UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
The Hill
By ANTHONY MAY (St. Andrews University)
ASHOT. " Damn," we said. Another shot. We stirred, for a Nelsonesque disregard of signals must be practised with discernment. The two ponies grazqd on reed-like grasses in a clearing, and we took up their long leading-ropes and turned up the hill through the trees. A wood conjures up dappled sunlight and bird-song, but here It was dark; exotic conifers dripped, moss-covered boulders oozed moisture, spotted fungi grew among the roots, and only the heavy flap- ping of a departing capercailzie broke the silence. It was in all but extent a forest.
As we climbed away from the loch, the trees thinned till a few stunted birches gave way to the bare hillside where the mist lay. There Angus led, picking his way towards the shot through a maze of peat-hags and surrealist stumps, and the pony followed in a meander, independent and finicky, at the rope's end. Angus came from the Outer Isles, and invariably worea boiler-suit on the hill. His was a migratory and happily unordered existence as a gillie in the summer and a weaver in the winter, but this seasonal variation was echoed in a certain lack of continuity from hour to hour, for he had the endearing disability of the dormouse in Wonderland. His day was punctuated by irregular siestas,•no fitful dozings these, but deep and, if undisturbed, prolonged slumbers that were affected neither by the hardness of the ground nor the rain in his face.
The mist cleared, and a whistle from the ridge guided us to the stalking-party. The lean and venerable head stalker, the grand old man of the forest who more than the laird was lord of all he surveyed, sketched out his proposals for the afternoon to the two shooting guests; and all the while appraised distant hillsides through rain-spotted spectacles and an immense tele- scope. Nichol who carried the rifle and disembowelled the stags stood aloof by the dead beast, and wiped his knife absently on his breeches. A flask was passed round, binoculars were returned to their cases, the prodigious telescope resolved itself miraculously to the size of a drum of oatcakes, and the party rose to their feet, while Angus manoeuvred his mare into position for the lifting by cajoling her into a dainty passage that would have earned a commendation in the Haute Ecole class at Olympia. The beast was slung on to the saddle, and, though the boiler- suit would have jarred on the acute sensibility of an artist, the effect was sufficient to suggest that solemn engraving "The Return of the Deer Stalkers ' that hangs in the dark lobbies of small Highland hotels. If the two gillies, considerably plaided and pictured in earnest disputation, were not reproduced in detail in the present scene, there was much that was. The stag's head and antlers were twisted back over its shoulder, and the pony's jolting motion as it was led away gave the macabre impression that the burden, eyes glazed and tongue lolling, was licking itself. . A day on the bill was organised with all the attention to detail that characterises the military exercise. Sometimes in the wake of the jeep that carried the stalking-party to the field a note was laid on the track between two stones, outlining the plan as far as the movements of the deer would permit, and instructing the pony-support in where they were to be and at what time. If they saw or heard nothing during a prescribed vigil, at, say, Safthaugh Bothy, they would be posted on to McKinley's Fank, a trysting Place of unparalleled desolation to be held, like Rorke's Drift, till further orders. But on this occasion Angus was despatched down to the road to leave the stag in the pony-cart, a vehicle euphemistically described as " the van "; the stalking-party moved off, and I followed at a discreet distance.
For a long damp afternoon there was mist and silence on the corries. No rifle-shot disturbed my small blase pony, whose non-stop feeding arrangements emphasised a contemptuous indifference to the Alpine aspirations of man; no sound dis- closed the position of the stalkers, and my progression tended to become more hesitant, the tentative advances became shorter, the intervening halts became longer, and it was difficult to " Think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, That lie between us and our hame."
At last there was the long-awaited report of a rifle. , The shot seemed to come from the summit of the ridge which, crowned as it was with, a hundred foot of crags and rock-slabs, would make evacuation by pony impracticable. In addition, there was always the disloyal consideration that there might not be a sta4 to bring down at all, so 1 contoured along waiting and listening till, attracted by shouting in the mist, I found the rifleman dragging a stag sled-fashion down a steep slope of wet moss. The carcase was bruised, and many of the bones were broken, for Nichol, who possessed the stalker's respect for a natural advantage, brought it down by an unin- Jiibited use of precipices; and the consequent" double-jointed quality of a mass weighing some fifteen stone made the lifting awkward and profane. At length Nichol moved round to the front like a hesitant umpire giving a batsman middle-and-leg, and gave his opinion that the burden was truly balanced. We descended to the van, woke up Angus and embarked for home.
The bothy where three of us lived was surprisingly a two- storied building, and was fitted out entirely in matchboarding varnished a sombre mahogany some fifty years ago. Unmounted antlers and faded sketches by Bruce Bairnsfather hung about the walls, groceries littered the table and heavy duty china the sink, and a seat from an old car stood by the fireside. On our return there was time for a mixed grill before assembling for the evening skinning at the larder. Here there was nothing of the small cool cupboard full of neatly stacked tins and half- eaten puddings that generally passes under that name. It was a detached stone building with a sinister block and tackle hang- ing from the rafters, low wooden skinning cradles and gutters running with blood. '
The regular gillies bent to their task with swift competence, parting the skin from the body with 'a kneading motion of the clenched fist. A colleague, a 'medical student, flourished a skinning knife with an abandon that aroused some apprehen- sion, and I with no such claim to experience was put in a corner with a saw and given the subordinate post as headsman. Like the anatomist who " impolitely hewed his way through bones," I found myself inflicting gross indignities; heads were sawn off, tongues extracted and antlers removed on a shield-shaped piece of skull, until between us the elegant and eternal beast of the chase was transformed--reductio, as it were absurdunz—into several economic components. The carcases awaited the butcher; • the skins were taken away to be cured; the antlers were sold at sevenpence a pound to the makers of Highland curios; the hearts, livers and tongues were delivered to the great kitchen, and the remains were consigned, as if they had been radio-active, to a remote and deep pit.
By ten o'clock the next morning Angus and I were at McKinley's Fank, waiting. The ponies cropped the coarse grass at a distance, and the shafts of the van pointed to a cloud- less sky. A ruined but provided dry wood for a 'fire, and the belief hardened that here at last was. the contemplative man's recreation.
A shot. " Damn," we said.
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