Welsh Journals

THE STRANGER HE was cross, and he looked it he was also dis- hevelled, very dishevelled, and he pruned his feathers with the lassitude of utter exhaustion. It is not pleasant even for an eagle-owl, the largest and rarest of its species, to be dropped literally from the skies on to the bleak coast of an unknown land far from its wild northern home. Yet that is what the hurricane that had swept him out to sea had done for him, and after the long, weary battle with the storm, he found himself on one of the wildest and most desolate parts of the nothern coast of Pembrokeshire. It was dawn then, and on the rocky rim where the precipice overhung the sea, he perched and slept the long day through, while the wind moan gradually sank to a whisper, and the waves ceased to thunder on the rocks far below, and the roar of the back-drawn shingle died down to a murmur. It was dusk now, and perched on a snag the stranger began to take stock of his surroundings, though he still found the light strong and blinked uncomfortably. He stood a good two feet high in his mottled brownish plumage, and two ear-like tufts of feathers, together with the cruel, curved beak, gave him a peculiarly saturnine expression as he stood out in silhouette against the sky-line. His talons gripped the rocky perch very hard, for he was hungry. Behind him stretched the heath covered with dwarf gorse and bilberry scrub and ling and heather. Although it was very late autumn, a vestige of purple still clung to the ling. Below him a black chasm yawned in the dusk, where the precipice was cleft into a great rock chimney that dropped down a sheer two hundred feet into deep water. At the bottom the waves, very blue now, but still feeling the after- math of the storm, slapped in freshly and sent up brilliant cascades of spray into the limpid air as they dashed over the reefs. Further inland, the moor opened into a valley, a very rugged valley scarred by a road that was still more rugged, a road that passed a low, cheerless thatched cottage before it climbed over the further edge of the rise and disappeared into more habitable regions. But among the rocks and along the moors, even up in the air, there were watchers, eager, alert watchers which the owl could not see, for his night-seeing eyes were still dimmed by the twilight. Far above, a sparrow hawk reconnoitred the strange mass of brown plumage; with hardly a tremor of its wings it glided round in airy circles. Cormorants flying low over the water, with long necks stretched out straight in front of them in ungainly wise, came home to their roosting places on the ledges of the chimney; they too cast inquisitive glances at the stranger within their gates. Meek-looking guillemots, floating sleepily on the swell, seemed aware of his presence, whilst a vulgar, noisy colony of herring -gulls left him in no doubt as to their curiosity. He was still half-dazed and drowsy, but as the dusk deepened, something else happened. The sparrow- hawk uttered a shrill cry, and gracefully volplaned out of sight, The herring-gulls took the air in a screaming squadron as if getting out of the way of someone who compelled that respectful ceremonial. His quick ears caught the beat of great wings, and presently a mournful, shrill cry rang out. It was clear that some great feathered potentate was coming home for the night just out of sight round the corner of the cliff. He knew that cry rather too well, and perhaps, if nature had allowed of any variety of expression in that round, cruel-looking face, he might have looked a bit afraid. He certainly fidgetted on his perch would night never come ? And he was so hungry. It grew darker he began to feel more comfortable and flapped his down-ruffled wings silently as he meditated for flight. The birds had grown silent in their roosting places, but another band of watchers had taken their places. The long, brown form of a polecat had glided across the heather, and two bright, beady little eyes set in a face which, though small, bore an expression of absolutely fiendish cruelty were fixed upon him the long little white teeth were bared in a snarl, but the saturnine outline of the stranger compelled respect the polecat stood still and watched. Near by, too, a small grey-coated creature that looked for all the world like a small bear, shuffled out of a burrow, and a long snout marked down the centre with a jet black line and flanked by white cheeks, began to grub in the earth for roots and insects. Then it was suddenly lifted as the badger fixed a sober, inquiring stare on the alien form perched on the snag. Suddenly, very suddenly, the badger's long silver- grey fur bristled in a ridge along its back with a quick startled snarl the polecat arched its back and stood stock still in that attitude of mingled fear and rage in the valley, a fox in the act of springing over a burn turned in the air and landed back at its starting point as if it had seen a trap on the other side, emitting that strong, unpleasant odour peculiar to startled foxes. The eagle-owl had given cry. Its defiance rang out shrill and eerie among the rocks; a wailing cry, very dismal, unutterably weird.