His Master And Mistress
Came In And Stared In Astonishment.
It was against the rules
of the house!
They ordered him out and he looked at them
without moving. Then they spoke again very sharply indeed,
and he growled a low buzzing growl without lifting his chin
from his paws, and they had to leave him! He had transferred
his allegiance to a new master and head of the pack. He was
under my protection and felt quite safe: if I had taken any
part in that scene it would have been to order those two
persons who had once lorded it over him out of the room!
I didn't really mind his throwing over his master and taking
possession of the rug in my sitting-room, but I certainly did
very keenly resent his behaviour towards the birds every
morning at breakfast-time. It was my chief pleasure to feed
them during the bad weather, and it was often a difficult task
even before Jack came on the scene to mix himself in my
affairs. The Land's End is, I believe, the windiest place in
the world, and when I opened the window and threw the scraps
out the wind would catch and whirl them away like so many
feathers over the garden wall, and I could not see what became
of them. It was necessary to go out by the kitchen door at
the back (the front door facing the sea being impossible) and
scatter the food on the lawn, and then go into watch the
result from behind the window. The blackbirds and thrushes
would wait for a lull to fly in over the wall, while the daws
would hover overhead and sometimes succeed in dropping down
and seizing a crust, but often enough when descending they
would be caught and whirled away by the blast. The poor
magpies found their long tails very much against them in the
scramble, and it was even worse with the pied wagtail. He
would go straight for the bread and get whirled and tossed
about the smooth lawn like a toy bird made of feathers, his
tail blown over his head. It was bad enough, and then Jack,
curious about these visits to the lawn, came to investigate
and finding the scraps, proceeded to eat them all up. I tried
to make him understand better by feeding him before I fed the
birds; then by scolding and even hitting him, but he would not
see it; he knew better than I did; he wasn't hungry and he
didn't want bread, but he would eat it all the same, every
scrap of it, just to prevent it from being wasted. Jack was
doubtless both vexed and amused at my simplicity in thinking
that all this food which I put on the lawn would remain there
undevoured by those useless creatures the birds until it was
wanted.
Even this I forgave him, for I saw that he had not, that with
his dog mind he could not, understand me. I also remembered
the words of a wise old Cornish writer with regard to the mind
of the lower animals: "But their faculties of mind are no less
proportioned to their state of subjection than the shape and
properties of their bodies. They have knowledge peculiar to
their several spheres and sufficient for the under-part they
have to act."
Let me be free from the delusion that it is possible to raise
them above this level, or in other words to add an inch to
their mental stature. I have nothing to forgive Jack after
all. And so in spite of everything Jack was suffered at home
and accompanied me again and again in my walks abroad; and
there were more blank days, or if not altogether blank, seeing
that there was Jack himself to be observed and thought about,
they were not the kind of days I had counted on having. My
only consolation was that Jack failed to capture more than
one out of every hundred, or perhaps five hundred, of the
creatures he hunted, and that I was even able to save a few of
these. But I could not help admiring his tremendous energy
and courage, especially in cliff-climbing when we visited the
headlands - those stupendous masses and lofty piles of granite
which rise like castles built by giants of old. He would
almost make me tremble for his life when, after climbing on to
some projecting rock, he would go to the extreme end and look
down over it as if it pleased him to watch the big waves break
in foam on the black rocks a couple of hundred feet below.
But it was not the big green waves or any sight in nature that
drew him - he sniffed and sniffed and wriggled and twisted his
black nose, and raised and depressed his ears as he sniffed,
and was excited solely because the upward currents of air
brought him tidings of living creatures that lurked in the
rocks below - badger and fox and rabbit. One day when quitting
one of these places, on looking up I spied Jack standing on
the summit of a precipice about seventy-five feet high. Jack
saw me and waved his tail, and then started to come straight
down to me! From the top a faint rabbit track was, visible
winding downwards to within twenty-four feet of the ground;
the rest was a sheer wall of rock. Down he dashed, faster and
faster as he got to where the track ended, and then losing his
footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but luckily dropped on a
deep spongy turf and was not hurt. After witnessing this
reckless act I knew how he had come by those frightful bruises
on a former occasion. He had doubtless fallen a long way down
a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones. But the
lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits
and foxes went he could go!
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