towards it; the bass saw the enemy, and sped into deeper water. Rark! said Old Nog, sharply, and they stood still.
Sucking noises arose out of the pool as it grew darker. These were the feeding noises of male eels, thin and small and mud-coloured, whom the larger blue females would meet in the autumnal migration. In wriggling rushes the eels sought the shrimp-fry in the shallows, and whenever one passed near a beak—dap! it was snicked, lifted from the water as a writhing knot, and swallowed.
The Railway Bridge loomed low and black against the glimmer of sky and water. Splash, splatter, the bass were moving about the pool. Two or three lay, trout-wise, in the slight downward current by each round iron pier, watching the surface above them for the dark moving speck of a shrimp. The splashes of their jumps echoed under the girders.
A summer sandpiper flew over the bridge, crying in the darkness, for it had been alarmed while feeding under the mud slopes of the empty pill. It was answered by a curlew on the gravel bank above the herons.
Immediately below the bridge the brook poured its little fresh stream into the pool; raising up little ridges of sand, sweeping them away again with sudden little noises. Splash, splatter, the bass were feeding in the weed on the stone piling below the bridge-end. Patter, patter, five dark shapes moving on the soft wet sand of the pill’s mouth—the pattering ceased, and the brook slurred its sand-sounds as they slid into
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