Far away there was the deep boom of a punt-gun. That will get them moving, he said, and the dog moved its tail. A big mixed flight came in: with good fortune he got four barrels into them, killing two mallard and a shoveller. He regretted the shoveller, for by his private rules they were not to be shot. There was something about their coral and prussian blue and white bib and tucker that combined with their disproportionate beaks to make them look too much like agreeable toys. But, firing so quickly, he had not distinguished it.
For half an hour after that, while the first rays of the true dawn showed, the duck flighted in great numbers over the marshes. He shot a brace of teal right and left, a feat that consoled him for many bad misses, and he killed another widgeon and three mallard. But he was not shooting well: the duck were moving very fast, and his tired eyes were strained by the changing light. After seven successive misses – one bird carried away a deadly wound – he felt a wretched frustration welling up. By now the watery sun was showing a faint rim over the sea. All at once he felt very weary; unshaved, dirty and weary, with his eyes hot.
A little time passed and the sun came bodily up. The flighting was over, and he bent to his bag. As he stowed each away he smoothed it with care; he put the exquisitely marked teal on the top and strung the bag up. It was barely a quarter full: he had not done at all well. He knew that on such a good day he should have killed many more. He counted the big pile of empty cartridges against his bag, and he thought of the long walk back. He always had a feeling of reaction after he stopped shooting, when the taut excitement died rather ignominiously away, and now there was a strong vexation of spirit upon him as well as that.
‘Oh well,’ he said, and slung the bag on his back. He could see far and wide over the marsh now; beyond the sea-wall the masts of the fishing boats showed clearly in the sharp air. It was freezing now for sure. Towards the sea he saw a ragged skein of duck weaving and drifting like a cloud: there was none over the marsh. A curlew cried despairingly over his head; breaking its heart, it was.
The wind had quite died. Stiffly, with a lumbering gait, he went back towards the sea-wall with his dog padding quietly after him.
From far away there came a sound over the marsh on the still, frozen air: he looked round and above, but he could see nothing. The sound grew stronger, a rhythmic beating, strangely musical, and he saw three wild swans. The light caught them from below and they flashed white against the cold blue. High up in the air, their great singing wings bore the swans from the north: they flew straight and fast with their long necks stretched before them.
The rhythm changed a little, sighing and poignant, and a leaping exaltation took the man’s heart as he gazed up at them, up away in the thin air.
The beat changed more, and now they flew striking all together, so that their wings sung in unison as they went over his head. He stood stock still watching them, and long after they had passed down the sky he stood there, with the noise of their wings about his head.
Not Liking to Pass the Road Again
THE ROAD LED UPHILL all the way from the village; a long way, in waves, some waves steeper than others but all uphill even where it looked flat between the crests.
There was a tall thick wood on the right hand for the first half: for a long time it had been the place of the Scotch brothers. They were maniacs, carpenters by trade, Baptists; and one had done something horrible to his brother.
I have forgotten now why I thought that only one brother still lived in the wood: perhaps I had been told. I used to throw things into the wood.
At first they were small things, bits of twig or pebbles from the middle of the road, the loose stuff between the wheel tracks; I threw them furtively, surreptitiously, not looking, just into the nut bushes at the edge. Then I took to larger ones, and on some bold days I would stand in an open wide part of the road flinging heavy stones into the wood: they lashed and tore the leaves far within the wood itself. It was a place where there had been a traction engine and where they had left great piles of things for the road.
Quite early in the summer (there were a great many leaves, but they were still fresh and the bark was soft and bright) I was there and I had two old chisels without handles; they were brown and their cutting edges were hacked and as blunt as screw drivers, but their squared angles were still sharp. I had gashed a young tree with one, throwing it; it had taken the green bark clean from the white wood.
I had them purposely this bold day prepared, to throw them in with desperate malice – I was almost afraid of them then. I did not throw them far, but flat and hard and oh God the great bursting crashing in the wood and he came, brutal grunting with speed.
Before my heart had beat I was running. Running, running, running, and running up that dreadful hill that pulled me back so that I was hardly more than walking and my thin legs going weaker and soft inside.
I could not run, and here under my feet was the worst hill beginning. At the gap by the three ashes I jigged to the left, off the road to the meadow: downhill, and I sped (the flying strides) downhill to the old bridge and the stream full-tilt and downhill on the grass.
Into the stream, not over the bridge, into the water where it ran fast over the brown stones: through the tunnel of green up to the falls I knew the dark way. I knew it without thinking, and I did not put a foot on dry ground nor make a noise above the noise of the water until I came to the falls and then I stepped on a dry rock only three times all the way up the wide mouth. It is easier to climb with your hands and feet than to run on a bare road. And I came out into the open for an instant below the culvert on the road, a place where I could look back, back and far down to the smooth green at the foot of the old bridge.
It was still there, casting to and fro like a hound, but with inconceivable rapidity. Halfway up the meadow sometimes to hit back on the line, so eager, then a silent rush to the water’s edge and a check as if it had run into a stone wall: then over and over again, the eager ceaseless tracing back and fro. Vague (except in movement), uncoloured, low on the ground.
There was a cart on the road now, well above the ruined cottage, and I went home. I changed my boots without being seen – they had kept the water out for a long time, although I had been up to my knees at once; in the end the water had come in down from my ankles, quite slowly.
That night and afterwards, when I told the thing over to myself I added a piece to make the passing of the road again more bearable. In the added piece my mother came in and said that we were all to be careful when we went out because there was a mad dog. ‘Hugh was found on the old bridge,’ she said (Hugh was one of the farm boys), ‘at the foot of the old bridge, with his face bitten. They have taken him to hospital, but he will not speak yet.’
The Slope of the High Mountain
SNOW HAD FALLEN in the night and it lay on all the ground above five hundred feet, showing brave in the sun and making the sky so blue that it was a living pleasure to look at it.
To the men walking fast up the Nantmor road the sharp cold was a pleasure too, for their hurry had warmed them to a fine heat. They had already come some miles over the mountains before they had struck the metalled road, along an ancient track that wound among the high bogs, often ambiguous and always hard to be found: they had followed it without losing it, but it had taken time above their allowance. They were hurrying, therefore, with the fear of lateness behind them, and their nailed boots rang quick on the hard road, and they steamed in the frosty air.
It was to a meet of foxhounds that they were hurrying, a meet right under Snowdon, at ten o’clock. Moel Ddu was on their left, and Moel Hebog after it, and the snow lay well down their sides; the men could not see Snowdon yet, for the hills shut in the top of the valley. The cruel black rocks of the Arddu rose sheer on the right hand, and the Nantmor river ran fierce below them. Far along on the road ahead a man was walking fast: he was a dark figure,