United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hardly, however, was this long journey needed. The dog was baffled at the outset; and, casting about for the lost scent, he discovered, on the pebbles, the strong smell of the weasel that had wandered thither to quench his thirst while Brighteye was feeding in the reed-bed opposite.
Then wait till the ducks rise, and let go at 'em." There was another interval full of excitement; the punt was sent quietly toward the end of the reed-bed; and in obedience to his instructions Dick knelt ready to fire Tom watching him enviously, and wishing it were his turn.
The flags in the reed-bed were not so succulent as they had been in early summer; the branches that sometimes guided him as he swam from place to place seemed strangely bare and grey; the clump of may-weed that, growing near his burrow, had served as a beacon in the gloom, was faded to a few short brown tufts; and nightly in his wanderings he was startled by the withered leaves that, like fluttering birds, descended near him on the littered run-ways or on the glassy surface of the river-reach.
Up came Arrumpa's trunk to trumpet his contempt, and out from the hillslope like a picture on a screen stretched for a moment the flat reed-bed of Two Rivers, with great herds of silly, elephant-looking creatures feeding there, with huge incurving trunks and backs that sloped absurdly from a high fore-hump.
I gained the towing-path, which led me out gradually into the heart of the fen; the river ran, or rather moved, a sapphire streak, between its high green flood-banks; the wide spaces between the embanked path and the stream were full of juicy herbage, great tracts of white cow-parsley, with here and there a reed-bed.
"And did you see it, mester?" said Hickathrift. "Nay, my lad. I went on and on as quietly as I could go, and round the reed-bed, but all was as quiet as could be." "Didn't you see the poont?" said the wheelwright. "What punt?" said Tom sharply. Hickathrift looked confused. "Poont o' him as hed the light, I meant," he said hurriedly.
Since, under the care of his mother, he made his earliest visit to the reed-bed, Brighteye had seen hundreds of giant salmon; the restless fish, however, did not stay long in the pool, but after a brief sojourn passed upward.
Then he dropped once more into the pool, and swam across to a reed-bed on the further margin. There he found several of his neighbours feeding on roots of riverside plants.
They were good swimmers, with only the head showing above the surface sending out a trail of V-shaped ripples that shimmered and sparkled if the sun shone, and on moonlit nights. Often, however, they swam under water to some nearby island reed-bed or to the security of a burrow beneath the overhanging bank.
This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased practising his solos before the first winter set in and the morning sun glanced between leafless trees on a dark flood swirling over the reed-bed where in summer was his favourite feeding place.
Word Of The Day