Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/205

The Morte Tarka turned back under the Morte Stone, and swam to land. He climbed a slope strewn with broken thrift-roots and grey shards of rock, to a path set on its seaward verge by a fence of iron posts and cables. Salt winds had gnawed the iron to rusty splinters. The heather above the path was tougher than the iron, but its sprigs were barer than its own roots.

Over the crest of the Morte, heather grew in low bushes, out of the wind’s way. There were green places where among grass cropped by sheep grew mushrooms mottled like owls’ plumage. The sky above the crest was reddening, and he found a sleeping place under a broken cromlech, the burial place of an ancient man, whose bones were grass and heather and dust in the sun.

Tarka slept warm all day. At sunset he ran down to the sea. He worked south through the currents that scoured shelly coves and swept round lesser rocks into the wide Morte Bay. Long waves, breaking near the shallows, left foam behind them in the shapes of dusky-white seals. Bass were swimming in the breakers, taking sand-eels risen in the sandy surge. A high-flying gull saw a fish flapping in the shallows, with ribbon weed across its head. The gull glided down, and the ribbon weed arose on low legs, tugging at the five-pound fish, and dragged it on to firm, wet sand. Hak-hak! cried the gull, angrily. Tu-lip, tulip! the ring-plover arose and flickered away in a flock. Other gulls flew over, and dropped down. Tarka feasted among the noise of wings and angry cries. When he was full, he lapped fresh water trickling over the sand in a broad and shallow bed.