Pool, famous in the annals of the Hunt. ”

“ Thus he lay and made his comments whilst the party approached Moor Pool, but no sooner did they reach the bank than his demeanour changed and he sprang to his feet as though an adder had stung him. And no wonder, for the hounds at once struck the line of the otter, and made down-river at full cry. ‘Well now, Grylls,’ said he, ‘is it go or stay? Why, stay, of coorse; sure as you’re alive they’ll be back again.’ So he stood watching and watching and watching till hounds and men became blurred by distance, and at last disappeared into the wood. ”

“ Indeed, they were yet two miles away when the ridges above them were touched by the risen sun. To add to their troubles a magpie espied them, and though they were strange to him as to the terrier, he knew they were nightlings with no right to be abroad after sunrise, and mobbed them as he would have mobbed a leash of foxes. Under the brambles and osmunda ferns they were hidden from the pest, but in the open he had them at his mercy and, now fluttering just beyond their reach, now hopping from branch to branch of rowan or alder or wild-cherry, he annoyed them with impunity. ”

“ Then the mother otter slept like the cubs.
The ravine was weird with the shades of night, raven and magpie were asleep, when the nomads left the cairn and took to the trail. Like three shadows they stole over the crest above and entered the covert. In the silence of that still, sultry night they might have been heard forcing a way where the furze was densest, and presently they emerged from the lower edge, and, traversing a strip of open ground where a rabbit was feeding, came to a stream. This they crossed by springing from rock to rock, the otter first and the male cub last. ”

“ To their delight, a big flat-fish lay at her feet, its white underside uppermost. The smell of the prey, strange though it was, so pleased them that their nostrils twitched with anticipation. Indeed, the flounder was an appetizing morsel for creatures sated with eels and trout, and soon all three were busy devouring it. They were not long over the feast, but they had scarcely finished when the grey light stealing across the creek drove them to a cave in the overgrown bank. ”

“ At dusk he foraged along-shore despite the heavy ground seas, and at peep of day returned to his old couch at the foot of the reeds.
To see him lying there no one would dream that he lived in fear of his life. His breathing is placid, his limbs are quiet; no whimper, telling of disturbing dreams, escapes his lips; the very lapdog on the hearth might be more troubled than he. Nor does he seem to be the ferocious beast he is till he raises his head and peers suspiciously through the stems; then the fierce, restless eyes proclaim him a savage and an outlaw as he scans bar and cliff and creek. ”

“ Soon he reached the boulder from which the harbourer had watched the hounds and, sighting the crevice at its base, swam through the narrow opening to the hollowed space within. Scarcely was he ensconced when he heard the cry of his pursuers, and a minute later the maddened creatures were roaring at the mouth of his retreat. Squire and followers came tearing down the hill, and when the whipper-in had succeeded in calling off the hounds, Venom, the terrier, was sent in to drive the otter out. ‘He’ll soon have un out,’ said a man in a blue guernsey who knew his worth. ”

“ At length he had had enough and, leaving the marsh, made for the river, which he followed mile after mile till he reached the morass and laid up in the hollow bank in which he was born.
Meanwhile otter-hunting had begun, and all the country-side over men were on the lookout for his tracks. Not since the mysterious disappearance of the bob-tailed fox had so keen an interest been taken in any wild creature. Through the winter he had been the topic of conversation in the chimney-corner of cotter and crofter, and a very frequent intruder on the thoughts of the squire. ”

“ But she has left a burning scent, and soon the cry of the pursuers warns her that her hopes are vain. Nevertheless, as she is very weary, and as the pool to which the hedge runs down offers no harbourage, she remains where she is. But though the hounds soon wind her, the denseness of the thicket hinders them from getting at her until the terriers force her to the river. In the shallow water every eye can mark her where she swims and note her shortening dives. The end is near. Presently Dosmary seizes her as she rises, and the pack worries her life out. ”

“ Nevertheless she persisted, till one night, on the bank of the deep pool below the rapids, the male cub took a trout from her mouth, and the next night, just before dawn, his sister did the same. Their aversion to solid food once overcome, they would chatter over the new diet as if to testify to the pleasure they found in the exercise of their newly acquired taste, or even hiss angrily when their savage passions were stirred by the wriggling or quivering of the fish in their grip. ”

“ If they draw the rapids against the stream they can hardly miss him. But will they? Apparently not—at least, not for the moment. They are going on, despite the near approach of day. How carefully they examine the hollow banks and recesses of the boulders, disdaining even the grilse they disturb, in their expectation of yet getting the salmon! Beneath the gloomy pines that form a vista towards the brightening east they swim, eager as ever.
But, clear of the trees, they all at once cease their quest and listen. Some suspicious sound downstream has alarmed them. ”

“ Had he seen an otter he would by this be crossing the moor to meet the squire and tell, instead of pacing to and fro waiting for the hounds and glancing down now and again towards the spot where he expects to see them. It is full day by this, and river and tributary stream stretch across the purple moorland like golden threads. ‘Grand mornin’. Ah! if we can only find!’ he sighed, as the uncertainty of the sport flashed across his mind. ‘If! But there, man, ’tes no use iffin’. ”

“ The incident troubled the otter so greatly that, resisting all their importunities, she never again exposed them to the risk of capture.
To break the monotony of the hover, the cubs, as their limbs grew stronger, would, in the intervals of sleep, clamber to the wide parapet of the nest and take note of the things that moved within their narrow field: of trembling grasses, of the bramble spray that moved to and fro in the current, of the reeds that nodded in the wind, and, above all, of the creatures that visited the stream to feed or quench their thirst. ”