Stalking

“ It is sometimes difficult to be sure what is the result of one’s shot, and it is a great assistance to have the opinion of an experienced stalker whether he has his glass on the beast at the moment the shot is fired or not.
I was coming back one evening after a delightful day’s stalking in Glen Carron, when the stalker Macdonell said, “One moment, sir, there is a stag down there just gone out of sight. If you can shoot off your knee downhill you will have a chance directly.” ”

“ Such are the words, in his book Wild Sport with Gun, Rifle, and Salmon Rod, of Mr. Gilfrid [198] W. Hartley, a stalker of great experience, and the author of some most fascinating reminiscences on stalking.
Every good sportsman is, of course, greatly distressed if he has the misfortune to wound a stag without being able to kill him. No matter what care may be exercised, it is impossible, even for the best of shots who has been accustomed to stalk for many years, not to experience some time or other a catastrophe of this kind. ”

“ In stalking alone, there is this advantage, that one can always secure the best position in which to shoot, whereas if one is accompanied by a stalker, he sometimes takes that position himself and it is not easy to get him to move on, or, as is more often the case, there is no time for him to do so. ”

“ Then they were always showing their cleverness as hunters by stalking people—crawling up to them through the long grass, taking advantage of every irregularity of the ground or shrub to get nearer, and grinning with delight on seeing the surprise and fear of the person stalked. ”

“ Nevertheless, she stood rooted to her covert behind the window, living that terrible walk with him to the uttermost thought of home, sister, mother, sweetheart, wife, life itself—every thought that could come to a man stalking to meet his executioners. ”

“ If hunters think while on a stalk—which matter I doubt considerably—they think about the lay of the land, or the aspect of it, of the habits and possibilities of their quarry, of their labor and chances, and particularly of the vague unrealized sense of comfort, pleasure, satisfaction in the moment. Tight muscles, alert eyes, stealthy steps, stalk and run and crawl and climb, breathlessness, a hot close-pressed chest, thrill on thrill, and sheer bursting riot of nerve and vein—these are the ordinary sensations and actions of a hunter. ”

“ Bursting out from his cover with a hair-raising and blood-curdling yell, making at the same time a high jump and wildly waving his arms, the stalker rushed into the midst of the mob, catching, indeed, a young one by the leg, and generally making such a hullabaloo as to scare them into instant flight. ”

“ And there is yet another argument in favour of early stalks, altogether apart from their advantages from a stalker’s point of view, and this is that for a few hours after dawn Nature is at her very best. The air is deliciously cool, and as it is clear, excepting at certain seasons and at high altitudes, everything stands out sharp and well defined, and all the surrounding scenery is seen to the best advantage. If the sportsman is, as he ought to be, anything of a naturalist, he will see all nature under the most interesting aspects. ”

“ If you are not a hunter, perhaps you will not understand the intense and passionate ascendancy that a stalk may gain over a man's will. He begins in a spirit of sport, it may be, thinking, "I shall pit my wits against this stag—or bison, or cave cat—and see if I can out-think him." ”

“ What with the sun pouring down on the back and nape of the neck, and the scorching heat of the ground striking upwards into the face, together with the burnt grass dust, &c., which get into the mouth and nostrils, and nearly choke him in his desperate efforts to prevent coughing or sneezing, such a stalk requires not only great physical endurance, but the most stoical patience on the part of the stalker. ”

“ Thus the silent stalker pursued his way until he knew that he was but a short distance behind his quarry when there suddenly broke upon his ears the horrid snarling and growling of an enraged beast just ahead of him. ”

“ Often I wonder how a woman who is tired if she walks a mile in the open air can walk ten in a close, heated department store without fatigue. As I walk in the street Anastasia lags hopelessly in the rear, but the moment we enter the Louvre or the Bon Marché there is a mighty change. The enthusiasm of the bargain stalker gleams in her eyes; she becomes alert, a creature of fierce and predatory activity. It is I who am helpless now, I who try in vain to keep up, as in some marvellous way she threads in and out that packed mob of sister bargain-stalkers. ”

“ For six days, in spite of my exaggerated fear of scandal, I have prowled like a ghost before my own house, lurking behind trees, watching my own door like a ten-dollar-a-day detective. Dodging the policeman who would know me, I have kept my eyes for hours on the dim light that sometimes burns in my wife’s room, and when I have seen the shadow of some one passing and repassing behind the drawn shade, I have felt my heart in my throat, and have scarcely been able to restrain myself from calling out into the night air, “Julianna! Julianna!” ”

“ The stalker, being possibly a long way off at the time of sighting it, and unable to see whether there is a herd lying concealed near it in the grass or not, may miss a good chance at a beast with a first-rate head through a pardonable dislike to going a long way out of his track on an off-chance. But when feeding the stalker has a good chance of examining with his binoculars each individual beast in the herd, he can compare one with another, and mark those with the best heads. ”

“ In the words of the old stalker, "Above all things, let not the devil tempt you to trifle with a deer's nose: you may cross his sight, walk up to him in a gray coat, or, if standing against a tree or rock near your own colour, wait till he walks up to you; but you cannot cross his nose, even at an incredible distance, but he will feel the tainted air. Colours or forms may be deceptive or alike; there are gray, brown, and green rocks and stocks as well as men, and all these may be equivocal; but there is but one scent of man, and that he never doubts or mistakes ”

“ Even should the herd be lying rather scattered about, with their heads facing in all directions, they do not appear to be so keen at detecting the approach of the stalker as in the morning. Possibly they are either dozing or their senses are dulled from general lassitude, and they rely mostly on the sentinel; or it may be that the haze, which is thicker close to the ground, affects their vision in the same way as it does that of the stalker. ”

“ I turned round to look for the stalk, and I found it immediately under the bush, freshly broken, between two other roses which remained on the branch, and I returned home then, with a much disturbed mind; for I am certain now, as certain as I am of the alternation of day and night, that there exists close to me an invisible [Pg 106] being that lives on milk and on water, which can touch objects, take them and change their places; which is, consequently, endowed with a material nature, although it is impossible to our senses, and which lives as I do, under my roof.... ”

“ Did you hear anything?"
"Only the watch ticking in her hand. First I thought it was her heart beating."
"No, I mean did you hear anything in the night?" went on the detective. "Any queer noise? It's mighty funny if there was murder done and no robbery. But of course she might have heard a noise if you didn't, and she might have come down to find out what it was about. She might have caught a burglar at work, and he may have killed her to get away. But if it was a burglar it's funny you didn't hear any noise—like a fall, or something. How about that, Mr. Darcy?" ”

“ Trevor looked at it with astonishment, and Peter walked round and round it till, stopping short near the builder, he remarked—
“Well, Master Stalker, that’s a rum house! I’ll be bold to ask, are we to be shut up all winter, so that we don’t want a door to go in and out at? And is it so dark that we don’t want a window to see out of?”
“Wait a bit, and you’ll see what we’ll do, lad,” answered Stalker, laughing. “Light enough, day and night, when the snow’s on the ground; and you’ll be as much out of doors as in doors when the sky’s clear.” ”

“ From the swell mob, we diverge to the kindred topics of cracksmen, fences, public-house dancers, area-sneaks, designing young people who go out 'gonophing,' and other 'schools.' It is observable throughout these revelations, that Inspector Stalker, the Scotchman, is always exact and statistical, and that when any question of figures arises, everybody as by one consent pauses, and looks to him. ”

“ I bent myself to the conception of a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his ingenuity and resources, keeping his victim in a state of the most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel, incessantly to alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval of peace and security. ”

“ The dangers besetting the path of the lonely stalker have from time immemorial lent themselves in a particularly tempting manner to exaggeration, so that most accounts of the sport are not only given at third hand, but are overladen with romantic nonsense. ”

“ Two great ganders meeting face to face hissed a challenge. Here and these a big bird spread its great wings tentatively, and folded them again with distinct reluctance. The cycle was all but
complete. The instinct that in the beginning had bid them south, that had for this brief time sent them to earth, was calling again. In sympathy the restless head of the sentinel went still. Another minute, another second even, perhaps, and they would be gone. Through the filmy screen the stalker saw it all, read the meaning. ”

“ It was the sort of a room any girl would love to lie in bed and study. But I had other things to do, I remembered, besides wriggling my toes over a nest which had been feathered for some other and some much luckier woman. I was only an intruder there, a usurper whose kingdom of grandeur might turn topsy-turvy at the first touch of a bell or the unannounced opening of a door. ”

“ Donnely, rumors had spread all over the world. There were supposed to be men who could levitate—fly through the air at will. Others could walk through walls, and still others could make themselves invisible. The horrible monsters that were supposed to be walking the Earth were legion.
Actually, only one type of supernormal psychodeviant had been found—the telepath, the mindreader who could probe into the mental processes of others. Worse than that, the telepath could project his own thoughts into the mind of another, so that the victim supposed that the thoughts were his own. ”

“ Before the hand of the detective could be raised to stay her, the frightened creature had rushed down the stairs, through the alley and out into the street, causing the air to ring with her cries of murder and her shouts for the police.
"It's the woman down stairs," said Slattery aghast. "Sure, an' it's the whole worruld we'll have in to join us now." ”

“ It was the only one of the sort in existence at the time, and the wires at the side would at once suffice to identify it and to arouse the suspicion even of an English policeman. I paused for a moment behind a thick clump of lilacs and tried to pull out the incriminating negatives. Oh, Una, I did it for your sake; but there, terrified and trembling, in hiding behind the bushes, and in danger of my life, with that still more unspeakable danger for yours haunting me always like a nightmare, can you wonder that for the moment I almost felt myself a murderer? ”

“ I cannot give you any exact idea of that abominable watch in such gruesome company—the murderer and his victim. I sat for more than an hour with my eyes open upon that darkness, listening, straining, attentive to every interruption of the quiet. The living had sunk into the silence which the dead brought, and at first I feared that he had escaped. ”

“ But I have not a bit of such folly in my composition. Living hands set up the type and printed the words which gave me so deathly a shock; and hands, with a real purpose in them, cut it from the paper and pinned it to my cushion for me to see when I woke on that fatal morning. But whose hands? That is what I want you to discover."
I had caught the fever of her suspicions long before this and now felt justified in showing my interest.
"First, let me ask," said I, "who has access to your rooms besides your maid?"
"No one; absolutely no one."
"And what of her?"
"She is innocence herself. ”

“ She learned to stalk, to obliterate herself behind seemingly inadequate cover, to crawl almost without action visible to the eye, and her instinct for choosing the moment for the final fatal rush was not bettered even in the older dog. ”

“ These footsteps sounded in my ears soft, steady and deliberate, but it was not until I was conscious that they had passed and repassed me several times that I looked round. I had feared to recognise a policeman, but the first glance relieved me of that terror, A man moved by, wrapped in a thick ulster, and paid no heed to me. Once more I turned my eyes to the window, and once again the footsteps approached. This time I turned about almost unconsciously, and my gaze met his. I seemed to catch something significant in those steady, downcast eyes, and all of a sudden fell upon me a great fear. ”