Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/78

68 thrust my arm into the first, running it down about fifteen inches. It was a little more than a foot long, and enlarged somewhat at the end, the bottom also being about a foot beneath the surface, for it slanted downward. But I felt nothing within. I only felt a pretty regular and rounded apartment with firm walls of weedy or fibrous mud. I then thrust my arm into the other hole, which was longer and deeper, at first discovering nothing. But, trying again, I found that I had not reached the end, for it turned a little and descended more than I supposed. Here I felt a similar apartment or enlargement some six inches in diameter horizontally, but not quite so high, nor nearly so wide at its throat. Here, to my surprise, I felt something soft like a gelatinous mass of spawn, but, feeling a little further, felt the horns of a pout. I deliberately took hold of her by the head, and lifted her out of the hole and the water, having run my arm in two thirds of its length. She offered not the slightest resistance from first to last, even when I held her out of water before my face, and only darted away suddenly when I dropped her into the water. The entrance to the apartment was so narrow that she could hardly have escaped, if I had tried to prevent her. Putting in my arm again, I felt under where she had been, a flattish mass of ova, several inches in diameter,