“Confound those beastly birds! What a row they kick up!” whispered Haviland wrathfully as he watched the brilliantly plumaged cocks disappearing among the dark tree tops in front. “Come along, though. I expect it’s all right.”
“There you are,” he went on disgustedly, as they stood in the ride formed by the enclosing hedge of the first line of trees. “‘Trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.’ Nice free country this, eh, Cetchy?”
The notice board, nailed some seven or eight feet from the ground, stared them in the face. But Haviland was used to such.
Cautiously, noiselessly, they stole in and out among the trees, one eye and ear keenly alert for that which they sought, the other for indication of possible human, and therefore hostile, presence. The shower had ceased, but the odour of newly watered herbage hung moist upon the air, mingling with the scent of the firs, and the fungus-like exhalations of rotten and mouldering wood. A semi-twilight prevailed, the effect of the heavy foliage, and the cloud-veiled and lowering sky – and the ghostly silence was emphasised rather than disturbed every now and then by the sudden flap-flap of a wood-pigeon’s wings, or the stealthy rustle in the undergrowth as a rabbit or pheasant scuttled away.
“Look, Cetchy,” whispered Haviland. “This is the place where they found the chap hanging.”
Right in the heart of the wood they were, and at this spot two ridges intersected each other. A great oak limb reached across this point like a huge natural gallows beam.
“The fellow who found him,” went on Haviland, pointing at this, “did so by accident. He was coming along the ride here in the dark, and the chap’s legs – the chap who was hanging, you know – sort of kicked him in the face as he walked underneath that bough. Then he looked up and saw what it was. Ugh! I say, Cetchy, supposing that sort of thing was to happen to you or me! Think we’d get in a funk, eh?”
The Zulu boy, coming of a race which is intensely susceptible to superstitious fears, shook his head, and muttered something in his own tongue. The drear and dismal aspect of the place and its gruesome legend impressed him. He did not like it at all, but would not own as much. If Haviland, to whom he looked up as something of a god, was not afraid, why should he be? Haviland, moved by some spirit of mischief, went on, sinking his voice to a still more impressive whisper:
“Supposing we were to see the ghost now, Cetchy, looking just as they say it walks – black in the face, and with its eyes and tongue all bulging out of its head, and the bit of rope dangling from its neck! Think we should get in a beastly funk, eh? There, just coming out from under those dark firs – can’t you imagine it?”
For answer the other started violently, and uttered a scared ejaculation. Even Haviland’s nerves were not entirely proof against the interruption, coming when it did. Something had happened to startle them both.
Chapter Seven.
The Ghost
The next moment Haviland burst into a fit of smothered laughter.
“It’s only a hen pheasant, Cetchy,” he whispered, “but she made such a row getting up right under our feet just as we were talking about the ghost. It quite gave me the jumps.”
“She’s got nest too,” said the other, who had been peering into the undergrowth. “Look, nine, ten eggs! That’s good?”
“Yes, but you can’t take them. Never meddle with game eggs.”
“How I make collection if I not take eggs?”
This was pertinent, and Haviland was nonplussed, but only for a moment.
“I’ve got some extra specimens I’ll give you,” he answered. “Come on, leave these, and let the bird come back.”
The other looked somewhat wistfully at the smooth olive-hued eggs lying there temptingly in their shallow bowl of dry leaves and grass. Then he turned away.
“We’ll find plenty of others,” said Haviland. “Last time I was here I took a nest of blackcap’s, and the eggs were quite pink instead of brown. That’s awfully rare. We’ll see if there are any more in the same place.”
Round the cover they went, then across it, then back again, all with a regular system, and soon their collecting boxes were filled – including some good sorts.
“There! Big bird go away up there,” whispered Anthony pointing upward.
They were standing under a clump of dark firs. Over their tops Haviland glimpsed the quick arrowy flight.
“A sparrow-hawk, by Jingo!” he said. “Sure to have a nest here too.”
A keen and careful search revealed this, though it was hidden away so snugly in the fir-top, that it might have been passed by a hundred times. The Zulu boy begged to be allowed to go up.
“I think not this time, Cetchy,” decided Haviland. “It’s an easy climb, but then you haven’t had enough practice in stowing the eggs, and these are too good to get smashed.”
It was not everything to get up the tree: half the point was to do so as noiselessly as possible, both of which feats were easy enough to so experienced a climber as Haviland. He was soon in the fir-top, the loose untidy pile of sticks just over his head; another hoist – and then – most exciting moment of all, the smooth warm touch of the eggs. The while the parent bird, darting to and fro in the air, came nearer and nearer his head with each swoop. But for this he cared nothing.
“Look, Cetchy,” he whispered delightedly as he stood once more on terra firma and exhibited the bluish-white treasures with their rich sepia blotches. “Three of them, and awfully good specimens. Couple days later there’d have been four or five, still three’s better than none. You shall have these two to start your collection with, and I’ll stick to this one with the markings at the wrong end. What’s the row?”
For the Zulu boy had made a sign for silence, and was standing in an attitude of intense listening.
“Somebody coming,” he whispered. “One man.”
Haviland’s nerves thrilled. But listen as he would his practised ear could hear nothing.
“Quick, hide,” breathed the other, pointing to a thick patch of bramble and fern about a dozen yards away, and not a moment too early was the warning uttered, for scarcely had they reached it and crouched flat to the earth, when a man appeared coming through the wood. Peering from their hiding-place, they made out that he was clad in the velveteen suit and leather leggings of a keeper, and, moreover, he carried a gun.
He was looking upward all the time, otherwise he could not have failed to see them, and to Haviland, at any rate, the reason of this was plain. He had sighted the sparrow-hawk, and was warily stalking her, hence the noiselessness of his approach. The situation was becoming intensely exciting. The keeper was coming straight for their hiding-place, still, however, looking upward. If he discovered them, they must make a dash for it that moment, Haviland explained in a whisper scarcely above a breath. The gun didn’t count, he daren’t fire at them in any event.
Suddenly the man stopped. Up went the gun, then it was as quickly lowered. He had sighted the flight of the hawk above the tree tops, but the chance was not good enough. And he had sighted something else, the nest to wit. The bird was sure to come back to it, and so give him a much better chance. Accordingly he squatted down among the undergrowth, his gun held ready, barely twenty yards from the concealed pair, but with his back to them.
That sparrow-hawk, however, was no fool of a bird. She seemed possessed of a fine faculty for discrimination, and manifestly knew the difference between a brace of egg-collecting schoolboys, and a ruthless, death-dealing gamekeeper, and although at intervals she swooped