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"Lilith, my soul!" he murmured, his eyes wandering over the brassy, glaring expanse of water and dried-up reed-bed, as though to annihilate space and distance. "Lilith, my life! It is time I looked once more upon that dear face which rendered my dreams so sweet." His hand, still clasping something within his breast, was drawn forth, that which hung by the steel chain still inclosed within it.
When they leave the reed-bed in the morning, instead of flying with their companions to the accustomed feeding grounds, the males isolate themselves and scatter in different directions.
He panted and perspired, and struggled on, with the gun always ready; but saving a moor-hen or two upon one or other of the pools, and a coot sailing proudly along at the edge of a reed-bed with her little dingy family, he saw nothing worthy of a shot. Once there was a rustle among the reeds, but whatever made it was gone before he could see what it was.
For a time no sign of a living creature was visible; then a brown rat crept along the bank beneath my hiding place; a dim form, which from its size I concluded was that of Lutra, the otter, crossed a spit of sand about a dozen yards above the reed-bed, where a moonbeam glanced through the alders; and a big brown owl, silhouetted against the sky, flew silently up-stream, and perched on a low, bare branch of a Scotch fir beside the grass-grown path.
At last, when the voices of the otter and the owl were still, and when the shadows were foreshortened as the moon gazed coldly down between the branches of the fir, Brighteye, having recovered from his recent fright, left his sanctuary by the roots of the willow, and wandered, singing, singing, down the white, winding run-way and out into the main road of the riverside people, till he came to a jutting branch above the river's brim, whence he dived into the placid pool, and swam away towards the reed-bed.
After the first week of their stay, Brighteye found them so ill-tempered that he dared not venture anywhere near the tail of the stream; and, as the big trout at the top of the pool showed irritation at the least disturbance, the vole was forced to wander down the bank, to a spot below the salmon, before crossing the river on his periodical journeys to the reed-bed.
"'Follow, follow, he said; 'I go to bring up the people. "It was two days before Scrag stopped running. "From the Grass Flats on to the Islands it was all one reed-bed where the water gathered into runnels between hummocks of rotten rushes, where no trail would lie and any false step might plunge you into black bog to the shoulder.
They went back in silence for some time, and then Tom Long, whose eyes were unusually good, pointed to a part of the reed-bed on the right. "Is not that the continuation of the creek, sir?" "Yes, to be sure, so it is," said the lieutenant. "We can see it coming this way. It's masked by those trees the other way. Steady, my lads; steady. Let us go first."
Presently we reached the reed-bed that Hewitt had spoken of, and I could see a sort of little creek or inlet. Here I ceased to pull, and Styles cautiously punted us into the creek with one of the sculls. The boat grounded noiselessly in the mud, and we crept ashore one at a time through mud and sedge.
"Hark at him!" cried Dave, going on rapidly with his task and packing up his stuffed birds neatly in their basket, drawing out his pegs, and then rolling up and wringing the wet net before placing it in the punt, and winding in the dripping line which he drew through the water from the reed-bed.
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