a kill to complete it, when old Harper stopped and lifted his muzzle. The air on the water, colder than the land air, was brimming over the sea-wall, and Harper had smelled an otter. Deadlock moved into the air-stream, threw up his head, whimpered, and ran down the grassy bank to the broken turf above the glidder. Sterns were waved like feathers. Deadlock leapt into the river, followed by half the pack. Pitiful started patiently to work the water-line of the mud, and Captain babbled in excitement as he lapped and swam.
The water was three feet deep. Hounds scrambled up the glidder, some slipping down, drawing long claw-lines on the harder clay beneath. They whimpered and scratched before the round wooden trap, and Armlet bayed them on from the bank above. Terrier Bite’m pushed his small eager body between their flanks, under their legs, whining and yelping. Five men waded the river, testing a footway with taps of iron-shod poles before them. Thinking that the otter they had hunted for more than five hours was hiding inside, and that the tired hounds would have no chance to kill even an exhausted otter in the rising water, the pack was not withdrawn when Bite’m was taken to the open end of the drain, where Tarka’s deep seals in the lower ooze showed like big blackberries crushed in the mud. Bite’m was given a pat on his ribs and gently shoved into the dark hole. He crept in, quick and shivering.
The ooze sucked at Tarka’s webs as he turned away from the light-striped lid of the drain. His
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