The Romance of the Woods. Whishaw Frederick
mother, who of course escaped scot free, triumphing—as she supposed—by reason of her wisdom. But the dogs still stood on.
This is the best, as it is the pitiful foolishness of the blackcock younglings. Their fathers are birds of great wisdom and cunning; their mothers are sagacious and experienced; but the little ones are headstrong and foolish, and love to act independently of their elders. Instead of flying altogether as grouse and partridges do, and thus enjoying each a chance of escape as well as participating in the common danger, they rise by ones and twos, and each bird becomes the sole objective for the charge of the sportsman, thereby immensely lessening his chance of flying between the pellets.
The first covey of the season was a grand one indeed, thirteen birds, including the mother, and of these we slew, without leaving the original spot, no less than nine. Jemmie beamed. He said sweet things to Hermann, the lately abused and condemned; he patted the dogs and "praised them to their face;" he declared that I had slain a full half of the dead birds, whereas I knew well that three only had fallen to my fire and six to his; he discovered that the walking was easy enough when one grew used to it; he liked the sunshine; in a word, my friend James had donned those spectacles whose glasses are of the colour of the rose.
It was now seven o'clock; the heather and bilberry plants were still "dew-pearled," and there were diamonds on every gossamer thread that ran from leaf to leaf and from plant to plant; but the sun was hot enough, by this, to dry up an ocean, and I knew these morn-gems would not last much longer. I was glad when Jemmie proposed a short rest (nominally for the dogs' sake), for there was all the beauty of the morning to take in, and that is best done in a sitting or lying posture. The panting of the dogs is almost the only sound—that and the indescribable evidence of teeming life which you may hear in the dead of the silence. Who makes that sound? What is it? Where is it? I think it is Nature in travail; it is growth and development, the never-resting activity of the spirit of life that moves upon the face of the land.
Our nine little victims lie upon the heather before us, and Jemmie weighs each in his hand and tries, very unnecessarily, their beaks in order to be assured of their youth, and admires their growth, and beams upon men and dogs in high good humour. I, too, criticise the birds and am conscious of a stifling feeling of regret. Here are nine beautiful little lives taken in as many minutes, taken so easily—alas! but who could ever give back to these feathered ruins the thing we have bereft them of? I know it is foolish to sentimentalise thus over the dead creatures I came to destroy, and will destroy again the very next time that I have an opportunity; but the triumph of the sportsman is always a little marred, I think, by this feeling of guilt—the guilt of having robbed mother Nature of some of her beautiful children. She does very well without them, I dare say, and if we had not secured them doubtless the kites and hawks and foxes would have taken their share—probably as large a share as this of ours; nevertheless, here they were an hour ago upon this moor, alive and busy and beautiful; and now they are not, and we did it.
Nevertheless, again, we are up and about and ready to "do it" once more after a quarter of an hour's repose; and the next thing we chance upon is a covey of chirping and twittering little willow-grouse, scarcely free of the egg-shells, a tiny, confiding flock that flit chattering and scolding after their brown and white mother, annoyed to be disturbed and made to use their lovely little mottled wings in flight, and anxious to settle again before twenty yards have been covered. We send a laugh after the little family, instead of a hailstorm of No. 7, and leave them to grow and fatten; they shall enjoy the delights of life on this moor for three good weeks, if not four, ere the leaden death shall make Erinofka the poorer by their perfectly marked little persons. Then an old blackcock, unaware that Jemmie and his choked left barrel are about, foolishly lets us approach within fifty yards of his sanctuary, and rising with a crow of defiance, subsides instantly at the bidding of the unerring James, with a groan and a gasp—dead.
Presently a superb covey of willow-grouse (who are the parents of our own red variety of the family) rise with a whirr and a loud laugh from the old cock, leave their tribute of four upon the heather—and vanish. We see them flit like a white cloud over the open moorland, rise like one being to top the bushes, flash their wings in the sun as they wheel round in the traditional manner of their tribe before settling, and then we suddenly lose sight of them and see them no more.
"They are down among the aspens," said Jemmie. Hermann dissented.
"They wheeled right round the spinney," he says, "and settled well beyond it."
Ivan takes the side of Jemmie, and Stepan sides with his chief. I am neutral. I saw them up to a point but not beyond it; I saw the sun tip their white feathers with fire as they wheeled and then lost them; but I know how many there were—there were nineteen, no less, that journeyed over the heather and into the spinney—a gigantic covey indeed!
"Two coveys," says Jemmie; "the willow-grouse have a passion for massing even in the chicken stage," which is perfectly true, while in the autumn you may find a community of a hundred of them living together.
Now were these birds little white ghosts, or real flesh and blood and feathers? If not spectres, then where are they? This was the question we asked of one another as, for a full hour, we paced and repaced, as we believed, every inch of a square half mile of ground within which the little wizards must inevitably be somewhere hidden. Hermann explained the matter by declaring that they had settled altogether in a huddled mass, and had not moved a muscle since; knowing, perhaps instinctively, that by preserving absolute immobility they would give no scent. We may, and so may the dogs, have passed within a yard of the hole or tuft in which the beady-eyed little creatures lay crouched, watching us, scarcely breathing for terror, their poor hearts and pulses going very fast as we come near and pass by and see no sign of them.
But Carlow has the luck to stumble upon them. I am watching the dog, and I see him stop suddenly in his mad career (Carlow's career is always mad!), and bend over in an extraordinary position. There is the covey, under his very nose. Alarmed, indeed, they are now, and their necks are held straight and high; they attempt no further concealment; their only anxiety is how to take wing without falling into the jaws of this ogre—fox or whatever he may be. Carlow would sooner perish than touch one of them; but they do not know this, poor things, and peer helplessly and timidly this way and that in the extremity of terror and uncertainty. I can examine them now at leisure for a moment or two, and oh! what beautiful creatures they are. Where was ever so soft a brown as this of theirs, or so pure a white? What bird ever matched the graceful poise of their heads? What—there! they are off, and I have missed them with both barrels; this comes of moralising. Jemmie did not moralise, and he has dropped two of the beauties; but there is a chance for me yet, for the covey has settled in the open, no doubt about the exact spot this time, and not more than one hundred and fifty yards away.
So we take in all the dogs excepting old Kaplya, who is as safe and steady as the Rock of Gibraltar, and head straight for the place in which we believe the birds to be lying. Old Kaplya raises her nose, half turns towards us, smiles and winks (she positively does both), as though she would say, "All right, keep your eye upon Kaplya; I'm on these birds already—follow me!" and away she goes straight as a line, first cantering easily, then trotting a few yards, then cautiously walking as many more, then slowly stopping, stiffening, turning her nose now slightly to this side, now to that, then finally fixing herself into the very perfect picture of a sure point.
Up they go, and off go my two barrels, rather too rapidly and excitedly; off go Jemmie's also, but with more deliberation. To my first shot a bird falls in tatters; to my second two succumb. I have shot three of them, and Jemmie his usual brace. But, alas! my first bird is but a mangled mass of feathers and broken bones, and there must be a burial. Hide him deep beneath the moss and heather, Hermann, and for pity's sake say no more about the circumstance; for in truth my heart is like wax within me by reason of this wasted life. It is pardonable and right, though perhaps regrettable, to take these lives when we intend to use the shot-riddled carcases for our food, but to blow a beautiful creature to pieces and to be obliged to bury its remains is unpardonable.
We decide to leave the rest of this covey; we have levied sufficient tribute upon it. And now the day is growing into middle age, and Jemmie says that we will find one more family of willow-grouse or blackgame