them downstream, past Leaning Willow Island, and across the bend, to where the banks were glidden into mud smoothed by the sea. The tide had lapsed from the mud, leaving fresh water to tear the rocky bed below.
Tarka galloped through the tall green reeds to the river, stopping by a gut to sniff at the tracks of a curlew, which had been feeding there during the ebb-tide. Near the water he found another track, of five toes well spread, and the prick of five claws. The dog had walked there. Just above Halfpenny Bridge they saw him, half out of the water, and chewing a fish which he did not trouble to hold in his paws. He craunched it from the head downwards, gulping his bites quickly, and as soon as the tail was swallowed, he turned and went under water for more.
The bitch took her cubs to a pool below the bridge and walked with them across a shallow tail of water. She stared at the stones, brown and slippery with sea-weed, and the cubs stared also. They watched the glimmers in the claws of water, sometimes trying to bite them. While they were watching the mother ran along the bank to the top of the pool and slid into the water. More often than usual her head looked up as she swam from bank to bank, for she was not hunting, but driving the fish down to the cubs. Tarka became excited and, seeing a fish, he swam after it and went underwater to get it. In order to travel faster, he struck out with all four webs together, and lo! Tarka was swimming like an otter near a fish. It was the biggest fish he had seen, and although he kicked after it at the rate
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