Gales and cold rain prevailing, we spent much of our time indoors, while the wind roared through the coppice, and clouds of dead leaves whirled through the air, settling in rustling drifts in every hollow. The bracken was long ago brown and dead, but the blackberry leaves, though purpled by the frost, still clung with their accustomed obstinacy to the stalks, and provided thick cover for the pheasants. The old beech-trees were nearly bare, and, indeed, all the trees except the evergreens, especially those on the west side of the wood, had lost their leaves; only the oaks had foliage still to boast of, and most of this was brown and withered.
But it was only November, and we young ones had as yet no idea of retiring for the winter. On fine days, especially when frost was in the air, we were as frisky as ever, and had magnificent games among the heaps of dead leaves. It was the greatest fun possible to take running headers from the long, bare tips of the beech boughs, falling on the soft, elastic cushion of leaves, in which one completely disappeared, just as a water-rat does in a pond. Under the leaves the ground was still thick with ripe beech-mast, so there was no need as yet to infringe upon our winter stores. There were pine-cones, too, by way of change, and fallen hazel-nuts, though these were getting scarce now that not only we but our distant cousins, the dormice, had been getting in winter stores.
Our own preparations for winter were quite complete. The last piece of work had been to line our home thoroughly with dry moss, and partially to stop up the entrance which had been so large that, when the wind blew that way, it made cold draughts whistle round inside. For this work we young ones collected the material while mother did the building, and Rusty and I gathered useful hints for the future.
All these days, when the air was still, or the wind blew from the direction of the Hall, we could hear in the distance the clink, clink of axes—a novel sound in this country-side, where the Squire and his forebears before him had had the true Englishman’s love of timber, and thought not twice but many times before cutting down a single tree. But for a long time our solitude was not invaded, except by a few school-children picking late blackberries or nuts, or a labourer returning from his work along the wood-path. Then, one fine morning early in November, when Rusty and I were having our usual morning scramble, the sharp report of a gun sent us skurrying to the nearest refuge, which happened to be a tall fir-tree not far from the coppice gate. Bang again!—this time closer. Rusty looked out but dodged back with great rapidity. He intimated to me that the young murderer from the Hall had appeared and that he, Rusty, didn’t mean to move until he disappeared.
Bang again! A cock pheasant came whirring up past us, rocketing high over the tops of the trees, and a second dose of shot, hopelessly too late, sent a shower of twigs scattering from the tree just over our heads, and made us cower the closer against the trunk.
Steps came trampling past beneath us, and the firing became fast and furious. Every living thing took cover, or, if it had wings, departed as fast as they would carry it. The racket did not last long, and, as we found out later, the bag was not a large one. The Hall’s new tenants were not good shots, and their new keeper, who had supplanted old Crump, did not know his business. As soon as the noise had died away we made the best of our way home, and found mother and Hazel, who had been lying close at home, extremely relieved to see us safe back once more.
Several times again before the winter the solitude of our coppice was invaded by the same party—the little stout man with the mutton-chop whiskers, his white-collared, pasty-faced son, and a tall keeper with a ginger beard. But after their first two visits none of the coppice people paid much attention to them beyond sitting tight in cover. The very pheasants—stupid fellows as they are—made jeering remarks about their inability to kill anything unless it happened to be fool enough to sit still to be fired at.
What did cause much more serious alarm was the rumour of a new and most dangerous enemy. The news came to us through a strange squirrel whom Rusty and I met one cold bright morning rummaging among the deep beech-leaves for a breakfast of mast. The poor fellow had a nasty wound at the back of his neck, and looked thin and miserable. He was so nervous that when he heard us coming he bolted wildly up a tree. We called to him, and, looking rather ashamed of himself, he came back and met us.
‘What’s up?’ inquired I. ‘We’re not going to eat you. Come down and finish your breakfast.’
‘Ugh! don’t talk of eating!’ he answered in trembling tones. ‘You wouldn’t if you’d been so nearly eaten as I was three days ago;’ and he showed us his wound.
‘Weasel?’ Rusty asked.
‘No—much worse.’
‘What, not a fox?’
‘I’m not quite fool enough to sit on the ground and let a fox catch me,’ retorted the stranger. ‘It was a wild-cat.’
‘Wild-cat!’ exclaimed I. ‘Why, I’d no idea there were any left in these parts!’
‘No more had I,’ put in Rusty. ‘Mother says that a very old squirrel once told her that his father had seen a wild-cat, but that’s ever so many years ago. There are none left now.’
‘None left!’ returned the other angrily. ‘Very well; all I say is, wait. Your turn will come.’
He was clearing out in a huff when I stopped him.
‘Wait a minute. I want to hear all about it. Anyone can see you’ve been badly mauled. Come with us up into our beech-tree, and I’ll find you a better breakfast than this half-rotten stuff; then you can tell us all about it.’
After a little more persuasion, he cooled down and accompanied us, and we all heard his story. It appeared that a week before he and one of his brothers had visited a Spanish chestnut they knew of at some distance from their home, which was in a large wood about a mile away, when, without the slightest warning, a great cat had sprung out of a patch of dead bracken close by, and with two quick swings of her terrible paws bowled them both over. Our new acquaintance owed his life to the fact that he had seen the enemy coming just in time to duck, and, consequently, had received the full force of the blow upon his neck instead of his head. But even so he had been stunned, and had recovered his senses only in time to see the savage beast running rapidly away among the underbrush with the dead body of his brother swinging limp between her powerful jaws. Knowing that she would come back for him, he had summoned all his remaining energies, and succeeded in climbing into a pollard oak and hiding in a knot-hole in its spreading top. From there he watched the robber return, moving noiselessly across the dead grass and leaves on velvet-cushioned paws; noted the grey coat, stiff and coarse, the short tail, broad head, and small, close-rounded ears; had seen her search snuffing among the dead leaves, moving round and round in impatient circles, and shivered in his terror. But fortune was good to him, for after a time, which seemed endless, the cat, tired of her vain search, had at last turned, and with tail straight up padded softly back the way she had come. But it was not until nearly sunset that the wounded squirrel had made shift to crawl home, sore and aching, and there he had lain for two whole days. Alas! the tale of his sorrows was not yet told. On the third day his mother went out about midday to bring in some food, and never came back! Towards evening his father had gone to search for her, and returned at dark with the terrible tidings that the same stealthy fiend had captured her too. He had found some gnawed bones and her brush—that was all!
By this time the whole wood was in a state of panic. Rabbits, pheasants, and squirrels, all had suffered alike. The cat, it was said, was only one of a family who had taken up their abode in an immense hollow hornbeam in the centre of the wood. A regular reign of terror set in, and our new friend, whose name was Cob, together with his father and his sister, the only survivors of the family, had decided to emigrate before worse happened.
We were all very sorry for the unfortunates. A worse time for squirrels to emigrate could hardly be imagined, for, of course, they had been forced to abandon all their winter stores and their nest, which had been strengthened against the cold weather. It was now too late in the season to collect a proper provision, and they stood a very good chance of starving if the winter should turn out a severe one. You will understand that we young ones, who had never yet been through a winter, were not able to realize quite how serious the misfortune was; but mother, who had seen the snows of three years, thoroughly comprehended the situation, and at once bade Rusty and myself do all we could to assist the unlucky family. Next morning we paid a visit to their temporary quarters, a large untidy hole in a hollow oak, and after first showing them where the last few nuts were to be found in the ditch below the hazel-bushes, set to work to discover better quarters for them. Of course, by this time we knew our coppice from end to end. There was not a tree we were not familiar with from root to topmost branch. But after a good deal of consideration and discussion, we decided that the best refuge was another hole lower down in our own tree. It was one that mother had thought of seriously, after father’s death, as a residence for ourselves, but had decided against as being rather too small. However, we found on making a thorough examination that the wood on one side of it was so rotten that it could easily be dug out, and then the hollow would be amply large enough to accommodate the three wanderers. They, on their part, were devoutly grateful for the trouble we had taken on their behalf, and thanked us most cordially. Cob’s sister, whose name was Sable, a little, dark-furred creature, quite touched me by her shyly-expressed gratitude.
Autumn was now far advanced, and we had had several very sharp frosts. Except for the oaks, to which their dead, dry leaves still clung, the trees were bare. Rusty and I took our morning exercise among the denser foliage of the evergreen firs and larches, of which there were fortunately a good number in our coppice. I say fortunately because, where these trees are handy a squirrel need never starve even in the hardest weather. Not that squirrels are given to starving. Unless owing to some quite unforeseen and unusual accident we are as well able to fend for ourselves even in the hardest winters as any inhabitants of the woodland.
The migrant birds had all left long ago, and the woods were quieter than of old. Not that there was not plenty of life remaining. The wood-pigeons still pecked among the beech leaves for mast; great tits and tomtits moved restlessly among the branches of our beech; flights of long-tail tits talked softly in the tops of the evergreens. Finches of many kinds—greenfinch, chaffinch, bullfinch, and even a few hawfinches, feasted on the hawthorn berries which hung thickly on the bare hedges, and began to take their toll of the fast-reddening holly. The privet and mountain-ash berries were gone long ago. These form the pet dessert of bird life, and are always cleaned up almost before they are ripe. So, too, was the sticky scarlet fruit of three gnarled old yews which stood in a little group all by themselves just beyond the rabbit-warren where the ground sloped towards the brook. Thrushes and blackbirds still visited their’ dark recesses, but more from habit than for any other reason.
Redwings and fieldfares fed in small flocks across the open ground, and shared with the starlings and rooks the insect food of which they are so fond. The grass, no longer green but browned at the tips by frost and sodden from lack of sun, had ceased to grow, and feed was becoming short. I noticed that the cattle had taken to the higher ground instead of feeding along the brook; and that in the mornings when the frost-dew hung thick on the meadows, they wandered along the hedgerows, picking drier mouthfuls from the bank.
Some of our acquaintances had already retired for the winter. The hedgehogs were no longer to be seen making leisurely progress along the hedge-banks; they had all gone to sleep deep in leaf-lined crevices under the blackthorn roots; the dormice had followed their example, and curled themselves up for the winter in their delicately woven globes of grass and fibre. Mr. Dormouse is a heavier sleeper than we are, yet not above rousing for a square meal if the sun comes out warm and bright on a January morning. Snakes, slow-worms and lizards had all disappeared long ago, and would not move again for more than four months. I had not seen a bat for a fortnight, and I fancy the last of them had joined his comrades hung up in the church-tower or in Farmer Martin’s thatched barn, stiff and motionless like dead game in the Hall larder.
Field-mice showed when the sun came out, dodging about on the surface of the dead leaves, apparently very busy, and yet never appearing to accomplish anything in particular. But they would soon follow most of the four-legged denizens of the coppice into winter-quarters, and leave the bare woods to the birds, the rabbits, and the cunning, hungry fox.
Of the wild-cat, the terror of the neighbouring wood, we heard nothing at all; and though I often talked of her with Cob and his sister, we did not imagine that there was much chance of her raiding so far from home. Cob gradually recovered from his wound, and, as food was still fairly plentiful, he grew fat and strong again.
Nothing occurred to disturb the even tenor of those last few days before winter set in in earnest; and the silence that reigned in the coppice was broken only by the cheery song of the robin, the low twitter of the tits, and occasionally the clear pipe of the missel-thrush. Then came a day when the wind turned to the north-east, and a new biting, penetrating chill filled the bleak air.
For the first time in my experience mother absolutely refused to leave the nest.
‘Children,’ she said drowsily, ‘it’s going to snow. I feel it in my bones. Close the door with moss and let us sleep.’
Pushing a bunch of moss into the opening, she curled herself into the deepest, darkest corner of our snug retreat, and almost instantly fell into a sleep deeper than ever we had seen or dreamed of. Squirrels, you must know, are never still for more than a few minutes at a time in their ordinary sleep. I know that, whenever I wake at night, and that is very often, especially now that I am no longer young, some of my family are always moving their legs, twitching about like a dog that lies before the fire and hunts rabbits in its dreams. But this was a different thing, this sleep of mother’s—she lay like a dead thing on her side, her splendid brush curled round and over her, and, as we watched, her breathing seemed to slow until it became almost imperceptible.
We, too, felt strangely drowsy; but yet, with all the curiosity of youth, would not yield to it, so anxious were we to see this snow of which we had heard so often. The wind whistled in stronger and stronger gusts, making weird wailing sounds among the bare branches; the sky, already one uniform mass of greyish cloud, grew duller and thicker, while up to windward a darkness like that of the winter twilight began to cover the land. Rusty and I, peering out through a small hole in the moss, saw the great trees bending and swaying in the increasing blast, while the dead leaves raised by the wind rustled and rattled in brown clouds along the ground below. Then suddenly, and as if by magic, the whole air was swarming with little white atoms, which whirled and fluttered silently in a mad dance. Thicker and thicker they came till the sky was blotted out, and even the trees close by were nearly hidden behind the waving white veil. All along the eastern edges of the beech-tree limbs lines of pure white appeared and grew, while the dry leaves below stopped their rustling as they vanished, hidden beneath a carpet whiter than fallen hawthorn petals. To us, who had never seen the like before, it was a wonderful sight, and we gazed and gazed as if we should never tire. But gradually the drowsiness of the snow-sleep came upon us and mastered us, and, whether we would or no, closed our eyes. Rusty slipped limply back, and lay like a dead thing beside the quiet forms of Hazel and my mother. I remember vaguely pushing back the plug of moss into position, and then I, too, fell back and sank away into a long, delicious, dreamless slumber.
It may have been a day, or a week, or, for all I know, a month before I woke again. My sleep had been so deep that for a full minute I was quite unable to realize where I was or what had happened, and I lay contentedly still in that pleasant, dreamy state between sleep and wakefulness. Then my eye was caught by a tiny brilliant sunbeam, which, striking through some minute interstice in the mossy door, made a little path of golden light in which little motes of dust danced gaily across our hollow retreat.
Slowly recollection returned, and with it a feeling of perfectly ravenous hunger. Struggling up out of the deep hollow in my mossy bed into which I had sunk, I stretched, yawned, and, looking round, saw Rusty with one eye open gazing at me with a drowsy, puzzled expression. Mother and Hazel were still wrapped in deepest sleep.
I barked to wake Rusty; but he only blinked at me without speaking, until at last I leant over and nipped his ear. That woke him.
‘Weasel take you, Scud!’ he growled, starting up. ‘Your teeth are sharp.’
I told him I was simply starving.
‘Come to think of it, so am I,’ he said, stretching and yawning in his turn. ‘Let’s go and get some grub.’
‘Hadn’t we better wake mother and Hazel?’ I suggested. But Rusty thought not, since they were so sound asleep. Standing up on my hind-legs, I pulled away the plug of moss that closed the entrance, and sprang out, with Rusty close at my heels. What a sight met our eyes! Even hunger was forgotten in amazement. The rays of the morning sun shining from a sky of clearest, palest blue were reflected back from one universal dazzle of white. Below us the ground was an even plain of snow, which had covered up and hidden grass, dead fern, fallen branches, ant and mole heaps—all the irregularities to which our eyes were accustomed—under its deep smooth carpet. From the bare branches of the beeches and oaks the snow had melted and fallen away, but the evergreen boughs still bent under heavy loads, from which in places long, transparent icicles drooped. It was freezing hard, for the surface of the snow sparkled with crystals of ice, which shone more brilliantly even than dewdrops in the slanting rays. No breath of air stirred under the cloudless heavens, and the wood had a new stillness which was almost awe-inspiring.
But, oh, the air! Cold as it was, it had a dry tingle which set the blood fairly racing in our veins, and every moment increased our already ravenous hunger. Recovering from our amazement at the strange novelty of all around us, we bounded off together, intent on a store of beech-mast which lay beneath a twisted root of our own old beech.
It was a queer sensation, that first landing upon the snow. So hard frozen was it that our light weights made no impression upon it whatsoever. You would have needed the skill of a fox to find our tracks. Rusty was the first to reach the spot where we had made our store.
‘Snakes’ eyes and adders’ tongues!’ he exclaimed—Rusty was sadly given to the use of bad language—‘this white stuff has covered it all up, and I’m hungry enough to eat a sprouting acorn.’
‘Dig, you duffer!’ I answered him, and together we set to work, our sharp claws sending the crisp snow flying in clouds behind us. Suddenly the crust gave way, and we both tumbled through, one on top of the other, into a good sized hollow beneath. At first Rusty was much annoyed, considering it all my fault. However, as soon as he discovered that we were actually on top of our larder, he recovered, and began with all speed to scratch out the mast from the nooks and corners in which it had been stored.
Some people will tell you that a squirrel never hides two nuts in the same place, but this is not quite the fact. As I have said before, we all have a very natural objection to piling a whole score of nuts or other provender together in one place; for then, if any marauder does come along, he naturally gets the whole lot. But it must not be imagined that a separate hiding-place is made for each single nut or acorn. No; when we discover a good place for a larder, such as the hollow I am now speaking of, we often put quite a quantity of food into it, poking each separate morsel into a different crack or corner.
That was a royal feast. I am quite certain that neither Rusty nor I had ever been so hungry before in the whole of our short lives; and this makes me suspect that we had been asleep for at least a fortnight, or possibly more. At last Rusty, after a vain rummage in the furthest corner of the hollow, turned on me:
‘You greedy pig, Scud, you’ve eaten the last bit of mast!’
‘Well, you are a good one!’ I retorted, laughing. ‘I don’t mind betting you a chestnut that you’ve eaten more than me.’
‘Anyhow, there’s nothing left here,’ replied Rusty in a very aggrieved tone. ‘At this rate our stores won’t last long.’
‘There is any amount left,’ I told him, ‘and it seems to me that travelling is safer and better than ever. We’ll go round and hunt up some of those hazel-nuts under the hedge next time.’
‘All very well if this weather lasts,’ grumbled my brother, who always loved a grievance. ‘But suppose it melts. Mother said it often did. Then the grass will be all wet and beastly, and the ditch probably full of water. Or suppose more snow falls; then everything will be covered up.’
‘’Pon my fur, you’re as bad as a frog!’ I retorted. ‘Never was such a squirrel to croak. Come along out of this dark hole. I want some exercise.’
As we crawled out a bark hailed us from above, and there was Cob sitting out on a low branch over our heads.
‘I say, you fellows,’ he cried, ‘this is jolly, isn’t it?
‘Ripping!’ I answered. ‘Have you had a feed?’
‘Yes, I’ve had some mast; but we haven’t much, so I thought of going over to the fir-trees and looking for some cones.’
‘Right you are. We’ll come too. I’m still hungry enough to eat the most turpentiny cone in the coppice.’
So the three of us scuttled off across the crisp surface, and after satisfying ourselves with pine-kernels and a little of the inner bark from the branch tips by way of dessert, proceeded to rouse the wood with a thorough good scamper. We had the whole place quite to ourselves except for the birds. The wood-pigeons seemed as cheerful as usual, and the tits were busy pecking along the branches. But I must say I felt sorry for the robins, the thrushes, and blackbirds, and most of the other feathered creatures. The poor things seemed to have no life left in them. They sat huddled up in the sunshine with their feathers all fluffed out, till they looked twice as big as usual, but evidently they were all pretty hungry. Birds, you know, do not suffer much from cold directly, but when there is hard frost, and especially when frozen snow covers the ground, they have to go on very short commons. Those that feed on the grubs that live in tree trunks do well enough, and, of course, the sparrows and finches visit the rick and farm yards, and so provide for themselves. It is the berry and worm-eating birds who are worst off in weather of this kind. The hips and haws do not last long, and in really severe frost the holly berries also disappear, leaving only such untempting food as the hard dark ivy berries. Worse than all is the lack of water, and I fancy as many birds perish from thirst during a long frost as from all other causes put together.
When the low sun began to drop towards the west the cold increased, and we three hurried home and went to sleep again. But a day or two later the same brilliant sun called us again, and this time we resolved to pay our promised visit to the hedge by the hazel bushes, where we had buried the first of our nuts. At our special request Cob accompanied us. He, good fellow, as I discovered, was half-starving himself, in order to keep a supply for his sister and father, in case they woke up, so I consulted Rusty, and we agreed that we would take him with us and stand him a good feed out of our nut-store.
When we reached the place, we found, much to our disgust, that the ditch was quite full of snow, which had drifted in from the field. There was nothing for it but to begin a regular quarrying job, and very hard work we found it. Cob worked like a mole, and but for his useful assistance we should hardly have succeeded in reaching the treasure stored beneath the old thorn stump. As it was, we must have been digging fully two hours before we at last hit upon the right spot, and what with the keen air and the hard work we were pretty sharp-set by the time the plump brown beauties were unearthed.
‘Great water rats!’ exclaimed Rusty, driving his strong front teeth through the glossy shell of his first nut, and jerking away the pieces with quick, hungry tugs. ‘This is fine! All the sun and none of the wind. Just the place for a good feed and a rest.’
‘All the same, I hate being on the ground,’ said Cob, uneasily glancing round at the steep walls of snow which surrounded the little white pit which we had dug, and at the bottom of which we sat feasting.
Rusty uttered a disdainful snort.
‘What’s to hurt us here? A weasel wouldn’t trust himself in this dazzle of snow, and foxes don’t prowl in the daytime, let alone in a sun like this.’
‘Oh, I know it’s foolish,’ answered Cob humbly. ‘But I’ve been that way ever since the time that I had that escape from——’
His voice died away in a sharp choking gasp. Looking round in some surprise, I saw him staring upwards, a frozen horror in his wide eyes. Following his glance, I saw glaring down upon us through the hedge two cruel green orbs set in a wide grey face. It did not need the short ears, the stiff whiskers, or the rows of sharp white teeth, bared in a hungry grin, to tell me that I was looking upon the terror of the woods, the wild-cat of Merton Spinney.
The awful head was hardly a yard away. Its owner had crawled up unseen on the far side of the hedge—that is, inside the coppice, for we were in the ditch outside—and having got wind of us, was endeavouring to creep through unseen and unheard, so as to pounce upon us unawares. It was the lucky chance of our having Cob with us, whose hearing was acute beyond either Rusty’s or my own, that gave us that needful second’s warning. Without it there is no possible doubt but that I should never have been alive to tell this story.
One often says ‘quick as a cat,’ but it would be just as correct or more so to say ‘quick as a squirrel’; and I am quite certain that hardly half a second elapsed between the moment I set eyes on the cat’s head emerging from the briers and the bound which landed me six feet out of the hole along the ditch to the left. With the best intentions in the world no one of us could have helped the others, but would only have sacrificed his life uselessly if he had tried to. Thinking over the matter since, I have often wondered why the cat did not pounce straight upon Cob, who has confessed that he was so badly frightened that he never jumped until both Rusty and I were clear out of the hole. The fact remains that she did not do so. A rustle of quickly moved branches, and then a series of soft, padding sounds behind me, proved that I had been selected as her dinner—an attention which, as you may imagine, I could very well have dispensed with.
TWO CRUEL GREEN ORBS SET IN A WIDE GREY FACE.
I was badly frightened—there is no use denying it—but I did succeed in keeping my wits about me. In the open, of course, I was no match for her. Her springs were of tremendous length, far greater than mine, for a cat—like all her tribe—can travel at tremendous speed for a short distance. Aware of this, I turned sharp back through the hedge to my right—only just in time, for her cruel teeth snapped not an inch from my brush as I dived through the heart of the hedge. Being smaller than she, I gained a few yards in the passage through the close-set branches, and tore off across the frozen snow at top speed towards the nearest tree. There was no time to pick or choose; I had to take the first that came, and here luck was against me, for it was a tall but slender birch which happened to stand some little distance apart, the nearest tree to it being a beech some fifty feet away.
Up I went with a rush, again missing death by a sort of miracle, for my enemy launched herself at me like a shot from a catapult, striking the bark not the length of my body below my brush. She clung there a moment, and then fell back with a baffled snarl, and for a moment I thought she had given it up. But I suppose she was very hungry, or perhaps too enraged at her first failure to abandon the chase, for the next moment she drew off a few yards, and, coming at the tree with a rush, clattered up it, her sharp talons ringing against the rough bark.
Naturally my first impulse was to run out towards the beech and jump into it. Could I have done this I should have been safe, for the cat would have had to return to the ground in order to reach the beech-tree. But when I gained the outer end of the birch branch I found to my horror that the gap was full three yards—a terrible jump to risk at any time, but almost certainly fatal if I missed my footing, for before I could recover myself the hungry brute would most infallibly have leaped down upon me.
Now I was in a tight place indeed, for already the lithe, grey form of my cruel foe was stealing out along the branch to which I clung, her heavier body causing it to sway and vibrate beneath me. It seemed as though I must take the jump, and chance it. Suddenly I noticed that the cat had stopped. She was lying close along the branch, her hungry eyes glaring at me, her pink tongue slowly licking her lips. It was clear that she was afraid that if she came further the bough would not bear her weight.
This gave me a moment’s breathing-space, time to glance round and see if any other avenue of escape was open. At once I noticed another birch bough to my left, and a little higher, but still within fairly easy distance; and on the impulse I sprang, landing full upon it. At this the cat, with another blood-curdling snarl, turned quickly back towards the trunk, but before she could reach it I was off into the very topmost twigs of the birch. Here I felt sure that I was safe, at any rate for the time, for I did not believe the cat would venture so high. To my horror she set herself to follow, and, taking such risks as I never dreamed she would dare, she came slowly but stealthily on my track. All I could do was to crawl out to the thinnest tip that would bear me, cling there, and wait.
With horrible pertinacity she followed to the very top of the trunk, and, stationing herself in the last fork that would bear her, crouched there, apparently determined to wait and starve me out.
I was at my wits’ end, for there seemed no possible avenue of escape. I might remain where I was, you will say, and trust to tiring her out. True; but supposing she refused to be tired out? Remember, it was freezing hard. She could endure the cold; I could not. Sooner or later my muscles would grow numb, and I should fall either on to the ground or right into her jaws. Another thing (I may as well confess it), I was frightened—so badly frightened that this in itself was actually paralysing my powers. After a few minutes I began to feel as though some unexplainable impulse was forcing me to turn and gaze into those fierce green eyes. I had sense enough to be aware that, once I did this, it was all up. I should become fascinated, and drop right into the cruel jaws that waited so hungrily below.
Against this suicidal impulse I fought with all my might, but in spite of my best efforts it grew upon me until I began to feel that I could endure the torture no longer. It seemed as though it would be a relief to put an end to it, even if it meant ending my life at the same time. The cat seemed to know this, too, and lay below me, stretched at full length, still as the leafless branch on which she crouched.
I was actually turning; in another second I should have yielded as weakly as a miserable house mouse, when suddenly a sharp bark resounded from the beech-tree near by. The cat stirred, and for the moment I was saved.
I looked in the direction of the sound. There was Rusty only a few yards away in the beech. Cob was close behind him. Rusty cried out to me sharply:
‘Do you see that bough-tip straight below you?’
‘Yes,’ I answered dully.
‘Can you drop to it?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Don’t be a fool! You’ve done much bigger things than that. Here’s our plan: We’ll start barking at the cat and take her attention off you while you drop. It’s a possible jump from the bough below across to this tree, and you’ll have plenty of time, for the cat will have to climb down the trunk. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I replied faintly.
I had been in such a queer dazed condition that I had never even noticed the possible avenue of escape which Rusty pointed out. Looking down, it seemed a perfectly terrific drop. Indeed, it was something like twenty feet, and if I missed it there was another thirty to the frozen snow beneath.
‘Are you ready?’ came Rusty’s voice, sharp and threatening.
‘Yes,’ I said again.
A chorus of perfectly frantic barks and squeaks broke out at once. I heard my enemy move uneasily, and, summoning all my courage, I let myself go and dropped.
I struck the branch beneath, fair and square. Alas! its twigs were thin, elastic, and slippery with frozen snow. A wild grasp with all four paws failed to stop me. Down I went to the ground below.
Oddly enough, this was where my luck turned. If I had fallen on to the hard frozen surface I should almost certainly have been too stunned to move at once. As it was, I alighted on a spot where only a thin coating of powdery snow covered a deep soft cushion of dead leaves. Before the cat was half-way down the birch trunk I was in the beech-tree.
Rusty and Cob were awaiting me.
‘Good squirrel, Scud!’ cried my brother, in tones of such warm praise as absolutely astonished me, for I was intensely ashamed of myself for my cowardice, and for having had such a tumble.
However, there was no time to waste. With Rusty leading, we were away through the beech into the next tree, and so across the coppice at full speed. The cat, lashing her tail with rage, followed for a while across the snow beneath, and once or twice started climbing again after us. But we were most careful to keep in the thickest part of the wood, and whenever she climbed we merely jumped to the next tree. Soon she tired of this—for her—unprofitable pursuit, and stole softly away.
Not until we had watched her out of the coppice and away along the hedges in the direction of Merton Spinney did we venture to return to our respective homes, where we shut ourselves up snugly and went to sleep again.
