Page:Life Story of an Otter.djvu/97

 CHAPTER VI THE FAMILY BROKEN UP there, the cub watched the lurid after-glow fade, dusk creep over the rough water, and the sky darken till a star appeared in a break between the scudding wrack. Then he rose and listened. The waves broke against the point, the reeds hissed, the breakers thundered on the bar, but no call from his mother reached his eager ears. He was beginning to fear she had deserted him when from across the mere came the shrill summons. Immediately he dived and, rising almost at once, headed at excited pace for the creek, where soon, to his delight, he viewed his mother and sister swimming to meet him. The wild gambols that followed in the midst of the mere did not last long, for there was hunting to be done.

The quarry the otter had set her mind on were the pike frequenting the reedy bays, towards the largest of which the hunters swam. Near a bed of lilies they dived, and had not made half the circuit of the wall of stems before they espied 69