"Are we going to Clovelly?" he puffed at last, and they flung themselves down on the short, springy turf between the drone of the sea below and the light summer wind among the inland trees. They were looking into a combe half full of old, high furze in gay bloom that ran up to a fringe of brambles and a dense wood of mixed timber and hollies. It was as though one-half the combe were filled with golden fire to the cliff's edge. The side nearest to them was open grass, and fairly bristled with notice-boards.
"Fee-rocious old cove, this," said Stalky, reading the nearest.
"'_Prosecuted_with_the_utmost_rigour_of_the_law_. G. M. Dabney, Col., J.P.,' an' all the rest of it. 'Don't seem to me that any chap in his senses would trespass here, does it?""You've got to prove damage 'fore you can prosecute for anything! 'Can't prosecute for trespass," said McTurk, whose father held many acres in Ireland. "That's all rot!""Glad of that, 'cause this looks like what we wanted. Not straight across, Beetle, you blind lunatic! Anyone could spot us half a mile off. This way; and furl up your beastly butterfly-net."Beetle disconnected the ring, thrust the net into a pocket, shut up the handle to a two-foot stave, and slid the cane-ring round his waist. Stalky led inland to the wood, which was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile from the sea, and reached the fringe of the brambles.
"_Now_ we can get straight down through the furze, and never show up at all," said the tactician. "Beetle, go ahead and explore. Snf! Snf! Beastly stink of fox somewhere!"On all fours, save when he clung to his spectacles, Beetle wormed into the gorse, and presently announced between grunts of pain that he had found a very fair fox-track. This was well for Beetle, since Stalky pinched him _a_tergo_. Down that tunnel they crawled. It was evidently a highway for the inhabitants of the combe;and, to their inexpressible joy, ended, at the very edge of the cliff, in a few square feet of dry turf walled and roofed with impenetrable gorse.
"By gum! There isn't a single thing to do except lie down," said Stalky, returning a knife to his pocket. "Look here!"He parted the tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could have found foot-hold. Great gray and black gulls screamed against the jackdaws; the heavy-scented acres of bloom round them were alive with low-nesting birds, singing or silent as the shadow of the wheeling hawks passed and returned;and on the naked turf across the combe rabbits thumped and frolicked.
"Whew! What a place! Talk of natural history; this is it," said Stalky, filling himself a pipe. "Isn't it scrumptious? Good old sea!" He spat again approvingly, and was silent.
McTurk and Beetle had taken out their books and were lying on their stomachs, chin in hand. The sea snored and gurgled; the birds, scattered for the moment by these new animals, returned to their businesses, and the boys read on in the rich, warm, sleepy silence.
"Hullo, here's a keeper," said Stalky, shutting "Handley Cross" cautiously, and peering through the jungle. A man with a gun appeared on the sky-line to the east.
"Confound him, he's going to sit down."
"He'd swear we were poachin', too," said Beetle. "What's the good of pheasants'
eggs? They're always addled, too."
"Might as well get up to the wood, I think," said Stalky. "We don't want G. M.
Dabney, Col., J.P., to be bothered about us so soon. Up the wuzzy and keep quiet! He may have followed us, you know."Beetle was already far up the tunnel. They heard him gasp indescribably: there was the crash of a heavy body leaping through the furze.
"Aie! yeou little red rascal. I see yeou!" The keeper threw the gun to his shoulder, and fired both barrels in their direction. The pellets dusted the dry stems round them as a big fox plunged between Stalky's legs, and ran over the cliff-edge.
They said nothing till they reached the wood, torn, disheveled, hot, but unseen.
"Narrow squeak," said Stalky. "I'll swear some of the pellets went through my hair.""Did you see him? ' said Beetle. "I almost put my hand on him. Wasn't he a wopper!
Didn't he stink! Hullo, Turkey, what's the matter? Are you hit?"McTurk's lean face had turned pearly white; his mouth, generally half open, was tight shut, and his eyes blazed. They had never seen him like this save once in a sad time of civil war.
"Do you know that that was just as bad as murder?" he said, in a grating voice, as he brushed prickles from his head.
"Well, he didn't hit us," said Stalky. "I think it was rather a lark. Here, where are you going?""I'm going up to the house, if there is one," said McTurk, pushing through the hollies. "I am going to tell this Colonel Dabney.""Are you crazy? He'll swear it served us jolly well right. He'll report us. It'll be a public lickin'. Oh, Turkey, don't be an ass! Think of us!""You fool!" said McTurk, turning savagely. "D'you suppose I'm thinkin' of _us_? It's the keeper.""He's cracked," said Beetle, miserably, as they followed. Indeed, this was a new Turkey--a haughty, angular, nose-lifted Turkey--whom they accompanied through a shrubbery on to a lawn, where a white-whiskered old gentleman with a cleek was alternately putting and blaspheming vigorously.
"Are you Colonel Dabney?" McTurk began in this new creaking voice of his.
"I--I am, and--" his eyes traveled up and down the boy--"who--what the devil d'you want? Ye've been disturbing my pheasants. Don't attempt to deny it. Ye needn't laugh at it." (McTurk's not too lovely features had twisted them. selves into a horrible sneer at the word pheasant.) "You've been birds'-nesting. You needn't hide your hat.
