with the putting aside of the lantern that had lit his way through the winter’s night andrew’s thoughts turned to the otter. the mystery surrounding the ways of this wild creature drew him to it as buried treasure attracts the spade. “ah, the varmint!” he used to say, “theere’s no gettin’ to the bottom of un, he’s thet deep and artful. the fox valies hes broosh, but he’s reckless, i tell ee, compared along wi’ the otter. night and day, the restless varmint’s got a danger signal afore hes eyes.”
the earthstopper’s words convey some idea of the subtle and wary habits of this nomad of our fauna, which conceals its existence so well that its presence generally escapes observation in districts where it is not hunted.
this is partly due to its having no conspicuous holts like the fox or badger, being content in its wanderings with such lodgings as stone drains, hollow river banks and marshy hovers, all which are as well known to the tribe of otters frequenting a district as wayside camping-grounds are to the gipsies.
in west cornwall, where the sources of the streams are but four or five miles from the sea, the otters’ quarters by day are, for the most part, crevices and caverns in those mighty granite cliffs that keep watch and ward over the atlantic.
thence it sallies out when the twilight of its holt deepens into darkness, to raid the trout, and fearful of couching inland, rarely fails to steal back to its stronghold with the last shades of night, vanishing from moorland and coombe like a spectre before the dawn.
tactics of this kind, well devised though they are for the creature’s safety, are fatal to sport; and as the meet at the lake drew near, andrew kept turning over in his mind how he could circumvent them.
to induce an otter to lie up near this favourite fishing-ground, sir bevil, who was a keen otter-hunter, gave orders that, to keep the lake quiet, no one but the earthstopper was to go near it.
he, however, might have been seen there once soon after daybreak, stealing noiselessly round the margin as if he feared to awaken the spirit of the place, bending over the sand of the little bays and the skirts of the marshy ground to find track of the game. years of such work and the love for his craft had so sharpened his keen, quick eyes that the faintest trace of bird or beast could hardly escape their restless glance. not, however, until he had made his way round the creeks and crept under the rhododendrons fringing the bank, did he light on the object of his quest.
the footprints were clearly marked on the bare ground beneath the low branches, and impressed the earthstopper as he stooped to examine them in the sombre light, not so much by their unusual size as by a defect in one of the prints, showing that the middle claw of one forefoot was missing. this would make it easy for him to identify the track and so aid him in finding out whether the otter had gone down the coombe to the sea.
few sportsmen looking down at the lake, in its setting of wild hills, would dream that the poacher, after its night’s work, would trouble to seek the shelter of some distant sea-cave rather than lie up in the snug reedy hovers skirting the creeks.
tol pedn penwith. [face page 38.
but the earthstopper knew better. too often had he seen the hounds follow the trail of an otter down to the edge of the tide, to feel sanguine that it harboured near the lake. already, indeed, he was fearing, as he forced his way back through the wild luxuriant growth, that it had returned to the cliffs.
how those cliffs haunted him! did he catch sight of an otter’s seal shortly before a meet, as surely would the picture of the great granite walls with their impregnable fissures and caverns obtrude as it did then.
leaving the lake, he followed its overflow down the valley, examining the banks of the stream carefully, yet dreading to come across a trace of the beast. you would have thought he had caught sight of an adder, had you seen him start back when he found the downward track in the low-lying plantation under castle horneck. it was on the bank just above a high waterfall which it would seem had caused the creature to land, but from there to the beach no trace could he find, though he spent hours in the search. it was possible, he thought, that to conceal its line of retreat, the wily creature might have gone down to the sea along the bed of the stream. this view would perhaps have gained on him, but that in its lowest reach the sluggish water nearly circles round a meadow, and the otter must have taken, as is its wont, the short cut across the neck of the bend, and in so doing must have left its tracks in the marshy ground there.
another solution occurred to him. it was by no means improbable that the creature was laid up in the plantation; for not only does human foot seldom disturb the sylvan quiet there, but in an angle of the stream, just below the waterfall, under a tall elm there is as inviting a hover as nature’s sappers can tempt the eye of otter with.
floods have bared the gnarled and twisted roots and hollowed out the ground behind them, so that the backwater on the edge of the swirling stream extends far under the bank, and is lost in the gloom it casts. it was almost by chance that he discovered, a few days before the meet, traces of the otter, that left no doubt as to its line of retreat. he was standing in the plantation at the time, aglow with excitement from having seen the fresh seal of an otter a little way above in lezingey croft, and debating with himself whether he should again follow the stream to the sea, when his eye fell on some moist marks that were fast drying and only visible in a certain light, on a flat rock half hidden by creepers. faintest indication though it was, it furnished a clue to the line taken by an otter, and though there was no trace of footprints in the gap in the boundary wall above, the earthstopper felt sure that the poacher had within the hour passed up the hill on its way to the newlyn stream which flows down the adjacent valley.
thither he went at once, and after a long, fruitless search began to think, though against his better judgment, that the otter, if it had reached that stream, must have gone up the water towards buryas and not down towards the sea.
fortunately he persevered, and there just below a sudden bend, on a deposit of silt, was the cleanly-cut footprint, showing the defect he had first noticed under the bushes at the head of the lake. before him was convincing evidence of the difficulty of tracking the creature he was pitting his brains against, for its path on leaving the shelter of an overgrown ditch lay among some wild iris whose leaves met above, screening all the footprints but the solitary one on the mud. this would have been washed out had the mills up the valley been thus early at work, and even as it was, a tiny wave from time to time lapped the silt as if striving to erase the tell-tale print. holding back the flags to get a clear view, the earthstopper gazed long at the beaten path, heedless of the brambles that tore his fingers, or of the stream that swirled around his feet.
“the auld game es et, maister sloper? laast night a robbin’ the trout, thes mornin’ curled up saafe and sound in the cleeves of the rocks. ah, you rascal, ef et keeps me up all night, i’ll be even wyee yit.”
on his way home andrew called at the castle to report to sir bevil what he had seen, and to tell him what he had made up his mind to do, namely, to try and prevent the otter returning to the cliffs.
“i leave the matter in your hands, andrew,” said the squire, “my only fear is that if it comes up, and the chances are that it won’t, it may wind you in your hiding-place and be scared back. however, you know best about that. you won’t go over the ground again, i suppose?”
“no, sir, i shudden wonder ef i’ve bin wance too often as et es; but i couldn’t keep away.”
“is it the seal of a good otter?”
“the biggest i ever seed.”
“sorry to hear he’s been in a trap; you’ve no idea, i suppose.”
“noane at all, sir.”
all the way across the heather to his cottage, andrew thought of what the squire had said, but reflection did not shake the confidence he felt in his plan. more than once, when he had lain hidden on the bank of the stream, an otter had swum past within a few feet of him without betraying the least alarm. of course, he had kept as still as death. almost in the twinkling of an eye the earthstopper can become as rigid as a rock, and so disarm the suspicion of the shyest of wild creatures, provided they don’t get wind of him. he is in sight of his cottage now, but he is still defending his plan against the squire.
“well, ’spose the wust, say eh is skeared, what do it matter? hee’d be back in they theere cliffs long afore the hounds could come anist un, an’ i’ll warn ee, with a bellyful of the squire’s trout.”
rightly or wrongly, he determined to try to head the otter back, and even first to lie in ambush and see it pass on its way to the lake. but where?
it was this he was considering as he sat smoking his pipe over a glass of beer in the parlour of the “one and all,” the morning before the meet. save for vennie, who was curled up under the window seat, he was all alone. not that “maddern” men don’t like a glass of beer, but the leisure hours of an earthstopper are not those of ordinary toilers; so that he had nothing to break in on his thoughts but the tinkle of the blacksmith’s anvil, and the clear tenor voice of the parson who was trying over some chants in his study behind the shrubbery. sitting there, the earthstopper could see, as though it lay spread before him, the tranquil lake, its tiny bays and miniature headlands, the silver thread of the stream as it flows through croft, woodland, orchard and meadow on its way to the sea, and every overhanging tree and bordering bush.
what memories intruded on his thoughts as he searched the banks for an ambush! how vivid were those of long ago!
in a patch of furze near the stepping-stones he had found a long-tailed tit’s nest when he was a lad; in the dark pool under the bridge a big trout had carried away his hook and two strands of new gut; under the spray from the water falling from the wheel, during the great flood, he had caught his only salmon peal; between the apple blossoms that nearly kissed across the mill stream his young eyes had first followed the flight of a kingfisher.
skipping the rising ground between the coombes, he lit on the track on the silt, and instantly he reproached himself, as he had done again and again, for having, in a moment of excitement, held the leaves of the iris and tainted them with human scent.
lamorna mill. [face page 44.
at last he pitched on an ambush which seemed likely to favour his vigil if the otter should chance to come up, unless the moon should be clouded over, or the wind chop round when the sun went down.
it lay on the bank of the stream midway between the lake and the plantation, and from it he could command the otter’s line of approach. let it not be thought, however, that he had no misgivings about his ability to confine the wily varmint to the lake, even should it pass him without suspecting his presence. no one is more familiar with its resources when danger threatens; but the sting of past failures and the wish to be even with the elusive creature, above all, his anxiety to provide sport for the hunt, urged him to attempt the almost impossible task he had set himself. no doubt some will say he was over zealous, and complain—and with some show of reason—that he did not engage a score of helpers, who could have formed a ring round the lake and at a given signal have made noisy demonstrations. those who take this view would, of a surety, condemn him at once, did they but know the fame of “maddern” men for beating tin cans when the bees are swarming.
the earthstopper, it is true, did contemplate calling in their aid, only however to dismiss the idea from his mind; not because of any dearth of old kettles and pans, but through an experience of a year ago at marazion marsh, since which disastrous night—an otter broke through the line where two men lay asleep—he has “thought slight” of gulval men, for all their skill in smelting tin and cutting early broccoli. but this tale must be chronicled elsewhere. there were, however, other allies on whom he felt that he could depend, and these he meant to make use of.
that afternoon, he paid a visit to nute, the huntsman; and had you been standing by the smithy at the corner of the village street when the school children were going home, you would have seen andrew coming with leisurely stride along the lane leading to the kennels, with a big lantern in each hand, and the mouth of a hunting-horn lifting the flap of the side pocket of his velveteen coat. he had learnt to blow that horn as a kennel-boy, when he was little bigger and less educated than the boys that crowded round and plied him with questions.
good-natured, if evasive, were his replies about his use for the lanterns now that earthstopping was long over.
slowly up the street past the chute, where a woman was filling a pitcher, went the group, getting smaller and smaller as the boys reached their doors, until andrew and vennie were alone as they took the footpath that led across the heather to his cottage.
over “a dish o’ taa and a bit of saffern caake,” he amused his grandchild with a tale of his boyhood, recalled by a dent in the old horn he had placed on the table.
