After half an. hour the cries came down to the holt again. They passed, and then Tarka heard a new and terrible noise—^the noise as of mammoth iron-toed centipedes crossing on the stones, or shillets, at the tail of the pool.
Tally Ho! Look out, he's coming down!
Iron toes scraped the shillets faster. Here, across the shallow, a dozen men and women stood almost leg-to-leg in the water, stirring the stream with their iron-shod poles to stop the dog-otter passing down to the next pool.
Tarka and the cubs breathed fast again. Deadlock’s great bellow swam nearer, with the high yelping of Captain. Many wavelets slapped against the tree. A dozen hounds were giving tongue between Canal Bridge and the stickle above Leaning Willow Island. A shaggy face looked into the holt and a voice cried just over Tarka’s head, Go'rn leave it, Dewdrop! Go'rn leave it! Boots knocked on the trunk. Is-isss-iss! Go’rn leave it! And Dewdrop left it, bitten in the nose.
Unable to break the stickle, the dog-otter went back under the bridge. Baying became fainter. The notes of the cole-tits in the ash tree were heard again.
In the quiet hollow the otter unstiffened and scratched for ticks as though the hunt had never come there. Hounds and men were above the bridge, where another stickle was standing. The water flowed with small murmurs. She heard the rustling clicks of dragon-flies’ wings over the sun-plashy ripples. Silence, the tranquil chee-chee of a cole-tit seeking a grub in an oak-apple,
34
