CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tarka became one with the river, finding his course among the slimy stones so that his back was always covered. He rose beside the middle pier, whose cutwater was hidden by a faggot of flood sticks. Under the sticks was dimness, streaked and blurred with sunlight. Tarka hid and listened.
His paws rested on a sunken branch. The water moved down, clouded with the mud-stir-rings of the leat. He lay so still that the trout returned to their stances beside the stone sterlings.
B’hoys, b’hoys! Com’ on, ol’ fellars! Leu in, ol’ fellars. Com’ on, all’v yer!
The stain spread into the pool below the bridge. Hoimds whimpered and marked at the stick-pile. Their many tongues smote all other sounds from Tarka’s ears. He knew they could not reach him in his retreat, and so he stayed there even when a pole, thrust into the heap, rubbed against his flank. Then over his head the sticks began to crack and creak, as a man climbed upon them. The man jumped with both feet together on the heap. Tarka sank and turned downstream. Cries from the lower parapet; thudding of boots above. The chain of bubbles drew out downstream.
Tarka swam to the left bank, where he touched and breathed. He heard, in the half-second his head was out of water, the noise that had terrified him as a cub—the noise as of an iron-shod centipede crossing the shallows. Way down the river was stopped by a line of upright figures, standing a yard apart and stirring the water with poles.
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