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But it is of Venice that I would speak. The folk there live like water-rats upon a mud-bank, but the houses are very fine, and the churches, especially that of St. Mark, are as great as any I have seen. But above all they are proud of their statues and their pictures, which are the most famous in Europe.
The things he had to tell about otters' and badgers' and water-rats' houses, not to mention birds' nests and field-mice and their burrows, were enough to make you almost tremble with excitement when you heard all the intimate details from an animal charmer and realized with what thrilling eagerness and anxiety the whole busy underworld was working.
Finding no signs of any cubs, I was just going away when I saw a feather sticking out of the ground a few yards from the fox-earth. I pulled four young thrushes, a tiny rabbit, and two young water-rats out of this hole, and re-buried them. The cubs, it afterwards appeared, were laid up in a rabbit burrow some distance away.
Hay could not understand why the water-rats were so timid at this pond till he recollected that the preceding summer two schoolboys used to get up in an oak that overhung the water, each with a catapult, and, firing bullets from these india-rubber weapons on the water-rats underneath, slew nearly every one of them.
Beds of the large blue water forget-me-not floated beside the banks, and above them creamy meadow-sweet lifted its tall plumes among the reeds and grasses. Small water-rats swam busily from bank to bank or played on the roots of the willows, and bright wings of birds and insects fluttered and skimmed over the shining stream.
From the ship men were casting themselves overboard like water-rats, swimming in the water like ducks, scrambling on board the boats anyhow. From the half-opened main-hatch the black smoke, mixed now with sparks, rose steadily and swiftly and spitefully, as if driven through the half-closed teeth of a dragon. A mile away beyond the Northumberland stood the fog bank.
To these imaginary evils was added the reality of some enormous water-rats that issued from an adjacent pool and began to eat Andy's hat and shoes, which had fallen off in his struggle with his captors; and all Andy's warning ejaculations could not make the vermin abstain from his shoes and his hat, which, to judge from their eager eating, could not stay their stomachs long, so that Andy, as he looked on at the rapid demolition, began to dread that they might transfer their favours from his attire to himself, until the tramp of approaching horses relieved his anxiety, and in a few minutes two horsemen stood before him they were Father Phil and Squire Egan.
"Ah, dear little Sir Bevis!" whispered a reed, bending towards him as the wind blew, "please do not come any nearer, the bank is steep and treacherous, and hollow underneath where the water-rats run. So do not lean over after the forget-me-nots they are too far for you. Sit down where you are, behind that little bush, and I will tell you all about the bathing."
And putting on her cap, she cried: Fairies that are my friends, come hither! And in a moment a crowd of beautiful creatures, each one with a crown on her head, stood before her. Certainly none could have guessed that they were the snails, water-rats, and grasshoppers from which she had chosen her retinue.
Even now there is a narrow stream unfrozen; though the banks against which it chafes are hard, and will not take the impression of the moorhen's foot. The water-rats that in summertime played and fed along the margin among the flags are rarely seen in winter. In walking in daylight by the brook now their plunge into the water will not be heard, nor can they be seen travelling at the bottom.
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