Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the
excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the
creator of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very
high place.
It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form
of man-trap of which this found in the keeper's out-house was a
specimen. For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments
which, if placed in a row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim,
would have worn the subordinate aspect of the bears, wild boars, or
wolves in a travelling menagerie, as compared with the leading lion or
tiger. In short, though many varieties had been in use during those
centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as the true and
only period of merry England--in the rural districts more
especially--and onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth
century, this model had borne the palm, and had been most usually
followed when the orchards and estates required new ones.
There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted
landlords--quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these
resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but
gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts,
probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the
influence of their wives: two inches of mercy, two inches of cruelty,
two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe, and so on, through the
whole extent of the jaws. There were also, as a class apart, the
bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the bone.
The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression
that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a
shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a
tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws
were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that. When
they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and
three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being
about a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions
the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of a
stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the body
when forcing it down.
There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when
the gin and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs's great-uncle had
endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for
life. Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher,
and afterwards, coming back that way, forgetful of what he had done,
walked into it himself. The wound brought on lockjaw, of which he
died. This event occurred during the thirties, and by the year 1840
the use of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in the
neighborhood. But being made entirely of iron, they by no means
disappeared, and in almost every village one could be found in some
nook or corner as readily as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed,
been a fearful amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads--especially
those who had a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when they
reached their prime--to drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and
throw it with billets of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to
the depth of near an inch.