Part 12

A rattling burst of twenty minutes rendered the field, as may be well imagined, very select, and it would in all probability have become still more so, had not a fortunate check given horses and men a few moments' breathing time, thus enabling the cunning riders to get up to the hounds. "Away we go again, and I will be there at the finish," I exclaimed, as pressing my cap firmly on my head, and shutting my eyes, I ride at a tremendous bullfinch, the thick boughs and sharp thorns of which scratch my face all over and nearly decapitate me as I burst through it. But, as in the case of the renowned John Gilpin, it is--

"Ah, luckless speech and bootless boast, For which I paid full dear."

Another ten minutes' best pace and the fox is evidently sinking before us; but, alas! it was not to be my lot to see the gallant animal run into and pulled down in the open, after as fine a run as was ever seen. Trim-kept hedges, well-hung, stout, and newly-painted white gates, had shown me that for the last few moments, he had entered the domain of some proprietor, whose estate certainly presented the very pink of neatness. Little indeed did I dream that there would exist in the very heart of Easyallshire one so benighted as to object to the inroads made upon him by that renowned pack, the Muggers. But I reckoned without my host, or rather, as the sequel will show, with my host; for as, in my endeavours to save my now somewhat exhausted horse, I rode at what appeared an easy place in a very high fence, bounded on the off-side with a stiff post and rail, an irate elderly gentleman, gesticulating, shouting, and waving an umbrella in his hand, suddenly rose up as it were from the very bowels of the earth, just as my steed was preparing to make his spring, thus causing the spirited animal to rear up, and, overbalancing himself, to fall heavily to the ground with me under him. When I next recovered consciousness and opened my eyes, I was being borne along on a hurdle, by the author of my misfortunes--a gray-haired, piebald-whiskered, stout, little, red-faced old gentleman--and two of his satellites, whom I rightly conjectured to be the coachman and gardener; but the pain of my broken leg made me relapse into unconsciousness, nor did the few wits I by nature possess return to me again until I was laid on a bed, and a medical practitioner of the neighbourhood was busy at work setting my fractured limb. To make a long story short, I remained under the roof of Major Pipeclay--for that was the name of the irascible little gentleman whose hatred of hunting, hounds, and horses had caused my suffering--until my wounded limb was well again, the worthy old major doing all in his power to make amends for the catastrophe his absurd violence had brought about.

At the expiration of six weeks I was able to move about on crutches; at the termination of twice that period, I was well again, and had, moreover, fallen irretrievably in love with the bright eyes and pretty face of Belinda Pipeclay, one of the major's handsome daughters. Thinking, in my ignorance of the fair sex, that the child of so irascible a papa--having been in her juvenile days well tutored under the Solomonian code of "sparing the rod, and spoiling the child"--must therefore, of necessity, make a submissive and obedient wife, I proposed, was accepted, obtained the major's consent, and became a Benedict.

Dear reader, I am really ashamed to confess the truth: I have been severely henpecked ever since. Whether Belinda possesses the same antipathy to hounds, horses, and hunting men as her progenitor, I cannot possibly tell; for returning to India soon after my marriage, I had no opportunity of there testing her feelings in that respect. Now the increasing number of mouths in our nursery compels a decreasing ratio of animals in my stable, and I am reduced to one old broken-winded cripple, which I call "the Machiner." He takes Mrs Sabretache and myself to the market town on a Saturday, and mamma, papa, and the little Sabretaches to church on the following day.

A DAY WITH THE DRAG

BY THE EDITOR

To my mind there are few more pleasant ways of spending an afternoon, than in having a good rousing gallop with the Drag. Of course there be Drag-hunts and Drag-hunts, and unless the sport is conducted smartly and well, 'twere better far that it should not be done at all. The hounds need not be bred from the Beaufort Justice, but on the other hand, they need not be a set of skulking, skirting brutes, that one "wouldn't be seen dead with." Of course the members of such hunts ride in mufti--more familiarly called, in these degenerate days, "ratcatcher"--but I always think that Huntsman and Whips should be excepted from this rule, and anyone who is privileged to share the fun of the Royal Artillery Draghounds will find that the high officials of the hunt are arrayed, not _certes_, as was Solomon in all his glory, but in the very neatest and smartest of "livery," and nothing could look more sportsmanlike than the dark-blue coat, red collar and cuffs, surmounted by the orthodox black velvet hunting-cap, which are _de rigeur_ at Woolwich now. When I first joined in their cheery gallops, there was no hunt uniform, and the appearance of the "turn out" suffered accordingly. Now, nothing is left to be desired in this direction. Good fellowship in the field we have always had, and does not this go far indeed to make up the sum of one's enjoyment? When every man out, almost without exception, knows the rest of the field personally; when a kindly hand is always ready to be stretched forth to aid a brother in distress--when you know every man well enough to say "mind you don't jump on me, old chap, if this 'hairy' comes base over apex at the next fence!" or, "Let me have that place first; I can't hold this beggar!" things all seem so much pleasanter than they are in a country where you know few people, and don't know them very well: yes, sociability, depend upon it, goes very far indeed to make up the charm of any sport, and in none more so than in that of crossing a country.

Let us imagine ourselves arrived at Woolwich and "done well" at luncheon in the R.A. mess. And here I would observe, _par parenthese_, that it would require a big effort of imagination to picture to yourself any occasion upon which you were _not_ "done well" within those hospitable portals. About 2.30 when we are half way through that cigar in the ante-room, which alone "saves one's life" after such a luncheon, a crack of the whip, and a "gently there, Waterloo!" brings us quickly to the window overlooking the parade ground, where hounds have just arrived in charge of the Master and two Whips. We hurry out, after a farewell to such of our kindly hosts as are not intending to accompany us, and find that that big-boned black horse with a hog mane, is intended to carry "Cæsar and his fortunes" this afternoon. A right good one he is, too, with a perfect snaffle mouth. He is "not so young as he was," but "sweet are the uses of adversity," and this fact has its advantages, as he will not fret and worry, and pull one's arms off before starting: he has "joined the band," which is also an excellent thing in its way, because the man just ahead of you can hear him coming, and will, you hope, get out of the way at the next fence! After a short period of moving up and down the parade ground, and exchanging greetings with a few whom you have not had a chance of speaking to before, the word is given, and at that indescribable and, to me, most direful pace, a "hound's jog," off we go along the road over the Common.

How the bricks and mortar fiend has been working his wicked will with the place since last we saw it! The trots out to the several meets get longer and longer as season after season rolls by. What was once almost our best line, and where for two or three years the annual point-to-point race was held, is now an unwieldy mass of buildings, prominent amongst which stands that gigantic fraud on the long-suffering ratepayers, the Fever Hospital, with its staff of 350 to wait on a maximum of 450 patients!

At last we emerge from the region of building and railway "enterprise" (save the mark!) and see glimpses of the country ahead of us. A winding lane traversed, and we find a gate propped open on our left: here a halt is called. The Master rides into the field, whilst the Whips remain where they are in charge of the pack. Two minutes later our worthy chief returns and addresses the assembled company, not in the studied beauty of language employed by Cicero, nor in the perfervid oratory of Demosthenes, but in a manner very much more to the point than most of the harangues of those somewhat long-winded classics. "Let 'em get over the first fence: then you can ride like blazes!" he says.

The Whips move forward gently: hounds are all bristling with excitement, for they seem to know as well as we that the moment for action has arrived. "Gently there, Safety! have a care, then!" Yow, yow, yow! from the hounds. Toot, toot, from the Master's horn, and away they go. "Do wait, you dev---- fellows! You'll be bang into the middle of 'em! There, now, you can go and be blessed to you!" Amid a confused rush of horses, clatter of hoofs, and babel of tongues, we are away, and thundering down to the first fence, a big quickset. With a crash the first Whip is over or through; it doesn't matter which so long as he finds himself "all standing" on the right side. Half-a-dozen men make for the same place and great is the thrusting thereunto. The first and second get over: the third man falls: the next alights almost on top of him: now comes a gallant "just joined" one, who does not jump when his horse does, and then that first fence becomes of no further interest to us, for are we not over it, and speeding along at our best sprinting pace towards a line of post and rails, where, the Powers be praised! there is plenty of room for the whole field to have it abreast, if they wished. Two refuse at this: it is a pretty big one, and worse still the timber is new: but the next comer smashes the top rail and lets everyone through: then for three or four fields all is plain sailing--brush fences that our steeds almost gallop through, form the only obstacles. We jump into a park, and "Ware hole!" is the cry: we pull off to the right of where hounds are running in order to avoid the home of the ubiquitous bunny, but not soon enough, unluckily, to save one youngster from a tumble: the horse puts his foot in a rabbit hole and rolls over as if he is shot. "Not hurt a bit! Go on," calls out the rider, pluckily. Yes, no doubt about it, this is the game for the making of young soldiers. On we go, now descending a gentle slope to where an ominous little crowd of yokels and loafers are lining a narrow strip of green on each side: a second glance, as we rise in our stirrups for inspection purposes, shows us that this is evidently looked upon as the sensation "lep" of the run: a good sized brook, in front of which have been placed some stout, well furze-bushed hurdles. The scent has been thoughtfully laid a little on one side of this, so there is no fear of stray hounds getting in one's way. One look shows us that it will take a bit of doing, and hats are crammed on, and horses "taken by the head" in earnest, as the three leading men come along at it. A quick glance round and a lightning calculation as to where you'll go to, should your neighbour whip round or fall just in front of you, and then a vigorous hoist over the hurdles carries you just clear--and no more than just clear--of the frowning and muddy stream just beyond. The man on your left gets over also, but with one hind leg dropped in: three come slashing over, all right: then little Miffkins, in an agony of incertitude, takes a pull at his horse when within three lengths of where he should take off. Fatal mistake! for he merely succeeds in putting the break on: the horse jumps short, and just clearing the hurdles drops helplessly into the turbid stream amid the ribald jeers and laughter of the crowd assembled. Baulked by this _contretemps_ the next horse refuses, and though ridden at the obstacle again and again, resolutely persists in remaining on the wrong side of the water. But "forrard on, forrard on!" Miffkins will get dry again--he is not hurt, in the least--and his horse will be taught an invaluable lesson in swimming. The pack is still racing away half a field ahead, but they are beginning to "string" a good deal now, from the severity of the pace. And by the same token, most of our good nags are obviously feeling that this sort of fun can't go on for ever. My own musical steed is, in especial, making the most appalling observations on the subject as we breast the next sharp slope. I feel, somehow, that he is using the equinese for "Hang it all, you know, I'm not a steam roundabout, my dear chap!" and my heart smites me. Before, however, I can make up my wavering mind as to whether conscience imperatively demands of me "a pull," or not, to my great joy, hounds suddenly throw up their heads where the drag has evidently been lifted, and we find ourselves at the ever welcome check. Most of us slip off our smoking steeds, whose shaking tails and sweat-lathered coats attest the rate at which these three miles have been covered. By twos and threes, the stragglers, and those whose luck is "out," arrive. One man has broken the cantle of his saddle, another has managed to pull his horse's bridle off in the floundering of a fall: here is a rider whose spur has been dragged off his boot: there one who has broken his girths: two men are hatless and another has lost his cigarette case, presumably whilst standing on his head after trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a stile without jumping it. However, these are but common incidents of the chase, and "all in the day's work." The troubles are taken good humouredly, and in the true spirit of philosophy. The men who have second horses out, have now mounted them, whilst the rest of us who intend riding the concluding half of the line, resume acquaintance with our splashed saddles and mud-stained steeds. Trotting off across a road, we again lay on, and have a gallop of quite five hundred yards before coming to anything in the way of an obstacle. Over a piece of timber, to the tune of a most unholy cracking of top rails, we go, and soon find ourselves approaching the far boundary which offers us the choice of a blind, hairy place, with a big ditch on the far side, a gate securely nailed up, and a greasy-looking foot-bridge adorned with several dangerous-looking holes. This last we all--as I think, wisely--eschew. Some make for the gate: the rest of us try the first-named place. One of the whips goes at it "hell for leather," and gets over. I, following him, I blush to say, rather--just a very little--too closely, utter a silent prayer that my leader may not fall, and somewhat to my astonishment feel "the musician" apparently disappearing into the bowels of the earth beneath me whilst I shoot over his head and sprawl, spread-eagled, on my hands and face into the ploughed field beyond. He has jumped short and paid the penalty by dropping into the ditch. I shout back "No" to a kindly enquiry as to whether I am hurt, and the questioner gallops on, leaving me to wrestle with the problem of how I am to extract the hog-maned one from his present retreat. As I take him by the rein and wonder how deeply his hind legs are imbedded in the sticky clay, he makes a wild flounder, plunges up the bank, rams his big, bony head into my chest and causes me to take up a most undignified position, for nothing can look much more aimless than to see the ardent sportsman attired in boots and breeches, seated involuntarily in the wet furrow of a ploughed field, his horse standing over him in an apparently menacing attitude. However, although I felt damped--and was--the animal was out of what might have been "a tight place," and I climbed into the saddle again with muddy breeches, but a cheerful heart. To catch hounds after this was, of course, out of the question, but I jogged slowly across the field I was in, and felt, I humbly confess, a thrill of unholy joy, as from the farther side of the thick hedge there, I heard a plaintive voice saying:

"Come through the gap and give us a hand, old fellow; I've come down, busted both girths and a stirrup leather, lost my curb chain and split my br--waistcoat!"

I was happy again. I had a companion in misfortune, and, better still, one in sorrier plight than my own. By the time we had (as far as a piece of string, two torn handkerchiefs and a necktie, the thongs of both hunting crops, and a pair of braces would allow) repaired damages, lighted and smoked a couple of cigars, and talked the day's doings over as we rode back to the cheery lights shining from the barrack windows, I for one felt just as happy as if I had managed to live through the whole, instead of only part, of that invigorating gallop with the Woolwich Drag.

STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR

We sons of Devon are, I doubt not, too prone to dwell and enlarge upon the fact that we are not quite as other men, that when all things were made none was made better than this, our land of sunny skies and mystic moors, of lane and hedgerow, of sea and river, where the balmy fragrance of Torbay invites the winter, and the chill grandeur of Exmoor repels the summer's heat; with goodness overflowing from Porlock to Penzance; the home of traditions and folkspeech that mark us out a people meet to enjoy the wholesomest clime under the canopy of heaven.

I say we are too apt to allow these matters to weigh with us, and breed a smiling contentment and ease of living perhaps not good for those who shall come after us--for those who may be forced to quit their native soil and sojourn among aliens of sharper wits and noisier mode of life. Soft as a Dartmoor bog the South Devon man has been found by those of northern blood, who in mean ways despoil him. Yet if history doth not lie, there have been sundry occasions when, for stoutness of heart and a kind of obstinacy of courage, the men of the west of England had no need to suffer by comparison with any. To many of us now, alas, the home of our fathers, the haunts of our boyhood, are no longer daily present; but the exile's memory is strong and vivid, and, aided as is natural by not infrequent visits to them, yields abundant pleasure in the contemplation of spots hallowed to us by fond associations, the tombs of our sires, the scenes of early passion, and perhaps above all, to him of man's estate, the otter bank and Exmoor.

Stronger than death, more lasting than love of woman, is the passion for the chase, and of all those who ride to hounds, the hunter of the wild deer of Devon must surely bear the palm for all the qualities that go to make up the sportsman; and as I have been challenged to show that this at least is no empty boast, nor figment of the brain, I proceed to tell, for all but those who know it better than I, how the men of Devon hunt the wild red deer.

It was ordained that I should be the first of my race born out of Devon, and there was perhaps allotted to me lacking that birthright a keener relish for all that Devon yields, so that a certain home-sickness will often befall me, which that sweet air and homely speech and hospitable fare only may cure. It is then I go west, go where merrie England is merrie England still, remote from stir and traffic of modern life, forgotten of civilization and the so-called march of mind. Cathay within three hundred miles of Paddington Station!

Not many years ago there came over me the old longing. As summer merged into autumn it got into my blood and there being no help for it, ere September waned I packed my bag and set out for Exmoor. There, descendants of the tall deer whom the Conqueror "loved as if he were their father," were to be found in plenty, hunted with horn and hound, captured and slain.

As much in the spirit of the pilgrim as of the sportsman, I made my way to where the river Exe and its big brother Barle have union. To Dulverton I fared, even as John Ridd had fared two hundred years before, and as I crossed the threshold of the Red Lion, recalled John Fry's striding into the hostel, "with the air and grace of a short-legged man, and shouting as loud as if he were calling sheep upon Exmoor."

"Hot mootton pasty for twoo trarv'lers, at number vaive, in vaive minnits! Dish un up in the tin with the grahvy, zame as I hardered last Tuesday."

In these days Dulverton may be said to exist for one purpose only, that of hunting the stag--with perhaps a little fishing thrown in. The oldest inhabitant will meet you upon the bridge, and with true Devonshire garrulity discourse of stag. Sauntering alongside you the length of its single street, he will point out the abode of the tailor (who makes hunting garments), of the cobbler (who makes riding boots). A saddler's shop is almost an appanage of the inn under whose portico, on the day of my arrival, a fuming sportsman and a well "done" horse were eloquent of stag. In the town there was suppressed excitement, and what passes in those parts for bustle and stir. The traffic had a way of suddenly disappearing down an alley which led to the banks of the Barle, and so to Exford. Needless to say, the attraction at Exford was Mr Bisset's kennels, nor would any peace or comfort reign in Dulverton until such time as news should arrive of the find and the kill.

That evening we sat in the stone-floored parlour of the inn and drank cider out of blue pint mugs--no true son of Devon drinks from a tumbler--and by my side was the warped old man who had weathered eighty Exmoor winters, and who told of the season of bitter frost when the red deer would come by the score of a morning to the farmers' ricks of corn and hay and clover, and some of them so tame that they would present themselves at the back door for a drink of water.

On the following day, things had quieted down. The staghounds were in kennel; and although the Exmoor foxhounds met in the neighbourhood for cub-hunting, heedless people went their way and took no notice of a pursuit only distantly connected with stag.

At last the eventful or stag-hunting day is ushered in, and as usual one's preparations are discovered at the last moment to be incomplete. A refractory boot causes delay and consequent anguish to a small party who have to travel with me on wheels from Dulverton to the meet at Venniford Cross; for eighteen Devonshire miles are before us, and it is conceivable that the day would have ended before our journey, had our coachman been other than a native Jehu. A man must live in the west of England to get used to driving horses at a hand-gallop up and down hills of which the gradient is sometimes less than 1 in 4 and sometimes more. And so we go on, our driver singing--

"When the wind whistles cold on the moors of a night, All along, down along, out along lee, Tom Pearce's ould mare doth appear gashly white, Wi' Bill Brewer, Jan Slewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan'l Whiddon, Harry Hawke; Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and a--a--ll."