 | DAY THE SIXTH. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago |  |
6. DAY THE SIXTH.
The sun rose broad and bright in a firmament of that most brilliant
and transparent blue, which I have witnessed in no other
country than America, so pure, so cloudless, so immeasurably distant
as it seems from the beholder's eye! There was not a speck
of cloud from east to west, from zenith to horizon; not a fleece of
vapor on the mountain sides; not a breath of air to ruffle the calm
basin of the Greenwood lake.
The rock-crowned, forest-mantled ridge, on the farther side of
the narrow sheet, was visible almost as distinctly through the medium
of the pure fresh atmosphere, as though it had been gazed at
through a telescope—the hues of the innumerable maples, in their
various stages of decay, purple, and crimson, and bright gorgeous
scarlet, were contrasted with the rich chrome yellow of the birch
and poplars, the sere red leaves of the gigantic oaks, and with the
ever verdant plumage of the junipers, clustered in massy patches on
every rocky promontory, and the tall spires of the dark pines and
hemlock.
Over this mass of many-colored foliage, the pale thin yellow light
of the new-risen sun was pouring down a flood of chaste illumination;
while, exhaled from the waters by his first beams, a silvery
gauze-like haze floated along the shores, not rising to the height of
ten feet from the limpid surface, which lay unbroken by the smallest
ripple, undisturbed by the slightest splash of fish or insect, as
still and tranquil to the eye as though it had been one huge plate
of beaten burnished silver; with the tall cones of the gorgeous
hills in all their rich variety, in all their clear minuteness, reflected,
summit downward, palpable as their reality, in that most perfect
mirror.
Such was the scene on which I gazed, as on the last day of our
sojourn in the Woodlands of fair Orange, I issued from the little
cabin, under the roof of which I had slept so dreamlessly and deep,
after the fierce excitement of our deer hunt, that while I was yet
slumbering, all save myself had risen, donned their accountrements,
and sallied forth—I knew not whither—leaving me certainly alone,
although as certainly not so much to my glory.
From the other cottage, as I stood upon the threshold, I might
hear the voices of the females, busy at their culinary labors, the
speedily approaching term of which was obviously denoted by the
rich savory steams which tainted—not, I confess, unpleasantly—the
fragrant morning air.
As I looked out upon this lovely morning, I did not—I acknowledge
it—regret the absence of my excellent though boisterous
companions; for there was something which I cannot define in the
deep stillness, in the sweet harmonious quiet of the whole scene
before me, that disposed my spirit to meditation far more than to
Teachmans' colony—not surging to and fro, obedient to the fickle
winds—but soaring straight, tall, unbroken, upward, like Corinthian
columns, each with its curled capital—seemed to invite the soul of
the spectator to mount with it toward the sunny heavens.
By-and-bye I strayed downward to the beach, a narrow strip of
silvery sand and variegated pebbles, and stood there long, silently
watching the unknown sports, the seemingly—to us at least—unmeaning
movements, and strange groupings of the small fry, which
darted to and fro in the clear shallows within two yards of my feet;
or marking the brief circling ripples, wrought by the morning swallow's
wing, and momently subsiding into the wonted rest of the
calm lake.
How long I stood there musing, I know not, for I had fallen into
a train of thought so deep that I wa sutterly unconscious of everything
around me, when I was suddenly aroused from my reverie by
the quick dash of oars, and by a volley of some seven barrels discharged
in quick succession. As I looked up with an air, I presume,
somewhat bewildered, I heard the loud and bellowing laugh
of Tom, and saw the whole of our stout company gliding up in two
boats, the skiff and the canoe, toward the landing place, perhaps a
hundred yards from the spot where I stood.
“Come here, darn you,” were the first words I heard, from the
mouth of what speaker it need not be said—“come here, you lazy,
snortin, snoozin Decker—lend a hand here right stret away, will
you! We've got more perch than all of us can carry—and Archer's
got six wood-duck!”
Hurrying down in obedience to this unceremonious mandate, I
perceived that indeed their time had not been misemployed, for the
whole bottom of the larger boat was heaped with fish—the small
and delicate green perch, the cat-fish, hideous in its natural, but
most delicious in its artificial shape, and, above all, the large and
broad-backed yellow bass, from two to four pounds weight. While
Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had
picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs,
a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative
throughout the country, and thirteen English snipe.
“By Jove,” cried I, “but this is something like!—where the
deuce did you pick the snipe up, Harry—and above all, why the
deuce did you let me lie wallowing in bed this lovely morning?”
“One question at a time,” responded he, “good master Frank;
one question at a time! For the snipe, I found them very unexpectedly,
I tell you, in a bit of marshy meadow just at the outlet of
the pond. Garry was paddling me along at the top of his pace,
after a wing-tipped wood duck, when up jumped one of the long-billed
rascals, and had the impudence to skim across the creek under
my very nose—`skeap! skeap!' Well, I dropped him, you may
be sure, with a charge, too, of duck shot; and he fell some ten yards
over on the meadow; so leaving Garry to pursue the drake, I landed,
loaded my gun with No. 9, and went to work—the result as you
one I cut to pieces and could not find for want of Chase—two went
away without a shot, over the hills and far away! As for letting
you lie in bed, you must talk to Tom about it; I bid him call you,
and the fat rascal never did so, and never said a word about you,
till we were ready for a start, and then no master Frank was to
the fore.”
“Well, Tom,” cried I, “what have you got to say to this?”
“Now, cuss you, do n't come foolin' about me,” replied that
worthy, aiming a blow at me, which, had it taken place, might well
have felled Goliah; but which, as I sprang aside, wasting its energies
on the impassive air, had well nigh floored the striker. “Dont
you come foolin' about me—you knows right well I called you, and
you knows, too, you almost cried, and told me to clear out, and let
you git an hour's sleep! for by the Lord you thought Archer and I
was made of steel!—you could n't and you would n't—and now you
wants to know the reason why you warn't along with us!”
“Never mind the old thief, Frank,” said Archer, seeing that I
was on the point of answering, “even his own aunt says he is the
most notorious liar in all Orange County—and Heaven forbid we
should gainsay that most respectable old lady!”
Into what violent asseveration our host would have plunged at
this declaration, remains, like the tale of Cambuscan bold, veiled in
deep mystery; for as he started from the log on which he had been
reposing while in the act of unsplicing his bamboo fishing pole, the
elder of the Teachmans thrust his head out of the cabin nearest to
us—“Come, boys, to breakfast!”—and at the first word of his welcome
voice, Tom made, as he would have himself defined it, stret
tracks for the table. And a mighty different table it was from that
to which we had sat down on the preceding morning. Timothy—
unscared by the wonder of the mountain nymphs, who deemed a
being of the masculine gender as an intruder, scarce to be tolerated,
on the mysteries of the culinary art—had exerted his whole skill,
and brought forth all the contents of his canteen! We had a superb
steak of the fattest venison, graced by cranberries stewed with
cayenne pepper, and sliced lemons. A pot of excellent black tea,
almost as strong as the cognac which flanked it; a dish of beautiful
fried perch, with cream as thick as porridge, our own loaf sugar, and
Teachman's new laid eggs, hot wheaten cakes, and hissing rashers
of right tender pork, furnished a breakfast forth that might have
vied successfully with those which called forth, in the Hebrides,
such raptures from the lexicographer.
Breakfast despatched—for which, to say the truth, Harry gave
us but little time—we mustered our array and started; Harry and
Tom and I making one party, with the spaniels—Garry, the Teachmans,
and Timothy, with the setters, which would hunt very willingly
for him in Archer's absence, forming a second. It was scarce
eight o'clock when we went out, each on a separate beat, having
arranged our routes so as to meet at one o'clock in the great
swamp, said to abound, beyond all other places, in the ruffed grouse
last day.
“Now, Frank,” said Harry, “you have done right well throughout
the week; and if you can stand this day's tramp, I will say for
you that you are a sportsman, aye, every inch of one. We have got
seven miles right hard walking over the roughest hills you ever
saw—the hardest moors of Yorkshire are nothing to them—before
we reach the swamp, and that you'll find a settler! Tom, here,
will keep along the bottoms, working his way as best he can;
while we make good the uplands! Are your flasks full?”
“Sartain, they are!” cried Tom—“and I've got a rousin big
black bottle, too—but not a drop of the old cider sperrits do you git
this day, boys; not if your thirsty throats were cracking for it!”
“Well! well! we won't bother you—you'll need it all, old porpoise,
before you get to the far end. Here, take a hard boiled egg
or two, Frank, and some salt, and I'll pocket a few biscuits—we
must depend on ourselves to-day!”
“Ay! ay! Sur,” chuckled Timothy, “there's naw Tim Matlock
to mak looncheon ready for ye a' the day. See thee, measter
Frank. Ay'se gotten 't measter's single barrel; and gin I dunna
ootshoot measter Draa—whoy Ay'se deny my coontry!”
“Most certainly you will deny it then, Tim,” answered I, “for
Mr. Draw shoots excellently well, and you—”
“And Ay'se shot mony a hare by 't braw moon, doon i' bonny
Cawoods. Ay'se beat, Ay'se oophaud[4]
it!” So saying, he shouldered
the long single barrel, and paddled off with the most extraordinary
expedition after the Teachmans, who had already started,
leading the setters in a leash, till they were out of sight of
Archer.
“They have the longest way to go,” said Harry, “by a mile at
the least; so we have time for a cheroot before we three get under
way.'
Cigars were instantly produced and lighted, and we lounged
about the little court for the best part of half an hour, till the report
of a distant gunshot, ringing with almost innumerable reverberations
along the woodland shores, announced to us that our companions
had already got into their work.
“Here goes,” cried Harry, springing to his feet at once, and
grasping his good gun; “here goes—they have got into the long
hollow, Tom, and by the time we've crossed the ridge, and got upon
our ground, they'll be abreast of us.”
“Hold on! hold on!” Tom bellowed, “you are the darndest
critter, when you do git goin—now hold on, do—I wants some rum,
and Forester here looks a kind of white about the gills, his whatdye-call,
cheeroot, has made him sick, I reckon!”
Of course, with such an exhortation in our ears as this, it was impossible
to do otherwise than wet our whistles with one drop of the
old Ferintosh; and then, Tom having once again recovered his good
“swam not the deep river,” as merrily as ever sportsmen did, from
the days of Arbalast and Longbow, down to these times of Westley
Richards' caps and Eley's wire cartridges.
A tramp of fifteen minutes through some scrubby brushwood,
brought us to the base of a steep stony ridge covered with tall and
thrifty hickories and a few oaks and maples intermixed, rising so
steeply from the shore that it was necessary not only to strain every
nerve of the leg, but to swing our bodies up from tree to tree, by
dint of hand. It was indeed a hard and heavy tug; and I had
pretty tough work, what between the exertion of the ascent and
the incessant fits of laughter, into which I was thrown by the grotesquely
agile movements of fat Tom; who, grunting, panting,
sputtering, and launching forth from time to time the strangest and
most blasphemously horrid oaths, contrived to make way to the
summit faster than either of us—crashing through the dense underwood
of juniper and sumach, uprooting the oak saplings as he
swung from this to that, and spurning down huge stones upon
us, as we followed at a cautious distance. When we at last
crowned the ridge, we found him, just as Harry had predicted,
stretched in a half-recumbent attitude, leaning against a huge gray
stone, with his fur cap and double-barrel lying upon the withered
leaves beside him, puffing, as Archer told him, to his mighty indignation,
like a great grampus in shoal water.
After a little rest, however, Falstaff revived, though not before
he had imbibed about a pint of applejack, an occupation in which
he could not persuade either of us, this time, to join him. Descending
from our elevated perch, we now got into a deep glen, with a
small brooklet winding along the bottom, bordered on either hand
by a stripe of marshy bog earth, bearing a low growth of alder
bushes, mixed with stunted willows. On the side opposite to that
by which we had descended, the hill rose long and lofty, covered
with mighty timber-trees standing in open ranks and overshadowing
a rugged and unequal surface, covered with whortleberry, wintergreen,
and cranberries, the latter growing only along the courses
of the little runnels, which channelled the whole slope. Here,
stony ledges and gray broken crags peered through the underwood,
among the crevices of which the stunted cedars stood thick set, and
matted with a thousand creeping vines and brambles; while there,
from some small marshy basin, the giant Rhododendron Maximum
rose almost to the height of a timber tree.
“Here, Tom,” said Harry, “keep you along this run—you'll
have a woodcock every here and there, and look sharp when you
hear them fire over the ridge, for they can't shoot to speak of, and
the partridge will cross—you know. You, master Frank, stretch
your long legs and get three parts of the way up this hill—over the
second mound—there, do you see that great blue stone with a
thunder splintered tree beside it? just beyond that! then turn due
west, and mark the trending of the valley, keeping a little way
across you both. Go very slow, Tom—now, hurrah!”
Exhorted thus, I bounded up the hill and soon reached my appointed
station; but not before I heard the cheery voice of Archer
encouraging the eager spaniels—“Hie cock! hie cock! pu-r-r-h!”
—till the woods rang to the clear shout!
Scarce had I reached the top, before, as I looked down into the
glen below me, a puff of white smoke, instantly succeeded by a
second, and the loud full reports of both his barrels from among the
green-leafed alders, showed me that Tom had sprung game. The
next second I heard the sharp questing of the spaniel Dan, followed
by Harry's—“Charge!—down Cha-arge, you little thief—down to
cha-arge, will you!”
But it was all in vain—for on he went furious and fast, and the
next moment the thick whirring of a partridge reached my excited
ears. Carefully, eagerly, I gazed out to mark the wary bird; but
the discharge of Harry's piece assured me, as I thought, that further
watch was needless; and stupidly enough I dropped the muzzle
of my gun.
Just at the self-same point of time—“Mark! mark, Frank!”
shouted Archer, “mark! there are a brace of them!”—and as he
spoke, gliding with speed scarcely inferior to a bullet's flight upon
their balanced pinions, the noble birds swept past me, so close that
I could have struck them with a riding whip.
Awfully fluttered was I—I confess—but by a species of involuntary
and instinctive consideration I rallied instantly, and became
cool. The grouse had seen me, and wheeled diverse; one darting
to the right, through a small opening between a cedar bush and a
tall hemlock—the other skimming through the open oak woods a
little toward the left.
At such a crisis thought comes in a second's space; and I have
often fancied that in times of emergency or great surprise, a man
deliberates more promptly, and more prudently withal, than when
he has full time to let his second thought trench on his first and mar
it. So was it in this case with me. At half a glance I saw, that if I
meant to get both birds, the right-hand fugitive must be the first,
and that with all due speed; for but a few yards further he would
have gained a brake which would have laughed to scorn Lord Kennedy
or Harry T—r.
Pitching my gun up to my shoulder, both barrels loaded with
Eley's red wire cartridge No. 6, I gave him a snap shot, and had
the satisfaction of seeing him keeled well over, not wing-tipped or
leg-broken, but fairly riddled by the concentrated charge of something
within thirty yards. Turning as quick as light, I caught a
fleet sight of the other, which by a rapid zig-zag was now flying
full across my front, certainly over forty-five yards distant, among
a growth of thick-set sapplings—the hardest shot, in my opinion,
that can be selected to test a quick and steady sportsman. I gave it
him, and down he came too—killed dead—that I knew, for I had
shot full half a yard before him. Just as I dropped by butt to load,
quick redoubled cracks of Harry's heavy dog-whip, and his incessant
rating—`Down, cha-arge! For sha-ame! Dan! Dan! down
cha-arge! for sha-ame!”—broken at times by the impatient oaths of
Tom Draw, in the gulley, who had, it seems, knocked down two
woodcock, neither of which he could bag, owing to the depth and
instability of the wet bog!
“Quit! quit! d—n you, quit there, leatherin that brute! Quit,
I say, or I'll send a shot at you! Come here, Archer—I say, come
here!—there be the darndest lot of droppins here, I ever see—full
twenty cock, I swon!”
But still the scourge continued to resound, and still the raving of
the spaniel excited Tom's hot ire.
“Frank Forester!” exclaimed he once again. “Do see now—
Harry missed them partridge, and so he licks the poor dumb brute
for it. I wish I were a spannel, and he'd try it on with me!”
“I will, too,” answered Archer, with a laugh; “I will, too, if
you wish it, though you are not a spaniel, nor any thing else half
so good. And why, pray, should I not scourge this wild little imp!
he ran slap into the best pack of partridge I have seen this two
years—fifteen or sixteen birds. I wonder they're not scattered—
it's full late to find them packed!”
“Did you kill ere a one?” Tom holloaed; “not one, either of
you!”
“I did,” answered Harry, “I nailed the old cock bird, and a
rare dog he is!—two pounds, good weight, I warrant him,” he
added, weighing him as he spoke. “Look at the crimson round
his eye, Frank, like a cock pheasant's, and his black ruff or
tippet—by George! but he's a beauty! And what did you do?”
he continued.
“I bagged a brace—the only two that crossed me.”
“Did you, though?” exclaimed Archer, with no small expression
of surprise; “did you, though?—that's prime work—it takes a
thorough workman to bag a double shot upon October partridge!
But come, we must go down to Tom; hark how the old hound keeps
bawling!”
Well, down we went. The spaniels quickly retrieved his dead
birds, and flushed some fifteen more, of which we gave a clean account—Harry
making up for lost time by killing six cock, right and
left, almost before they topped the bushes—seven more fell to me,
but single birds all of them—and but one brace to Tom, who now
began to wax indignant; for Archer, as I saw, for fun's sake, was
making it a point to cut down every bird that rose to him, before he
could get up his gun; and then laughed at him for being fat and
slow. But the laugh was on Tom's side before long—for while we
were yet in the valley, the report of a gun came faintly down the
wind from beyond the hill, and as we all looked out attentively, a
partridge skimmed the brow, flying before the wind at a tremendous
pace, and skated across the valley without stooping from his
altitude. I stood the first, and fired, a yard at least ahead of him—
barrel—still on he went, the faster, as it seemed, for the weak
insult.
Harry came next, and he too fired twice, and—tell it not in Gath
—missed twice! “Now, Fat-Guts!” shouted Archer, not altogether
in his most amiable or pleasing tones; and sure enough up
went the old man's piece—roundly it echoed with its mighty
charge—a cloud of feathers drifted away in a long line from the
slaughtered victim—which fell not direct, so rapid was its previous
flight, but darted onward in a long declining tangent, and struck
the rocky soil with a thud clearly audible where we stood, full a
hundred yards from the spot where it fell!
He bagged, amid Tom's mighty exultation, forward again we went
and in a short half hour got into the remainder of the pack which
we had flushed before, in some low tangled thorn cover, among
which they lay well, and we made havoc of them. And here the
oddest accident I ever witnessed in the field took place—so odd,
that I am half ashamed to write to it—but where's the odds, for it
is true?
A fine cock bird was flushed close at Tom's feet, and went off to
the left, Harry and I both standing to the right; he blazed away,
and at the shot the bird sprung up six or eight feet into the air, with
a sharp staggering flutter. “Killed dead!” cried I; well done
again, fat Tom.” But to my great surprise the partridge gathered
wing, and flew on, feebly at first, and dizzily, but gaining strength
more and more as he went on the farther. At the last, after a long
flight, he treed in a tall leafless pine.
“Run after him, Frank,” Archer called to me, “you are the
lightest; and we'll beat up the swale till you return. You saw
the tree he took?”
“Aye! aye!” said I, preparing to make off.
“Well! he sits near the top—now mind me! no chivalry,
Frank! give him no second chance—a ruffed grouse, darting
downward from a tall pine tree, is a shot to balk the devil—it's
full five to one that you shoot over and behind him—give him no
mercy!”
Off I went, and after a brisk trot, five or six minutes long, reached
my tree, saw my bird perched on a broken limb close to the
time-blanched trunk, cocked my Joe Manton, and was in the very
act of taking aim, when something so peculiar in the motion of the
bird attracted me, that I paused. He was nodding like a sleepy
man, and seemed with difficulty to retain his foot-hold. While I
was gazing, he let go, pitched headlong, fluttered his wings in the
death-struggle, yet in air, and struck the ground close at my feet,
stone-dead. Tom's first shot had cut off the whole crown of the
head, with half the brain and the right eye; and after that the
bird had power to fly five or six hundred yards, and then to cling
upon its perch for at least ten minutes.
Rejoining my companions, we again went onward, slaying and
bagging as we went, till when the sun was at meridian we sat down
woodcock and champagne, but of hard eggs, salt, biscuit, and
Scotch whiskey—not so bad either—nor were we disinclined to
profit by it. We were still smoking on the marge, when a shot
right ahead told us that our out-skirting party was at hand.
All in an instant were on the alert; in twenty minutes we joined
forces, and compared results. We had twelve partridge, five rabbits,
seventeen woodcock; they, six gray squirrels, seven partridge,
and one solitary cock—Tim, proud as Lucifer at having led the field.
But his joy now was at an end—for to his charge the setters were
committed to be led in leash, while we shot on, over the spaniels.
Another dozen partridge, and eighteen rabbits, completed our last
bag in the Woodlands.
Late was it when we reached the Teachmans' hut—and long
and deep was the carouse that followed; and when the moon had
sunk and we were turning in, Tom Draw swore with a mighty
oath of deepest emphasis—that since we had passed a week with
him, he'd take a seat down in the wagon, and see the Beacon
Races. So we filled round once more, and clinked our glasses to
bind the joyous compact, and turned in happy.
| DAY THE SIXTH. The Warwick woodlands, or, Things as they were there, ten years ago | |