Part 5 (2/2)
See how the sheep have drawn together into phalanx yonder, in that bare pasture to the eastward; he has crossed that field for a thousand! Yes, I am right. See! they turn once again. What a delicious rally! An outspread towel would cover those four leading hounds--now Dauntless has it; has it by half a neck.
”He always goes up when a fox is sinking,” Harry exclaimed, pointing toward him with his hunting whip.
Aye! he has given up his point entirely; he knew he could not face the hill. Look! look at those carrion crows! how low they stoop over that woody bank. That is his line. Here is the road again. Over it once more merrily! and now we view him.
”Whoop! Forra-ard, lads, forra-ard!”
He cannot hold five minutes; and see, there comes fat Tom pounding that mare along the road as if her fore-feet were of hammered iron; he has come up along the turnpike, at an infernal pace, while that turn favored him; but he will only see us kill him, and that, too, at a respectful distance.
Another brook stretches across our course, hurrying to join the greater stream along the banks of which we have so long been speeding; but this is a little one; there! we have cleared it cleverly. Now! now! the hounds are viewing him. Poor brute! his day is come. See how he twists and doubles, Ah! now they have him! No! that short turn has saved him, and he gains the fence--he will lie down there! No! he stretches gallantly across the next field--game to the last, poor devil! There!
”Who-whoop! Dead! dead! who-whoop!”
And in another instant Harry had s.n.a.t.c.hed him from the hounds, and holding him aloft displayed him to the rest, as they came up along the road.
”A pretty burst,” he said to me, ”a pretty burst, Frank, and a good kill; but they can't stand before the hounds, the foxes here, like our stout islanders; they are not forced to work so hard to gain their living. But now let us get homeward; I want my breakfast, I can tell you, and then a rattle at the quail. I mean to get full forty brace to-day, I promise you.”
”And we,” said I, ”have marked down fifteen brace already toward it; right in the line of our beat, Tom says.”
”That's right; well, let us go on.”
And in a short half hour we were all once again a.s.sembled about Tom's hospitable board, and making such a breakfast, on every sort of eatable that can be crowded on a breakfast table, as sportsmen only have a right to make; nor they, unless they have walked ten, or galloped half as many miles, before it.
Before we had been in an hour, Harry once again roused us out. All had been, during our absence, fully prepared by the indefatigable Tim; who, as the day before, accoutered with spare shot and lots of provender, seemed to grudge us each morsel that we ate, so eager was he to see us take the field in season.
Off we went then; but what boots it to repeat a thrice told tale; suffice it, that the dogs worked as well as dogs can work; that birds were plentiful, and lying good; that we f.a.gged hard, and shot on the whole pa.s.sably, so that by sunset we had exceeded Harry's forty brace by fifteen birds, and got beside nine couple and a half of woodc.o.c.k; which we found, most unexpectedly, basking themselves in the open meadow, along the gra.s.sy banks of a small rill, without a bush or tree within five hundred yards of them.
Evening had closed before we reached the well known tavern-stand, and the merry blaze of the fire, and many candles, showed us, while yet far distant, that due preparations were in course for our entertainment.
”What have we here?” cried Harry, as we reached the door--”Race horses?
Why, Tom, by heaven! we've got the Flying Dutchman here again; now for a night of it.”
And so in truth it was, a most wet, and most jovial one, seasoned with no small wit; but of that, more anon.
DAY THE FOURTH
When we had entered Tom's hospitable dwelling, and delivered over our guns to be duly cleaned, and the dogs to be suppered, by Tim Matlock, I pa.s.sed through the parlor, on my way to my own crib, where I found Archer in close confabulation with a tall rawboned Dutchman, with a keen freckled face, small 'cute gray eyes, looking suspiciously about from under the shade of a pair of straggling sandy eyebrows, small reddish whiskers, and a head of carroty hair as rough and tangled as a fox's back.
His aspect was a wondrous mixture of sneakingness and smartness, and his expression did most villainously belie him, if he were not as sharp a customer as ever wagged an elbow, or betted on a horse-race.
”Frank,” exclaimed Harry, as I entered, ”I make you know Mr. McTaggart, better known hereabouts as the Flying Dutchman, though how he came by a Scotch name I can't pretend to say; he keeps the best quarter horses, and plays the best hand of whist in the country; and now, get yourself clean as quick as possible, for Tom never gives one five minutes wherein to dress himself; so bustle.”
And off he went as he had finished speaking, and I shaking my new friend cordially by an exceeding bony unwashed paw, incontinently followed his example--and in good time I did so; for I had scarcely changed my shooting boots and wet worsteds for slippers and silk socks, before my door, as usual, was lounged open by Tom's ma.s.sy foot, and I was thus exhorted.
”Come, come, your supper's gittin' cold; I never see such men as you and Archer is; you're wash, wash, wash--all day. It's little water enough that you use any other ways.”
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