The Way of the Wild Part 8

The tenth case doesn't matter, because the creature that discovers it usually dies. Moreover, there was no cover to move to, and cover is the cat's trump card.

Now, everything would have gone off all right if--well, if the cat hadn't been a cat, I suppose; that is, if he had been able to stop the ceaseless twitching of the black tip of his tail. Tiger-hunters know that twitching, and those who have stalked the lion will tell you of it, as also the sparrow on the garden wall, whose life may have been saved from somebody's pet "tabby" by that same twitching. It is a characteristic habit of the tribe, I take it.

The luminous ghost-thing was close now. Heaven knows whether it saw that twitching then! I think so. It stopped, anyway, and became a pillar of stone. The cat, almost under it, fairly pressed himself into the gra.s.s.

Then--whrrp!

Something shot through the air like a lance, and pinned that twitching tail-point to the ground. There had been no warning--nothing! Just that javelin from the ghost, and---the cat on his hindlegs, screaming like a stricken devil, clawing at the ghost, now revealed as a very big, long-legged bird which flapped. It flapped huge wings and danced a grotesque dance, and it smelt abominably, with the stench of ten fish-markets on a hot day.

Then at last, the cat clawing and yelling the whole time, the bird's slow brain seemed to realize the mistake. The javelin, which was its beak, was withdrawn from the protesting tail-tip hurriedly--to be driven through the cat's skull as a sheer act of necessary self-defense, I fancy. But the cat did not wait to see. Imagine the infamy, the absolute sacrilege, from a cat's point of view, of spitting a feline tail in that disgusting fashion. Why, if you only tread on one, you hear about it in five-tenths of the average second, and offend the supercilious owner for a month afterwards!

There was a vision, just a half-guessed vision, of our cat shooting straight upwards through the air, and outwards over the still waters of the dike; there was a number one splash that set the reflected stars dancing, and the water-voles ("rats," if you like) bolting to their holes; and there was the sighing "frou-frou-frou!" of great wings as the big bird rose and fled majestically. There was the sucking gurgle and drip-drip of a furred body leaving the water on the far side, eyes that glared more hate than pen can set down, and a deep, low, malignant feline curse. That cat had swum the rest of the way over the dike which he could not jump.

The bird was only a heron, and that does not sound much unless you are acquainted with the ways of the heron and all his beak implies. A heron is one of those birds that can fight at need, and--knows it.

Moreover, in his long beak, set on his steel-spring neck, he has a weapon of awful "piercefulness," and--knows that too. The bird is an example of armed defense.

This one had merely been fishing for eels in that pessimistic way peculiar to all fishermen, and seeing the tail-tip waving in the gra.s.s, and nothing else, had mistaken the same for his quarry. And this will be the easier to believe because we know, and probably the heron did also, that eels are given at times to overland journeys on secret errands of their own.

The cat crawled away down the dike in offended silence. He was wet, and the only cat I ever knew who did not seem to be scandalized past speech at the fact. Indeed, he went farther. He came upon a ripple and a dot, some fifty yards farther on, which to the initiated such as he, represented a water-vole ("rat," if you will) swimming.

Then, before you could take your pipe from your mouth to exclaim, the water-vole was not swimming. He was squealing in a most loud and public-spirited fashion from between Pharaoh's jaws, and it was the cat who was swimming. He had just taken a flying leap from the bank and landed full upon the dumbfounded water-vole--splash! Then he swam calmly ash.o.r.e and dined, all wet and cold. Now, what is one to say of such a cat?

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Landed full upon the dumbfounded water-vole--splash!"]

III

Long did the keepers, in Colonel Lymington's woods and along the hedges, search with dog and gun for Pharaoh, and many traps did they set. The dogs truly found a cat--two cats, and the guns stopped them, but one had a nice blue ribbon round his neck, and the other had kittens; the traps were found by one cat--and that was the pet of the colonel's lady--one stoat, one black "Pom"--and that was the idol of the parson's daughter--and one vixen--and she was buried secretly and at night--but Pharaoh remained where he had chosen to remain, and he remained also an enigma.

Then the colonel's rare birds began to evaporate in real earnest.

Hawkley's little efforts at depleting them were child's-play to those of Pharaoh that followed, although, of course, Pharaoh himself did not know, or care the twitch of a whisker, whether the birds he slew were rare or not.

Now, if there was one thing more than another about which the colonel prided himself in his bird sanctuary, it was the presence of the bittern. I don't know where the bittern came from, nor does the colonel. Perhaps the head-keeper knew. Bitterns migrate sometimes, but--well, that keeper was no fool, and knew his master's soft spot.

It was a night or two later that Pharaoh surmounted the limit, so to speak, and "sprung all mines in quick succession." He had been curled up all day in his furze fortress, that vast stretch of p.r.i.c.kly impenetrability which, even if a dog had been found with pluck enough to push through to its heart, would still, in its ma.s.sed and tangled boughs, have given a cat with Pharaoh's fighting prowess full chance to defy any dog.

He was beautifully oblivious of the stir his previous doings had kicked up, and of the winged words the colonel had used to the head-keeper; of the traps set all about, of the gins doubled and trebled in the wood and round the park, and of the under-keepers who, with guns and tempting baits, took up their positions to wait for him as night fell.

No one seemed to have suspected the furze a mile away, and still less the marsh and the coverless bleak sh.o.r.e of the estuary, as his home.

Indeed, no one looks for a cat on a wind-whipped marsh when woods are near at all. Yet this open, wet country seemed to be a peculiarly favorite hunting-ground of Pharaoh's.

It was a night of rain-squalls and moonlit streaks when Pharaoh, wandering devious among the reeds, first became aware of the bittern, in the shape of reptilian green eyes steadily regarding him from the piebald shadows. Possibly the cat's whiskers first hinted at some new presence by reason of the "ancient and fish-like smell" which pervaded this precise reed jungle.

Pharaoh stopped dead. Pharaoh, with cruel, thin ears pressed back, sank like a wraith into the soft ground. Pharaoh ceased to be even a grayish-yellow, smoky something, and became nothing but eyes--eyes floating and wicked. A domestic cat, after one frozen interval, would have crept away from the foe it could not fathom, but Pharaoh had other blood in his veins.

To begin with, he was wondering what manner of beast the owner of those saurian-like orbs might be. To go on with, he was hungry, and--smelt fish. But though he was looking full at the big bird, he could not see it, which is the bittern's own private little bit of magic.

Nature has given him a coat just like a bunch of dried reeds and the shadows between, and he does the rest by standing with his bead stuck straight up and as still as a bra.s.s idol. Result--invisibility.

None know how long those two sought to "outfreeze" the "freezer," while the rain-showers came up and pa.s.sed hissing, and the moon played at hide-and-seek. None knew when Pharaoh, flat as a snake, first began that deadly, silent circling, which was but acting in miniature the ways of the lion. None knew, either, at what point of bittern first begun to sink and sink, till he crouched, and puffed, his neck curved on his back like a spring ready set, his beak, like a sharpened a.s.segai, upright.

Only the short-eared owl, with his wonderful eyes, beheld Pharaoh make his final rush; watched that living spring _sprung_ quick as light, shooting out straight at the cat's glaring eyes, and saw--greatest miracle of all the lot--Pharaoh dodge his head aside in the twentieth of a second, and blink, letting the blow that spelt death whiz by.

And only those same owl's ears--sharpest of all the ears of the wild--heard the diabolical yell of Pharaoh as the long, sharp beak pierced through the loose skin of his shoulders, and, thanks to that same looseness, came out again an inch or two farther on, transfixing him; or listened to the devilish noise of the "worry," as the cat turned in agony on himself and buried his fangs where he could behind those expressionless green reptilian eyes; or caught the stupendous flurry and whirl of wings and fur and gripping claws and scaly legs, as a cloud put out the moon and darkness fell with silence, like the falling curtain that ends a play.

The very last pale rays of a watery setting sun slid bar-like through the cottage window, and fell, twirling, aslant the floor.

A late spider had spun a web across the fireplace, and the one last fly that always lingers sat in the sunbeam. It was Hawkley's cottage, dismantled and derelict.

Something like a furry round ha.s.sock, lying motionless in a far corner, moved at the sound of rain, and lifted a round head with round eyes that glared with so terrible an expression that one caught one's breath. There was blood--dried blood--by the furry shape, and drops of dried blood across the floor from the window in the next room, that it had been n.o.body's business to shut.

The day went out in gloom and howling rain-rushes. Darkness took possession of the room. And--_the gate clicked_.

Truly, it might only have been the wind, but--Pharaoh was on his feet in a flash, growling, and there was a glint of green-yellow light as his eyes whipped round.

Followed a pause. Then, in a lull, once, twice, the unmistakable crunch of a shod foot on gravel.

Another pause. Pharaoh was crouching close now, trembling from head to foot.

"Pharaoh! Pharaoh! Pharaoh, old cat, are--are you in there?"

The voice, strained and husky, came in at the open window. In the last lingering afterglow of dying day, a face, haggard and set, showed there, framed in the lead cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Phar---- Ah!"

Pharaoh was up. Pharaoh had given a strange, coaxing little cry, such as a she-cat gives to her kittens. Pharaoh, lame and stiff, but with tail straight as a poker, was running to the window in the next room, was up on the sill, was rubbing against and caressing the haggard face like a mad thing.

There was a long, tense pause, broken only by a continuous purring.

Then the creaking sound as of the lid of a wicker basket being opened.

The purring ceased. The creaking came again, as if the lid were being shut. There came the crunch once more of stealthy shod feet on gravel, the click of the gate, and--silence!

Hawkley had come for, and found, his cat.

VI

THE CRIPPLE

It was gradually getting colder and colder as he flew, till at last, in a wonderful, luminous, clear, moonlit sunset, when day pa.s.sed, lingering almost imperceptibly, into night, the wind fixed in the north, and a hard white frost shone on the glistening roofs--far, far below.

Up there, at the three-thousand or four-thousand feet level, where he was flying, the air was as clear and sparkling as champagne, and as still as the tomb. If he had been pa.s.sing over the moon instead of over the earth, the effect would have been something like it, perhaps.

He was only a thrush, _t.u.r.dus philomelus_ the songster, but big and dull and dark for his kind, and he had come from--well, behind him, all shimmering and restless in the moonlight, like a fountain-basin full of quicksilver, lay the North Sea; ahead and beneath lay England; and across that sea, three hundred miles, as I count it, at the very least, to the lands of melting snow, he was going when late cold weather had caught him and warned him to come back. And alone? No, sirs, not quite. Ahead, just visible, blurredly--a little phantom form rose and fell on the magic air; behind, another; on his right, a third--all thrushes, flying steadily westward in silence; and there may have been a few more that could not be seen, or there may not.

His crop, as were the crops of the others, was perfectly empty.