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Here you may find nests of the strong down partridge and peewit, but take care that the keeper isn't down upon you; and in the middle of it is an old cromlech, a huge flat stone raised on seven or eight others, and led up to by a path, with large single stones set up on each side.
Rabbits twinkled into the furzes where Waldron's three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum danger before he darted in. It was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the bunting and carrion crow. "Here we killed on the seventeenth of January last," said Raymond's host. "A fine finish to a grand run.
"Ah, had I but my bow and a good straight arrow!" whispered Allan, crouching down at Aasta's side. "Hush! Give me your plaid," said she. "Let him not see you; but go you down by the farther side of the bay while I take this nearer path. When you hear me cry as the peewit cries, run as quickly as may be towards the boat. Methinks by his fair hair that the lad should be of the Norsemen. Is that so?"
I knew the hands was aboard, and arter watching 'is cabin-skylight until the light was out, I went and undressed. Then I crept back on to the jetty, and arter listening by the Peewit to make sure that they was all asleep, I went back and climbed down the ladder. It was colder than ever. The cold seemed to get into my bones, but I made up my mind to 'ave that twelve quid if I died for it.
They ate with laughter and chat. Pigeons passed overhead, going and coming from an old farm about a hundred yards away; the sky above them had a lark for voice singing his loudest; and in the next field a peewit was wheeling and crying. The few trees in sight were struggling fast into leaf. Nature even in this cold north was gay to-day and young.
It was about eleven o'clock when my maid left me, and I sat for some minutes wrapped in my dressing gown, before the open window. The night was very still, and save for an occasional rustle of the wind in the distant tree-tops, the hooting of an owl, the melancholy cry of a peewit and the hoarse barking of a dog, the silence was undisturbed.
Professor Ansted includes it in his list, but only marks it as occurring in Guernsey. There is one specimen in the Museum. PEEWIT. Vanellus vulgaris, Bechstein. French, "Vanneau huppé." The Peewit is a common and rather numerous autumn and winter visitant to all the Islands, though I have never seen it in such large flocks as in some parts of England, especially in Somerset.
Like other great truths, it has grown dim, but it seems strange to think how this little incident could have been borne in mind for a century. There was another footpath that led through the peewit field, where the green plovers for evermore circle round in spring; then past the nightingale field, by the largest maple trees that grew in that country; this too was all grass.
Lights glint fitfully, a human voice imitates the plaintive cry of the peewit, cautious whistling follows, comes next the clash of arms, and the scream of one in the death-throes, and again silence falls. Stroke emerges near the Reekie Broth Pot, wiping his sword and muttering, "Faugh! it drippeth!"
Swiftly these swept behind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks that were swallowed up in haze. And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewit wailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing Stage towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill.
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