over placid water, and fishermen standing in groups on the quay, after the closing of taverns, heard the whistling cries of the young otters, a mile away on Crow Island, lost on the shingle where the ring-plovers piped. They were heard for three nights, and then the south-west gale smote the place and filled the estuary with great seas.
Black bits of old leaves turned and twirled in the flooded weir-pool above Canal Bridge, like the rooks turning and twirling high in the grey windy sky. The weir in flood was an immense loom in sunlight; the down-falling water-warp was whitey-yellow with bubbles; to and fro across the weir moved the air-hollows, a weft held by a glistening water-shuttle. Below, the bubble-woven waters were rended on the shillets; they leapt and roared and threw up froth and spray. A branch of a tree was lodged on the sill; the rocks had stripped it of bark. Sometimes a lead-coloured narrow shape, longer than a man’s arm, would appear in the falling water-warp, moving slowly against the torrent with sideways flaps of tail, until washed back into the lower river again, which roared and heaved like fighting polar bears. The sun lit the travelling air-hollow under the sill of the weir. The salmon never reached the sill. Some fish tried to swim up the fish-pass, but the pound of the flood was mightier on the steps. Above in the weir-pool a bird was swimming, low in the water, watching with small crimson eyes for trout. Its beak was sharp as a rock-splinter. Above the water it was brownish-black, foam-
209
