Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/202

East Cleave boring into its blubber. Near the boar swam a sow porpoise, suckling her little one, who, towed along on its back, breathed during every rise and roll of its mother. Tarka caught his first herring and ate it on a rock, liking the taste, but when he swam out for more, the under-seas were vacant.

For a week he slept in the disused lime-kiln on the greensward above the Heddon water, that lost itself in a ridge of boulders above the tide wash. While he was exploring the fresh water a storm broke over the moor, and the roaring coloured spate returned him to the sea. He went westwards, under the towering cliffs and waterfalls in whose ferny sides he liked to rest by day. Once he was awakened by a dreadful mumbling in the wind far above him. As he lifted his head he heard a whishing noise, as of falcons in swoop. Flakes of scree clattered and hurtled past him; then a stag, and three staghounds. The bodies smashed on the rocks, and were of silence again. Soon the cries of seabirds and daws were echoing out of the cliffs. Ravens flew down, and buzzards, and the air was filled with black and white and brown wings, with deep croaking, wailing, and shrill screaming. They jostled and fought for an hour, when a motor-boat, holding a red-coated figure, came rovmd the eastern sheer and drove them into flight. The gulls mobbed Tarka when they saw him slipping down from his resting ledge, but he found the sea and sank away from them. That night, quatting on a rock and eating a conger, the west wind brought him the scent of White-tip.

At dawn he was swimming under the sea-feet of