and tore away his bite. For five minutes he ate, then stretched up his head, with its spiky neck-hair raised, and excitedly assayed the air. Hu-ee-ici His nostrils opened wide. Hu-ee-ic! White-tip looked over the weir-sill and slid down with the water. Yinn-yinn-y-y-ikk-r! she cried, through her white teeth, and pulled the fish away from Tarka, who rolled on his back and tried to play with her tail. Then he rolled on his pads again and stared down through the rectangular space under the bridge, remembering the other fish. He slid off the rock. White-tip ate two pounds of the mullet. Then she followed Tarka.
The leat, with its swift clear water and brown weed—like clusters of stoats’ tails—ran parallel to the brook, a few yards away, and past a lime-washed mill with a ruined water-wheel. A fence made of old iron bedsteads was set in the leat's grassy bank, and here White-tip saw the dark shape of Tarka’s head against the nobbled lines of framework. He was eating. Seeing her, he whistled. As she ran over the grass, she smelled the scales where he had dragged the fish. Yinn-yinn! she cried again, jumping on the fish and clutching its head in her paws. Tarka watched her. Then he licked the blood from his wounds and ran back to the pill. He was going after more big fish.
In the meadow near the lime-washed mill was a dump of house-rubbish, tipped there by dust-carts, and spread about. A sow and her growing litter were routing in the mess of rotten flesh and vegetable food, crunching up egg-shells and bones and cinders with eager delight. Here, while the
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