Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/213

Luke's Hut Island and lifting from the bows of the riding ship, the head looked up again beside the broken wicker-work. “Artter,” said the man who had pointed, and forgot it. They were going to drink beer in the Plough Inn.

Their voices became faint as they walked on the wall. Flocks of ring-plover and little stint flickered and twisted over the mud and the water. A late crow left the saltings, as a sedge-owl swept on long wings over the drooping yellow grass of the wall, and slixnk away across the water.

Where the pill merged into the estuary the mud was scoured, leaving sand and gravel. Below the stone setts and pobbles of the wall’s apron, whose cracks held the little ruddy winter leaves of the sea-beet, was an islet of flat stones, apart from the wall by a narrowing channel where water rushed. On the stones stood Old Nog, watching for shapes of fish. The broken crab-pot bumped and lurched along the channel, and the heron straightened his neck when he saw a fish jump out of its crown. He peered in the dusky water, where weeds moved darkly, and saw the fish darting before a tapered shadow. It was green and yellow, with a streamer flying from its back. Old Nog snicked the gemmeous dragonet from before the otter’s nose, shook it free of hfe beak, caught it in a jerk that pushed it into his gullet, and swallowed it while the otter was still searching.

Tarka saw a blur of movement above, and swam on under water to the wide sea.

Colour faded; the waves broke grey. Across