it is with some misgiving that i venture to insert this tale, inasmuch as the telling involves mention of a place so weird that readers strange to the land’s end district may be incredulous of its existence.
for to this day an evil repute clings to cairn kenidzhek amongst those best fit to judge its character—to wit, the few dwellers round the base of the rugged hill on which it frowns. within half a mile or so of it, there are three small farmhouses, counting the one on the lower moor by the quaking bog where jim trevaskis used to live, and from the occupants, if you first win their confidence and are betrayed by no “furrin” accent, you may learn some of the strange occurrences that take place about it.
with bated breath they will tell you that on pitch-dark nights the pile of rocks is at times lit up with an unearthly light, and that now and then, especially when trouble is brooding and the death-watch has been ticking in the “spence,” they hear, as they lie awake, the stony hill ring under the stroke of galloping hoofs. whether these and other eerie happenings, around which legends have shaped themselves, can be explained on scientific grounds, matters not to them, for the celt of the countryside turns a deaf ear to new-fangled notions and clings to the traditions of his fathers. but of all the haunting memories of the cairn, that which inspires the greatest dread is associated with the disappearance of two men who were last seen toiling up the hill at the close of a wild winter’s day. no legend is this coming down from a remote past; for dick shellal, trevaskis’ farmhand, who could count up to forty with the help of his fingers, had heard his great-grandfather say that the mystery was talked about when he was a boy as if it were a thing of yesterday.
on the december night when our tale opens, trevaskis himself, as was his wont in stormy weather, bedded up the cattle early, piled the furze on the fire though the wind was westerly, and—a thing he would never have done by day—permitted shellal, who scamped the job in his hurry to get indoors, to put the wheel of an old donkey cart on the “riffled” thatch of the pig’s “crow.” hours later, when his master had at length fallen asleep, and shellal could hear him snoring through the “planchen,” he himself lay wide awake on his straw pallet listening to the moaning of the wind, and, tempted during a temporary lull to gratify his curiosity and see whether anything was abroad, sat up in bed and peeped through the corner pane of the attic window. angry clouds coursed across the face of the moon, and the sky was nearly as dark as the earth; but whilst he looked there was a rift in the black veil, and against the silver disc he got a glimpse of the jagged crest of the cairn. lowering his gaze at the sight of it, he followed the vague outline of the murky cone of the hill, and then with the quickness of thought, buried his shock head under the bedclothes. coward! let him lie there with chattering teeth, and with knees doubled up to his chin. the light that scared him, though it is so near the edge of the bog, is no pixie’s light, no lantern held by shadowy hands; the feeble rays he saw, flicker on the path of as human a being as ever trod the earth. he should have known who it was, for there is but one man whose lonesome duty could bring him there in the small hours of the morning, when the watch-dog sleeps, and the fox is tyrant of the farmyard. yes, it is andrew who threads his way in and out amongst the rush-clumps near the lip of the treacherous quagmire. but what is he doing there? why has he not taken to the rising ground at his usual point, a furlong back, where the herbage is scant, and scarce hides the stony surface? surely he must have missed his way, or he would not be following the widely circuitous base to reach the fox-earth in the valley on the far side of the cairn.
cairn kenidzhek.
it is not so. no, given to taking short cuts though he is, he prefers on this night to keep on the rim of the haunted slopes, and as near the bog as foothold will allow. level-headed as he is in most things, the taint of superstition is in his blood too, and it is fear, excited by the story he heard two hours ago, that dictates the path he follows. dropping in at the “jolly tinners” at trewellard for a glass of beer before starting on his round, he found himself an involuntary listener to what he would rather have missed. on pushing open the door, he was surprised to find some half a dozen miners in the bar, and wondered at the cause of their silence. they were seated on a form in front of a fire, but their attention was apparently taken by an aged miner, for their heads were turned his way. andrew, who feared there had been loss of life in the mine, stole into a seat opposite the old man, who, to his dismay, related the story of the two men lost upon cairn kenidjack, for so he called it. thrilling was every word he said, even when dealing with the well-known facts—the sighting of the strange sail, the landing at the cove, the path taken by the men across the moor, their conversation with the miners near the cross, the spot near the cairn where they were last seen in the gathering gloom, the lurid light that lit up the rocks, the finding of the broken claymore. but when with trembling voice he threw out dark hints of what most likely befell the missing men at nightfall, a deathlike silence fell on his rugged listeners, and so unnerved was the earthstopper that he started at the creaking of the signboard, and shrunk from the thought of the journey before him. the tale ended, andrew would have called for a quart of strong ale, but that he was short of cash and would not ask the landlord to put his name on the slate, “no tick” being the custom in the parish of pendeen. yet, for the sake of the company and the brightness of the room he stayed on and, not knowing the gossip of the mining village, strove, but in vain, to change the current of his thoughts by putting questions about the “bal” and even about the ponies in the submarine level, which extends more than a mile under the sea. at turning-out time, he put the cat that had fallen asleep on his knees gently on the floor, and lit the lantern. leaving the inn, he went up the road with one of the miners who lived on the edge of the moorland, and when the wind slammed jan jose’s door behind him, andrew, oppressed with a feeling of loneliness he seldom experienced, left the track and set out across the gale-swept waste leading to kenidzhek, with uncle zackey’s version of the mystery vivid in his brain. on the way he stopped two fox-earths, his tramp till then being void of incidents, save for the startled cry of a snipe that sprung from his feet near the edge of a marsh, and the scream of an owl that glided past him where, to avoid some waste heaps, he swung round by a mine-ruin. he had not, however, proceeded three furlongs from the spot where shellal saw his light, before he got a fright which, for an instant, paralysed his steps and all but took his breath away. “good lor’! whatever es et?” he gasped as something white crossed his path. his first thought was that his fate had overtaken him, and that he would disappear as mysteriously as the two men of zackey’s yarn. recovering from the shock and feeling the ground still under his feet, he moved on, his stumbling steps betraying his agitation. “couldn’ be a whi—a white hare; no, no, was too big for that and et didn’ loup along like a hare. was et a livin’ crittur at all? was et—rubbish!” “pull yourself together, man,” said a voice within, “go back and see if the thing left any track.” though the sweat stood in big drops on his face, and the gale which met him in the face impeded his steps, he conquered his fears so far as to go back. the thing had passed up the slope, he remembered, near the giant’s quoit, for against that he had momentarily leant for support; and there he bent over the ground, his face blanched, his eyes wild but eager as if they would devour the bare places between the tussocks that skirted the trickling water. two paces above, on the margin of a shrunken pool made by the runnel, and clean-cut as in plaster, the light of the flickering flame fell on the track of a badger. “good lor’!” he exclaimed, as the footprints met his astonished eyes; and then hurriedly retraced his steps. the farther he got from the spot, the more strongly reason asserted itself over superstition. he argued thus with himself: “white, wadna? sartinly: the track of a badger, wadna? i should say so—” this with the trace of smile, for he had never seen more clearly-cut footprints. “have i seen a white badger, i wonder? auld dick wance said as much and was laafed at for the rest of his days. no, et caan’t be, and yit ’tes hard to believe et edden. sperrits doan’t maake badger-prints in the mud. how many glasses o’ beer did ee have at the ‘tinners’? only wan, worse luck? es et saafe to tell the squire? the caastle waan’t hould un, he’ll be in such a pore.” it must be explained that sir bevil took the keenest pleasure in collecting curious specimens of the fauna of the district. in the entrance hall at the castle were a cream-coloured otter, a grey fox, and a yellow seal, but as yet there was only a grey badger in a case below three pied cornish choughs. and here let me mention an incident which bears on the story, inasmuch as it serves to explain the earthstopper’s caution and hesitancy, despite his intense eagerness to report what he has seen. some four months after the capture of the otter, he was standing under the cairn near the castle, at the edge of the brake which hounds were drawing, his eyes strained to catch a view of a fox. a slight rustle in the furze, and a brisk waving of cunoval’s stern, had attracted his attention, or the animal he got a glimpse of might have escaped his notice. as it was, he saw only the body and tail of the creature as it flashed across a narrow opening between the bushes, but whatever it was, its coat and brush were as white as snow. great was his excitement, but greater far was his chagrin, on looking over his shoulder as he ran in the direction of sir bevil, to see the snow-white creature climbing the stem of a fir that rose out of the brake. of course, had he known that the squire had brought home a big persian cat on his return from plymouth the week before, he could not have fallen into such an error as to believe that he had seen a white fox; cats, foreign or indigenous, being, unless their ears are cropped close, such inveterate poachers.
this experience and his narrow escape from making a fool of himself dwelt with the earthstopper, and occurred to him more than once before he had completed his round. his work done, he has plenty of time to reconsider the evidence in cold reason now that the powers of darkness have crept back to their lairs. he is sitting in the lewth with his back against one of the boulders of a stone circle, set like a coronet on the brow of a hill commanding the steep slope over against him, down which the hounds will come on their way to the meet.
the sun that reddens the east has lifted the veil of night from the valley, revealing the smoke rising from a few chimneys where white-washed homesteads dot the countryside. some cows, released from milking, are waiting for a boy to open the gate of a meadow; a flock of geese is making its way to a pool in the bottoms. the earthstopper takes no notice of them, of the cosy rickyard, of the grim cairn beyond, or of the distant bay for all its roseate hue and lovely setting. his thoughts are centred on the ghostly thing that crossed his path, and as he cannot but believe, left a badger’s footprints on the edge of the runnel. in all his wanderings he has never met with anything to excite his interest and imagination so much, or to cause him such anxiety. he feels that he ought to tell the squire, but by doing so he runs the risk of incurring the ridicule that had fallen on dick hal. he has every confidence in sir bevil’s discretion, but he knows that somehow, secrets leak out of castles as freely as they do out of cottages. how unfortunate it was that owing to the wildness of the night vennie had to be left to keep his grandchild company! the dog would have flown at the thing if it were a living creature, and that would have dispelled the slight misgiving he feels that the prints might have been those of a grey badger which had passed up the hill earlier. but in that case what could he have seen? a witch? or the lost soul that is said to wander there? no, no, the sun is too high in the heavens for him to heed old men’s tales. his mind is made up, he will risk everything and tell the squire before the day is out, and the sooner the better for he will know no peace until his secret is shared. his decision made, he knocks the ashes from the pipe he has been smoking and, choosing a sheltered spot, lies down on the dry fern, and with a mossy stone for his pillow soon falls asleep, for he is tired after his long round and the buffeting of the wind. a couple of hours later he awakes with a start. has he overslept himself? he looks at the sun. it is not mid-day, but still the hounds may have passed; troubadour may have found him in the hollow where he lay, may have licked his face and gone on, without his being any the wiser. he scans the hills around, but can see no horsemen silhouetted against the sky; the few cattle in the valley are grazing undisturbed; he listens but he can hear no tell-tale sound, no toot of horn, no bark of farm-dog, only the voice of the dying gale, the faint rustle of dried bents, and the whistle of the golden plover. he runs to a gap he knows of at the far end of the croft, but finds in the mud there no track of horse or hound, and then, on looking across the valley, he sees the hounds coming down the steep lane where it skirts a stunted plantation, the space between the huntsman and the whippers-in flecked with the white markings of the pack. the meet is at a small village which he cannot see from his station, but he waits where he is, knowing that the cover below him is the first to be drawn. and now he begins to think of his report and to turn it over on his tongue. it runs smoothly enough until he comes to “white badger!” it is not the word white or the word badger that scares him, but the two together. “white mouse, white rat, white ferret, white cat, white otter, white elephant, whi—white badger.” yes, white goes naturally enough with all but badger. dare he tell the squire after all? he becomes irresolute. he walks to and fro across the heathery space enclosed by the stones, and finally moves half-way down the hill and takes his stand behind a big boulder. hardly has he gained it when a whipper-in gallops past him to take up a position on the far side of the stone circle; then sir bevil comes up the croft on the grey mare, and from his favourite spot, which is some twenty yards away from where andrew is, watches the working of the hounds. seeing after a time that a find is unlikely, andrew half resolves to go, there and then, and unburden his mind. twice he left the shelter of the rock and as often retreated, but not before sir bevil had remarked his hesitating behaviour. a third time he ventured a little further, and then, if he were about to retire again, the squire’s voice checked him.
“do you wish to speak to me, andrew?”
“yes, sir, i do and i doan’t.”
“no one trapping foxes, i hope?”
“no, sir, leastwise, not this side the country,” said andrew, walking up to him.
“you’ve bad news of some sort, i fear.”
“no tedn that nither, sir. et’s like thes—i was coming down-along round the foot of the hootin’ cairn, soon after midnight, when summat white crossed the ground afore me.”
“what was it?” said sir bevil with a smile, the eeriness of the place and the superstitious fear of the earthstopper occurring to him.
“thet’s just the point, sir.”
“was it twenty paces ahead of you?”
“lor’ bless your life, sir, ’twas touchin’, under my feet, so to spaake. ’twas a darkish night, for all the moon was nearly full, but the thing showed up as white as a ghost, and the sight of un gov me a bra’ turn, the more so being where i were.”
“is that all you have to say?—i see the hounds are moving off.”
“only thes, sir; on second thoughts, i went back all of a quaake to see ef the thing left any track.”
“well, did you find any?” said sir bevil, rather excitedly; till then he had not seen what the earthstopper had been driving at.
“iss, sir.”
“what was it, my man, what was it?”
“the track of a badger—of a heavy badger, the prent was that deep.”
“you believe then, andrew, that you have seen a white badger, a white badger,” said the squire, repeating the words deliberately and emphatically, as was his wont on the bench at crucial points of a witness’s evidence, and looking the while straight into the earthstopper’s unflinching eyes.
“iss, sir, i do; but aifter thet i wouldn’t care to tell anyone savin’ yoursel’.”
“be at the castle at nine o’clock to-morrow morning,” said sir bevil, somewhat peremptorily, and then galloped off after the hounds, leaving andrew staring open-mouthed after him.
