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"T' goop ha' got un," cried old Robin, indignant at this outrage by a stranger to his caves, "God niver mahd mon to pree intil 's ain warks." Old Joe and Bob grunted approbation, and Mordacks himself was beginning to believe that some dark whirlpool or coil of tangles had drowned the poor diver, when a very gentle noise, like a dabchick playing beneath a bridge, came from the darkest corner.
The moorhens came back from the ponds where they had nested in April and May; the wild duck and the teal flew south from oversea, and in the night descended circling to the pool; a dabchick from the wild gorge down-river took up his abode in the sedges.
Our familiar Pied-billed Grebe or Dabchick disappears so suddenly, that 'Water Witch' is one of its common names." "What a lot of birds there are to watch for this fall!" said Nat very anxiously. "I only wish I knew how much more time we shall have before father and mother come for us."
"Yes; I wanted its picture, not its life. I've got several, but I'm not satisfied; though I've been lucky lately. I got a dabchick they're growing scarce not long ago." "We'll try the next pool, if you'll let me come," suggested Lisle. "I'm pretty good at trailing. But what do you want with their pictures?" "For my book," she told him.
In the meantime, Mr Dabchick had brought up one of our little nine- pounder boat-guns which had stuck in the rear and blew in part of the palisading on the left of the stockade, when he and a lot of us made a desperate charge to storm the entrenchment.
The otter remembered her experience with the dabchick, and believed that to capture a full-grown duck would tax her utmost strength and cause a general alarm.
Plucky as a lion, however, the captain rallied us; and, dividing the column into three portions, taking command of the middle division himself, while Captain Oliver of the Merlin, and Lieutenant Dabchick of our ship, headed the two others, we advanced with a cheer to storm the stockade, `old Hankey Pankey' aiming for its front face, and the other sections of our force for the flanks of the fortification.
The great osier-beds still give shelter to some, but not nearly so many as formerly. Up towards the spring-heads, where the feeders are mere runlets, the scarcity of wild-fowl has long been noticed. Hardly a wild-duck is now seen; one or two moorhens or a dabchick seem all.
As we approached the dhows, however, Mr Dabchick ordered us to pull easy, singing out to the other boats to spread out to leeward and make for the batilla, which had remained behind like a watchdog guarding the smaller craft, while we attacked her in the bows.
`Old Hankey Pankey' caught up the telescope that Mr Dabchick had just deposited on the slab, putting it to his eye. "Yes, they are dhows sure enough, Gresham," he said to the first lieutenant, after a brief inspection of the craft, which were stealing past us under the loom of the land far away to the westward.
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