by B. B.
‘Well, we ought to start snaring anyway,’ said Big John, ‘or we shan’t get much in the way of meat.’
‘I’ll go back to the Dower House and bring some more supplies, sugar, flour and things, if that’d help,’ suggested Little John.
Big John fishing in the Blind Pool
‘No you don’t, my lad,’ replied Robin, ‘they’ll have every door and window watched. I shouldn’t be surprised if Bunting doesn’t have a watch on the place all the time. You bet your boots they’ll be expecting us to go back again for more supplies and we should be caught red-handed. Besides, Cook would be told to keep everything locked up, and anyway we ought to try and live on the country; that’s half the fun of an outlaw’s life.’
Next day the boys set to work to snare in earnest. They looked out the snare wire which had almost been forgotten and made neat wooden pegs for the snares, and set them in all the likely woodland runs, but without result. They next tried setting them in the mouths of the rabbit holes, but again no success greeted their efforts. They were doing something wrong. Once or twice they found a snare pulled up and gone but that was all.
Little John suggested making bows and arrows. They made a bow string from some of the pig’s hide and bows from young saplings, but they soon found that a really successful weapon was beyond their ingenuity. Nor could they shoot their barbless arrows true. They did manage to kill a moorhen, but the wretched bird died of fright more than anything else. And all the time their stock of ammunition was dwindling lower and lower.
The smoked pig was nearly all gone – what a useful animal it had been – and endless rabbit and pigeon was becoming monotonous. They fell back mainly on fish. Every night, as dusk fell, the three outlaws set off down the woodland path for the Blind Pool. They fished by hand, for rods were too cumbersome. They lay with their faces close to the inky water fishing by touch. When the massive oaks grew black and still and the bats flittered across the surface of the pool they could hear the big tench rolling and sucking like pigs among the weeds, and now and again there would come a faint tremor from those abysmal depths as some sluggish monster fastened on the wriggling worm. The line would be jerked smartly upwards and a great bronze fish would come kicking on to the bracken, gasping and flapping, the fronds sticking to its scales. And what magical fish those Blind Pool tench were to be sure, with bold blunt lines, thick of back and sturdy of tail! Fried in pig’s fat they were food celestial and never a night passed but they returned with at least half a dozen of these bronze beauties threaded on sallow twig.
One still and magic night, when the full moon shone down and its reflection hung like a great lantern in the oily water, Robin sat on the heron’s log – the selfsame log from which Bunting had taken his fatal plunge – fishing in seven feet of water. Big John and Little John were somewhere down the far end of the pond and he was alone. Already he had caught three tench; the biggest weighed four pounds. They lay beside him on the bracken.
He lay flat on his stomach with his nose an inch from the water. Now and again a moth banged into him or a water rat swam across the moon’s path to its hole under the willows. All at once something made him look up and there, twenty yards away in the moonlight, was a deer. It stood with the bracken up to its breast, gazing towards the far end of the pool where the other boys were busy over their lines.
Robin Hood never moved; neither did the deer. And after what seemed an hour the great beast moved silently out of the fern and bent its head to drink, half hidden by the willows. It drank noiselessly, but the widening rings went gleaming outwards and lapped the log on which he lay. A deer! So there were such things in the Chase after all. The Whiting had been right.
The rifle, alas, was back in camp, though even if he’d had it with him, it would have been a wrong thing to shoot in that dim, uncertain light. The animal might have been wounded and gone away to die a lingering death. Yet, given a good light and a clear shot, Robin was sure he could bring down a deer, even with so small a calibre rifle as the .22.
A muffled splash at the far end of the pool where Big John had just captured a large tench caused the animal to wheel lightly round and vanish like smoke into the fern.
They did not always visit the Blind Pool at night though the fish were easier to catch then. When the sun was hot the outlaws found the oak tree clearing windless and almost suffocating and then they would visit the pool for a swim, though they took the wise precaution of always having a scout on the watch. The sudden appearance of Bunting had been rather unnerving. And then there was that mysterious character, Smokoe Joe, whom they had not yet seen. If Smokoe found them the hunt would be up all over again. Sometimes when the wind set across the forest from the south they thought they smelt his fires but that was all. He remained an unseen potential enemy.
When the long summer afternoons grew unbearably torrid the boys would strip naked and slide off into the peaty pool, diving like dabchicks and chasing each other underwater. One of the things public school had taught them was to swim like otters. Sometimes Robin would drop his legs and hold his nose and let himself sink down and down out of the warmed upper layer of water into the icy depths below. He had glimpses then of a strange subaqueous world, of long-drowned pine trunks black and spiked and the dim green writhing jungles of the lily roots, which appeared uncommonly like the tentacles of an octopus.
And that underworld of water, where a green twilight reigned perpetually, revealed the fleeing forms of fish – some bulky, others small – which fled before him into the tangled forests of the weed.
It was always something of a relief to rise again to the surface, his body seemingly drawn by some invisible line as though he too were a captured fish; to leave below that icy cellar and break surface into the dazzling warmth of the sunlit afternoon.
Once Big John got into difficulties. He foolishly swam among the lilies to pick one of the attractive flowers – no wonder the ancients called the water lily the flower of the nymphs! – and the coiling pipelike roots wound themselves about his ankles and held him fast. The more he threshed and struggled the greater became their slimy grip so he wisely lay still and called for help.
Robin and Little John got him out, but for a long time he lay exhausted on the bank, white of face, and with a new cold fear in his heart. The Blind Pool was not to be trifled with, nor would it have its treasures stolen.
Robin was determined to persevere with the setting of snares. There was evidently something in their woodcraft which was lacking. So one afternoon towards the end of July he set out alone with some snare-wire snares in his pocket and set the near some burrows which he had found in another part of the Chase.
The others had said they were going to the Blind Pool to catch tench and had promised Robin they would be back before sundown to get the fire going in readiness for his return. He took the rifle with him and after telling Big John and Little John to mind what they were about he set off into the fern. It was a gloomy afternoon, brooding and still, threatening thunder, which boded no good for the would-be tench catchers. Fish do not bite in thundery weather.
The flies were an intolerable nuisance. When the boys had first come to the Chase they had not been worried by them, but that afternoon they were almost unbearable. Hardly a bird sang for it was late summer, and they were worn out with family cares and perhaps they already felt the approach of autumn.
Already, on the blackberry bushes the blossom had begun to fade and here and there the berries had formed, hard and red as yet, but promising fine fruit later on. The nut bushes, too, showed tiny pale points which would, in time, be filberts. Robin carried his rifle at the ready but that afternoon not even a rabbit was visible.
It took him the best part of an hour to reach the warren and he began to search about for suitable runs. It was obviously no good setting the snares in the warren itself and he endeavoured to discover some well-worn run among the fern close by.
A sudden sound made him pause. It was a muffled whimpering as of some animal in
distress. It was some time before he located its direction. Not far distant was a large tree which had fallen and under its upturned roots were several holes. The whimpering seemed to be coming from there and after a time he tracked it down. Some creature was either trapped or in distress under the root. He lay at full length with his ear to the ground and listened carefully.
Then he found a broken branch and with this primitive spade he began to excavate. After a while he had removed a good deal of earth which he scratched out behind him like a rabbit. Then at last he saw the back quarters of a dog, a small dog, a regular lurcher’s poaching cur. It had been caught by a snag through its collar and was unable to free itself.
After a little more digging Robin at last got it out. A more wretched animal he had never seen. How long it had been in the hole he could not guess, but its ribs were prominent and it was too weak to stand. Its rough coat was matted with earth and its claws worn down, the pads quite raw and bleeding. Robin took it up tenderly. It shut its eyes and trembled as it lay in his arms.
‘Poor old chap,’ said Robin, ‘I’ll get you back to camp; it’s grub you want.’ The poor little beast made a feeble attempt to lick his hand and dropped its head wearily on Robin’s arm. It was evident that unless he got it back to camp without delay and gave it some food it would soon be dead.
When at last he reached the clearing by the oak tree he found the others had returned. They had had no bites, but this was not to be wondered at, as thunder was already muttering in the distance. They lit a fire and cooked some rabbit and soon the famished waif was eating ravenously.
‘Why, he can’t have had anything to eat for days!’ exclaimed Big John. ‘If you hadn’t found him he would have been dead in the morning. What are we going to do with him, Robin?’
‘We’ll keep him I guess; he’ll be useful to us for rabbitting and company for us too. There’s no name on the collar; it’s probably some poacher’s dog.’
‘What shall we call him?’
‘Let’s call him after Bill Bobman’s dog, Whisky. It’s a good name for a dog and it’s short and snappy.’
‘If we’re going to use him for shooting we might call him Bang,’ suggested Little John. The dog raised its head and looked enquiringly at Little John. ‘Why, I believe that’s his proper name. Is it Bang, old boy?’ Bang was too engrossed with finishing the rabbit.
After finishing his meal he lay beside the fire and feebly tried to lick the caked earth from his coat. He also licked his paws, grooming each paw in turn.
‘Seems to be quite at home,’ said Little John. ‘It’ll be fun having a dog. I expect he belongs to someone in Cheshunt Toller or maybe he’s Smokoe Joe’s.’
Smokoe Joe! They had not thought of that!
‘We’d better keep him tied up for a bit,’ said Robin, ‘or he’ll be going off again.’
But Bang at that moment seemed quite contented to stay where he was and after a while he curled up and fell asleep in front of the fire.
It was quite three days before Bang’s claws were healed. They combed the mud out of his coat and soon he seemed a different dog. He went with them everywhere and it was not long before they found he was quite the cleverest poaching dog they had ever seen. He smelt out the rabbits under the fern and stalked them like a cat, pouncing on them as they lay in their forms.
And in addition to this they found he had an excellent mouth for retrieving game. When Robin dropped a pigeon into some thick cover Bang found it for them. He loved a gun and sometimes they would see him go up and lick the stock and wag his tail. As Big John said, he seemed to have twice the brains of Tilly, who was so fat; anyway she had never caught a rabbit in her life. The little dog was unhappy, however, and sometimes when they were sitting by the fire he would get up uneasily and wander about whimpering quietly.
But they never gave him the chance to run away and whenever for some reason or another they had to leave him behind, they tied him inside the tree. Evidently he had been trained not to howl when he was left because he never made a sound.
A week after his arrival he brought them a hen pheasant. The bird was alive and unharmed and Bang had evidently pounced on it as it sat on a nest. Either that, or he had smelt the bird as it crouched under the fern.
It was a most fortunate thing he was so useful in this way because Robin had to confess a complete failure with his snares. All he caught was one infant rabbit, which they had for breakfast with the bacon.
The pheasant, duly roasted, was delicious. Bang finished up the bones.
They found him perfectly trained for stalking. If Robin was worming his way among the underwood to get a shot at game, Bang would belly crawl five yards in the rear and if told to lie still he would do so and not follow until given a signal with the hand.
He brought them scores of hedgehogs which in some clever way he picked up in his mouth, without pricking himself. Most dogs will bark at a hedgehog but Bang was silent at all times. The only sound he had ever been heard to make was when Robin had found him trapped in the rabbit hole. He slept in the tree with them and the boys thus realized an ambition which they had always cherished, that of having a dog to sleep with them at night!
12. Mr Hawkins
‘It’s no good, chaps, we’ve got to face up to it,’ said Robin Hood one evening after supper. ‘The pig’s nearly finished and anyway it’s beginning to taste mighty funny. I reckon it’s because we didn’t use enough salt in the curing of it. There don’t seem to be any more wild pigs roaming around. We’ve shot up all the moorhens on the Blind Pool and it’s too early for duck yet. We’ve got exactly one more breakfast of porridge oats, matches are short, the salt’s gone; in fact, you chaps, we’ve got to rustle round a bit and do something.’
‘You think it’s too risky going back again to Cherry Walden and raiding the Dower House?’ asked Big John.
‘Yes, anyway, even if we could get into the house and we got what we wanted, it isn’t my idea of livin’ rough. Of course we’ve got the Blind Pool tench, we shall go on catching those for as long as the hot weather lasts and the perch will go on well into the winter, though they all seem to be small ones. But all the same, somehow or another, we’ve got to get some more cartridges. All I can think of is for one of us to go into either Cheshunt Toller or Brendon and buy what we want. We’ve only got fifteen shillings, but we could get a good bit with that, and we’ll buy some more salt, sugar and porridge oats.’
‘Looks as though we mean staying here,’ said Big John.
‘Well, why not?’ asked Robin defiantly. ‘So far we’ve got along all right and we’ve had a grand time. I vote we don’t pack up until we’re absolutely on our beam ends. Father and Mother will be back after Christmas and then we’ll give ourselves up.’
‘And take what’s coming to us?’ asked Big John grimly.
‘Yes, and take what’s coming to us,’ retorted Robin. ‘I don’t care what you say, living wild like this will have done us just as much good as swotting away at Banchester all through the summer and autumn terms.’
‘I don’t expect Father will take that view,’ said Big John. ‘We shall probably be expelled from Banchester and our careers will be ruined.’
‘Well, Father’s sending you and Little John out to the colonies, isn’t he?’ asked Robin.
‘Not before we’ve passed all our beastly exams; two terms is a lot of time to miss, you know. I’ve forgotten everything I ever learnt.’
‘I wonder what Father will do to us,’ said Big John with a certain morbid interest. ‘It’s so long since we saw ’em both I can’t exactly remember what they look like.’
‘I remember when he lammed me for cheekin’ Mother once,’ said Robin with fervour. ‘I’ll bet his arms are just as strong – stronger than old Batcham’s.’ Batcham was his housemaster. ‘Well, as I say, we’ll take what’s coming to us,’ said Robin again.
‘I suppose we are doing wrong running away from the Dower House and Aunt Ellen; of course, it’s wrong when you come t
o see it from their point of view. But as I say, if our parents were here we shouldn’t have done it. We may have missed a good slice of Banchester, but we’ve been learning other things. It seems to me this idea of going to school and then into business isn’t the natural way for a man to live, at least to my way of thinking. Don’t you see what most people are missing? Something which is fine and grand. Living like we do, I mean out in the open air. They’re getting farther and farther away from the natural life, nature and all that; they’re creating a world which is … Oh, I don’t know … I can’t jaw properly … but you know what I mean. Now for you, Big John, if you are going out to Canada, this trip will be the best thing for you. Latin and Greek won’t be much good to you in the backwoods.’
‘I dare say not, Master Robin, but what about you? You want to be a doctor, don’t you?’ said Big John.
‘Yes, I do, heaven knows why.’
‘Well, this sort of thing might not do Little John and me much harm, but I’m not so sure about you, Robin. Doctors have to be pretty brainy people, you know.’
‘I know all that,’ replied Robin, ‘but look here, my merry men, I somehow feel this will be the best part of my life. I shan’t ever get the chance again. When we’ve finished with Banchester, because, of course, we shall go back, if the school will have us, I shall go on to Cambridge, I expect, to Father’s old college, and then it’s bricks and mortar for me for the rest of my life. It’s pretty awful when you come to think of it.’
‘Well, don’t let’s think of it,’ said Big John cheerily. ‘We seem to have forgotten what we were saying just now about supplies. They’ve got to be got. I don’t know about you fellows, but I’m dying for a nice big juicy cabbage. Salt’s important, too. I don’t think we can live without it. And the thought of rabbit makes me sick. We could do with a strong needle. And then there’s the ammunition, too. We must get some more. How much have we left?’
Robin went into the oak and fetched out the box. He poured out the little brass cases on to the grass and they counted them. ‘Thirty-one rounds, that’s all.’