We hastily girded ourselves for flight, meanwhile reminding each other of the story we had planned to tell if caught.
At first we seemed to have luck. We turned westwards away from the beaters and found and pa.s.sed the upper end of the mora.s.s which had stopped us the night before. From there the going was good, through open underbrush, beneath big beeches and chestnuts, over firm and gently rolling ground.
Stopping and listening we tried to judge by the sounds the location of the line of beaters. We seemed to have a chance of getting beyond its western end. We set off again; just as we started on nine deer dashed past us, a big stag, two young stags and six does.
Then we did run, for we knew it was our last chance and, indeed, but little further, a young wolf raced down a ferny glade, vanishing into some alders on the further side of the glade. I nearly trod on a fleeing hare.
The beaters could not be far off.
Yet, for a bit, we seemed to be gaining on them, although we were quartering their front on a long slant. The third time we stopped to pant and listen we thought that our next dash would carry us where we might crouch in the first thicket and let their line sweep past us.
But, some fifty yards or so beyond, when we came to the dancing red feathers on the cord and thought we would be safe in a few breaths, there rose at us, from behind the feathered cord, three stocky men, armed with broad-bladed hunting-spears, who yelled at us:
"Halt! Stand! Surrender!"
We recoiled from them, amazed, threw away our wallets, threw off our cloaks, and bolted, incredulous; and as we ran, we heard them yelling:
"Here! Here! Here they are! We see them! This way, all of you! We"ve got them! Here they are!"
No bogs, no sloughs turned us or delayed us. The going was good, over firm footing, through light underwoods, among wide-set, big trees. For our lives we ran. There seemed a very slender chance of our crossing the whole length of the line of beaters and escaping on the other side, but that slender chance seemed our only chance. We ran fit to burst our hearts.
And the hunt was plainly converging on us. The noises of the beaters drew nearer. We seemed in a swarm of fleeing hares: more deer and more deer pa.s.sed us, this time, I thought, does with young fawns. We caught a glimpse of another wolf, of two foxes. And, in a moist hollow, we barely avoided a nasty rush of eight panic-stricken, grunting wild swine.
We did run across the entire line of beaters, but little good it did us.
Again we saw before us the feathered cord, the scarlet plumes dancing in the sun. At it we ran, sure of safety if we pa.s.sed it unseen and penetrated even ten yards beyond it into the underbrush. But we were again disappointed.
This time only two huntsmen rose at us, but they, too, flourished hunting spears with gleaming points, as big as spades. They too yelled at us and yelled to their fellows:
"Halt! You are caught! Hands up! Give yourselves up!"
And:
"There they go! Both of them! Come on! Here they are!"
Off we went again, slanting back across the approaching line of dogs and beaters, now closer together as they drew on towards the nets, and already appallingly close to us. Again we crossed the whole line, now much shorter. But this time we ran, not against part of the long stretch of feathered cord, but against the outer yard-high net. Of course this was well guarded and again we were yelled at and turned back.
Doubling back, now steaming, panting, gasping, with knees trembling under us, we reached the net on the other side.
Turned again, we found the beaters so near us and so close together, that we ran away from them rather than across their line. We ran, in fact, in a sort of mob of hares, foxes, boars, deer and even wolves, for some of each were in sight every moment.
So running we came where we could see the line of nets, now of six-foot, heavy-meshed nets, on either side of us. We made a last, desperate dash at one of the nets, I hoping to leap it or vault it or clamber over it and escape, after all. But six keepers, all with broad-bladed hunting spears, rose at us beyond it, rose with triumphant yells:
"We"ve got you now! We"ve got you now!"
From them we shied off and ran, half staggering with exhaustion and despair, between the converging lines of nets, ran in a veritable press of terrified game of all sorts, ran madly, since we heard now, not the barking and whine of dogs straining at their leashes, but the exultant yelping, barking and baying of great packs of dogs unleashed behind their game.
Of course, although no single dog, however infuriated, would ever attack me in daylight, when it could see my face, yet I could do nothing whatever to protect myself, and far less Agathemer, against the ma.s.sed onset of more than a hundred maddened hunting dogs, each bigger than a full-grown wolf.
So running, staggering, stumbling, at the end of our strength, we found ourselves running into the battue-pocket at the meeting of the two long converging lines of nets. Anything would be better than that. We tried to double back and were met by a dozen big dogs, some Gallic dogs of the breed of Tolosa, spotted black and white, others mouse-colored Molossians.
To escape them we dodged apart, each ran for a tree, each jumped, each caught the lowest limb of a thick-foliaged maple, the two not much over five yards apart. So thick were their leaves that I could hardly make out Agathemer in his tree. The two maples were close to the beginning of the pocket net. From my perch I could see plainly how cunningly the pocket had been set.
It was of strong, close-meshed nets fully three yards high stretched on st.u.r.dy forked stakes and well guyed back outside to pegs like tent-pegs.
These pocketing nets were set along the tops of the two banks of a gully about twenty yards wide, sloping sharply downward from its top near our trees and with sides three or four yards high and steep. Once in this gully, between the pocketing nets along the upper edge of its sides, no boar could scramble out, the lower meshes of the pocketing nets were too fine for any hare to squeeze through; no doe, no stag even, could leap such nets at the top of such banks.
I could just spy a part of the heaviest net across the gully at the end of the pocket. It seemed a large meshed net of rope thicker than my knee, with the large meshes filled in with smaller meshes of rope the size of my wrist.
Hardly was I safe in the crotch of my tree when the last of the game swept by below us, the dogs hot behind them, up came the press of beaters, and, from each side, in rushed the hunters, a score of handsome n.o.bles and gentry, habited in green tunics, wearing small, green, round-crowned, narrow-brimmed hunting hats and green boots up to just below their knees.
Each carried a heavy shafted hunting spear, tipped with a huge triangular gleaming head, pointed like a needle, edged like a razor, broad as a spade at its flare.
Even in my terror and exhaustion I could not but feel a certain pleasure in the beauty of the scene, a sort of thrill at its strangeness. I had partic.i.p.ated in such hunts in Bruttium and Sabinum, but never as hunted game.
The sun was not yet half way up the heavens, the dew had not yet dried from the leaves, owing to the very late spring the freshness of springtime had not yet pa.s.sed into the fullness of early summer. Through the tender green of the young leaf.a.ge, starry with drops of moisture, the sunshine shot long shafts of golden light. Under the beautiful canopy of blue sky and golden green foliage was the amazing turmoil of the hunt.
More than a hundred large animals, pigs, fawns, sows, does, boars and stags had fled before the beaters and were now jammed pellmell in the gully, for the end-net held. There they frantically jostled each other and the half dozen wolves caught among them which, indeed, snapped, slashed and tore at everything within reach, but, cowed themselves, had no effect whatever on the maddened victims which all but trod them under and actually trampled on foxes and on the swarm of squeaking, helpless hares.
Upon this ma.s.s of terrified flesh the two hundred dogs flung themselves, through the nets the huntsmen stabbed at the nearest victims, behind the dogs the shouting hunters advanced to spear their game, the battue was on and I watched it till the last animal was flat. The few which, frenzied, doubled back through the dogs and hunters were met and killed by the beaters. Not one escaped.
As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen.
Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped, whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets, execrations and curses.
We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have collapsed on the earth.
We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together, naked, bruised, b.l.o.o.d.y, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the gentlemen came up out of the gully.
Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat in his hand and mopping his forehead.
"Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not the men at all! They are not in the least like them!"
"Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added.
"What a pack of a.s.ses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two strangers. Couldn"t you look at them before you mauled them?"
"We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined.
"Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their backs."
They turned us round, to display the marks of scourging still plain on us both.
"They"ve both been branded," said a gentleman"s voice.
"Pooh!" cried another, "that proves nothing. They may have been scourged and branded by former masters, and manumitted since. I"ll have no stranger ill-treated on my land until he has had a chance to explain himself."
While he was speaking my guards turned me round again and took their hands off me.
Our champion was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy, curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He wore senators" boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant green and embroidered all over with a flowering vine in a darker, glossier green.
"What are your names?" asked the elder man who had noticed our brand- marks. He was swarthy and probably over thirty.
I gave him the name of Felix and Agathemer that of Asper, as we had agreed, neither of us thinking it advisable to claim to be free Romans by prefixing, "Sabinus" and "Bruttius."