Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/175

Derby sow weighed seven hundred pounds. She whistled to Tarka, who ran at the sow.

Seven hundred pounds of flesh returned from the fence with pricked ears and a tail-tip gone; and Tarka ate grass blades, although he was not hiingry. He wanted to get the taste of sow out of his mouth.

All night the swifts had been racing over the valley, so high that not even the owls had heard their whistling screams. When these birds saw the golden fume of the sun rising out of the east, they poured down in three funnels to the lower airs of the valley. Their narrow wings made a whishing noise as they fell. Tarka and White-tip in the weir-pool lay on their backs and watched them as they linked into chains and chased away, some up the valley, others to the estuary. Suddenly the otter heads lifted, looked round, and sank togetherthey had heard the otter-hounds baying in the kennels on Pilton Hill.

In daylight they drifted down the mill-leat that drew out of the pool, passing from grassy banks to concrete, above which were walls and windows of houses and lofts where pigeons sat and croodled. Some of the older pigeons were already cocking red-rimmed eyes at the sky, for it was near the time of year when the peregrine falcons wheeled aloft the town of Barum, coming from the cliff eyries of Bag Hole, Hercules Promontory, and the red cliffs along the Severn Sea.

A stag-bird, or farmyard cock, saw the otters from its perch on a bough over the leat, and cried Wock-wock-uock-wick, while its comb became