Page:Life Story of an Otter.djvu/78

52 came crashing through the undergrowth, the otter made off, and the cub followed her.

They struck the estuary near a jetty piled with bundles of oak-bark, floundered through the mud, and reached the river. The tedious bend, of which the otters had crossed the neck, now lay behind, and in front stretched the long reach marked by broad sand-banks that the tide was beginning to crawl over. So otter and cubs, after passing two branch creeks, musical with the whistlings of night-feeding birds, came to the deeper water, where hulks rode at their last anchorage, and, farther on, to the landlocked haven in which tall-masted vessels swung to their moorings, and the lights of a little seaport and fishing village winked at one another across the salt waters. On viewing the uncanny lights and hearing the shouts of a drunken sailor the male cub sidled up to his mother; and great was his relief when she rounded the rocky promontory that projects into the harbour, and entered the tranquil creek, whose waters reflected only the friendly moon.