248 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



otters on an island. We began to assail their holts with spade 

 and axe ; but, it being so late, had to give it up. The next 

 morning Mr. Radcliffe informed me that his man had tracked 

 three otters, side by side, over some mud, going up stream in 

 the direction of my draw of the day, asserting that no seal of 

 the otter had been there impressed before. I thought this news 

 too good : one otter would have done ; but my host declared he 

 could trust to the truth of the report, and we sallied forth in 

 joyful expectation. I was drawing a sort of back-water adjoin- 

 ing a cover, and, observing both hounds and terriers very busy, 

 I gave the word " to look out, for we were about to find.' 1 I 

 had sent on my groom, Thomas Newman, to a shallow some 

 distance off to watch it, when, having hardly said that we were 

 about to find, I heard the most extraordinary noise proceeding 

 from my groom and his vicinity that could be imagined. The 

 cause of it I give in his own words. He said " he heard me call 

 out that we were about to find, and at the same moment Smike, 

 followed at some distance by a single hound, came running 

 down the side of the stream, evidently on a drag directly towards 

 him. About fifty yards from where he stood, and about four 

 or five paces from the edge of the water, in a swampy spot in 

 the meadow, was a small mass of tangled reeds, briars and 

 bushes, perhaps twenty yards in circumference, or not so much. 

 Right into this little thicket Smike's drag took him, and, to 

 my groom's amazement, out on the grass rolled three otters and 

 Smike all fighting, Smike yelling with fury and pain at the 

 treatment he met with, and the young or three-parts grown 

 otter, whom he had fixed on, screaming in concert, to all of 

 which Newman added his view -halloo and whoop. The row 

 had not lasted a second when hand over hand raced up the old 

 hound, and with a rush knocked Smike and the three otters 

 into the water, but seizing and assisting to kill the one Smike 

 maintained his hold on. Having worried the first otter, I took 

 up the chase of the other two, finding them both, and changing 

 from one to the other occasionally, but at last settling to the 

 old bitch otter. Than the work she cut out for us I never saw 



