yards under water before he needed to put out his nose to breathe. In one of their haunts, the smaller cub caught a big trout driven upwater by the bitch, and as she dragged the flapping fish on the stones, Tarka seized it above the tail. She snapped at his head, dropping her bite to do so, and he dragged it away. She bit it through the red-spotted back, and they tugged, wrenching the fish into pieces which they ate held in pads and munching with their heads on one side, whereas before they had usually swallowed without chewing. At any threat of piracy one whipped round to eat facing another direction; very soon all the trout was gone except a scriddick, or fragment, of the tail.
There was no more yinny-yikkering when they had fed, for then was the time for play. When Tarka had drunk some water, he snapped playfully at the cub’s head, and inviting her by his manner to catch him, romped through the shallow into the pool. Sometimes he swam with only his hind legs, as his mother did when she was not close upon a fish, but when his sister was so near to his rudder that she could touch the tip of it, he used all four webs and swerved by a swish of his rudder which swung him round in his own length. In one of his turns she caught him and they rolled in the water, pretending to bite each other, and kicking as kittens do. And so it was that Old Nog, the wisest heron of the Two Rivers, heard the noise of bubbles breaking on the water as he alighted by the pool side. He watched, prepared to jump-and-flap if there were danger. He saw a swirl on the water, and the roll of two
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