Part 9

“Come in, zur,” quavered Mrs. Tiger.

Aaron, who was a devout chapel-goer, began to tremble.

“It be a ghostie!” he whispered.

“Git out!” scoffed Mrs. Tiger, for she had seen two large black shapes that she recognised pass across the little window.

Sure enough, the old ravens had discovered their young. The curious thing, Muggy emphasised, was that there had been no sign of them either during Tiger’s climb or afterwards, while the three men were tramping the three miles to his cottage, nor had they heard any croaking.

Meanwhile, the people in the cottage were fearful that the policeman would come their way and discover everything. The old birds kept banging away at the thatch, tearing out great mouthfuls of it in an endeavour to get at the fledgelings. Tiger did not dare to use his gun; the situation frightened him; so he opened the door. Immediately the cat pounced at a young bird, but one of the old birds swooped down and gave the cat a tap on the head that sent it spinning away, to drop dead with a hole in its skull that Tiger could put two fingers in. The youngsters, with nobody to stop them, got right away, half flying and half hopping.

“And since that day, zur,” Muggy said solemnly, “no raven has been known to touch a lamb. That’s as true as I’m sitting here.”

The ravens have nested on the headland again this year, using their old breeding ledge; and I am glad that at least one pair of these rare birds haunts the solitudes by the sea. No one interferes with them, except the peregrines, but the raven is too much for that fierce swift raider, turning on his back in mid-air and holding his beak upwards like a javelin as the falcon is about to strike. A quick eye the raven needs, for the hawk plunges at about two hundred miles an hour. But they never harm one another, and I know for a fact, having seen it myself, that the ravens practise their turning movement. They love to float in an uprushing wind just below the cliff-edge, and roll over like a twirled distaff, sideways, and then back again. And I think that if any stranger tried to shoot one, the Nightcrow Inn would rise in anger against him. The ravens have earned their sanctuary.

THE OUTLAW:

Being the indisputable (journalese) truth about the peregrine falcon that came to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1920.

The beechwood was ten miles from London. One morning in late September a strange visitor came to it, and perched upon a low branch. A blackbird, feeding below among the dried moss and brown leaves, shrilled a sudden alarm. The blackbird had never seen such an apparition before, but he recognised the family.

The newcomer remained still. He was tired and exhausted after a long journey. Since dawn he had flown high up, his pinions urged on and on by a fierce despair. For his mate had been shot upon Lundy Island, and he had flown straight into the sun’s face as though to find her spirit taken back into its flame that gave all the wild ones life. Swift had he flown, never pausing till he came to the beechwood; seeing it below, and wrapping his wings around him, he had fallen like a great iron arrowhead into its solitude.

The pigeons who roosted were in the stubble: the starlings haunted the water-meadows: the jackdaws flocked with the rocks about the furrows. The beechwood was still, for the blackbird had slipped away.

The stranger flapped his long thin wings, and looked around him.

He was about eighteen inches long, and bluish-ash in colour. His throat and upper breast were white, tinged with yellow, and marked with a few dark streaks. But the most noticeable thing was the eyes. They were large, and keen, dusky; ringed with yellow eyelids. Fierce and remorseless was their expression, aided by the short, hooked bill.

The falcon suddenly stiffened. From the lake below the sloping forest had come a faint trumpet-like call. He knew the call well, for many times had he and his mate preyed upon the wild duck in the Devon estuary opposite Lundy Island.

The next moment he had gone through the trees, a swift shadow. A little vole splitting a beechmast on the ground below crouched in terror. For everything preyed upon its kind. The weasel came by day, and in summer the grass snake; if it left the wood and went to the meadow there was the poised kestrel hawk; in the furrows a fox sometimes ran, snapping at the tiny mice; in the dark night came the great wood owl, and that white devil, the barn owl.

The mouse crouched in terror, but he passed on, a swift shadow: he was a noble bird, and did not take rodents.

Seven duck had flighted, and were going towards the reaches of the Thames. They flew fast and steadily, at fifty miles an hour. The passing narrow shadow became a relentless and swift whirling speck above them, ever climbing.

Then one of the duck was falling, the flight was scattered; the falling one clutched and borne to the beechwood, where the hooked beak tore and ripped.

Thenceforward the wood became a place of terror. One morning the keeper discovered a cock pheasant lying dead on the leaves. A small part of its breast had been eaten. At first he thought that it was the work of a fox--but he was puzzled; he knew that the fox usually ate more of a longtail than a small part of its breast, and always buried his half-eaten victim for consumption on another occasion. And on turning it over, he was still more puzzled. The back was ripped as though a knife had slashed and turned the skin right back.

A hundred yards away he found a carrion crow. The back of the crow was also smashed, although no attempt had been made to eat any section of its body. In other parts of the wood the keeper found slain pheasants, all badly broken; the remains of a squirrel--one forepaw and a bushy tail comprising the remains. Three dead duck floated in the lake. Whatever new and ghastly thing was causing the havoc, he told his head man later, it seemed to delight in destroying and killing for sport.

Gradually the terror became the topic of talk in the inns roundabout Bromley, in Kent. Some of the bolder and more imaginative declared that it was caused by an Arctic owl--one even said that he had seen it stooping at a dog in the twilight. He was a well-known liar.

No one in the district--which was outlying to a large town just outside the suburban area of south-east London--had ever heard of the like.

The mystery was solved in a sudden manner. The keeper had been setting baited traps--of the “gin” variety--tempting the unknown with the entrails of rabbits. But he caught nothing save a mangy stoat, blind in one eye and the other filming over with age. The gins were of no avail.

The keeper kept fowls in his garden. One day he was sitting in the porch of his cottage, smoking after the midday meal, and ruminating on what the squire had said about giving up the rearing of pheasants. His fowls were strutting and scratching: one had recently produced an egg and was proclaiming the fact with unmelodious insistency.

There came a hissing as of something falling: an alarmed curse from a hen. The keeper jumped up, swearing at the bluish tumbling of narrow wings that had gone over the hedge.

One of his fowls was kicking the air spasmodically. There was blood on the path. He picked the hen up--it was headless.