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There was no doubt about that cry, no possible shadow of doubt whatever it was a cry of extreme distress, a final, despairing S.O.S., flung out to the night in the frantic hope that one of the same species would hear and help. Several night-foraging wild-folk have S.O.S. signals of their own, but none like this.
And, mark you, from the point of view of those wild-folk, there may be easier rough handfuls to tackle than old doe-rabbits with young. This one had simply streaked out of the night from nowhere and behind and knocked the cat flying before she knew.
Rather, she executed two bounds, and somewhat unexpectedly found herself on top of the hedgehog. I say "unexpectedly," because she had hitherto bounded upon wild-folk who contrived mostly not to be there. This one contrived nothing, except to stop still. And the cat executed a third bound off the hedgehog, and rather more violently and more quickly than the first two. Also, she spat.
And so the wild-folk divided, even as the men-folk had done, five going south after Jeff, and five others, besides Finn and Warrigal, going east after the other man. But it was broad daylight, and none of them made any attempt to draw near the makers of the trails they followed.
In all the aeons four-footed wild-folk never seem to have learnt to look up, and, for the omission, die some painful deaths that might otherwise be avoided. I do not say that none of them ever look up they do, but it is seldom. Indeed, finally this wild cat did look up; he could not well help it. There was a sound like the swift descent of a smiting sword above him. But he was seconds too late.
She had no knowledge of pigs, and had never met any of the wild-folk gone mad; yet it seemed that one must have done so now, and that one to her growing uneasiness was coming straight towards her. I fancy that in that moment she thought of the warm fire, the singing kettle, the saucer of milk, and Miss Somebody's best arm-chair.
The whole procession passed silently, as they thought but to the waiting, watching, wild-folk unpardonably noisily diagonally across the field, and out of sight round a bend of the wood. They had an air about them. I don't know what it was exactly, but you could feel they were going to do something serious that had not been done there for a long time.
Next day the skua went away, and the fishing wild-folk breathed a sigh of relief as they watched him go, and for three days peace brooded over the winged fishers of those parts, so that birds could feed upon what they caught, nor be in fear of getting hunted for it. But upon the fourth day the skua came back. And he was not alone.
This hare, however, was fighting, and fighting like several furies, and grunting, and making all sorts of unharelike motions and commotions against another beast; and that other beast was most emphatically not a hare. It or, rather, he was big, as we count bigness among four-footed wild-folk in Britain to-day.
The cat, being young, however, managed to bungle his pounce for the fraction of a second, and that is long enough for most of the wild-folk.