# Tarka the Otter/Chapter 19

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. ​Tarka heard the noise under water, but he swam, down until he saw before him the bright-bubbled barrier. He swung round and swam upstream as fast as three and a half webbed feet could push him.
He swam under the heap of sticks again, enduring the massed tongues of marking hounds until the creaking and thudding over his head drove him to open water again. He swam under an arch, turned by the lower sterling, and swam up another arch, to a backwater secluded from the main stream by the ridge of shillets made by the cross-leaping waters of the runner in flood. An ash tree grew over the backwater, but Tarka could find no holding in its roots. He swam past the legs of swimming hounds and went down again.
Tally Ho!
He swam through the plying poles of the stickle, and ran over the shallow, reaching safe water before the pack came down. He was young and fast and strong. Hounds were scattered behind him, some swimming, others plunging through the shallows below the banks, stooping to the scent washed on scour and shillet, and throwing their tongues. He could not see them, when swimming under water, until they were nearly over him. He swam downstream, never turning back, touching first one bank to breathe, and then swimming aslant to the other. Once in the straight mile of river under the Town on the Hill, he emerged by a shallow almost by Deadlock’s feet; instantly he turned back. Farther down, by a jungle of balsam, ​whose top drought-roots were like the red toes of a bird, he left the river and ran on the bank, under trees. He had gone thirty yards on the hot land when Render and Deadlock crashed through the jungle of hollow sap-filled stalks after him. Although his legs were short—it was difficult to see them when he ran—he moved faster than any of the men hunting him could run. He left the land a hundred yards above Taddiport Bridge, by a bank where shards of Roman tiles were jutting.
Below the bridge was a ridge of shillets, long and wide as the broken hull of a sailing ship. Alders and willows grew here, and tall grasses that hid the old dry twigs and reeds on the lower branches of the trees. Floods had heaped up the island. The wet marks of Tarka’s feet and rudder soon dried on the worn flakes of rock; but not before the larger pads of hounds, making the loose shillets clatter, had covered them.
Leu-in! Leu-in, b’hoys. Ov-ov-ov-ov-over!
Tarka’s feet were dry when he took again to water, after trying to rid himself of scent on the stones so hot in the sim. He passed plants of water-hemlock and dropwort, tall as a man, growing among the stones, some sprawling with their weight of sap. He swam on down the river, passing Servis Wood, over which a buzzard, pestered by rooks, was wailing in the sky. The rooks left it to see what the hounds were doing, and wheeled silently over the river. Their shadows fled through the water, more visible than the otter.
A thousand yards from Taddiport Bridge, Tarka passed the brook up which he had travelled ​with his mother on the way to the Clay Pits. He swam under a railway bridge, below which the river hurried in a course narrow and shaded. An island of elm trees divided the river bed; the right fork was dry—hawkweed, ragwort, and St. John’s wort, plants of the land, were growing there. Tarka swam to the tail of the island, and climbed up the dry bank. The place was cool and shady, and filled with the stench arising from the broad leaves and white flowers of wild garlic growing imder the trees. Tarka trod into a thick patch, and quatted low.
Hounds passed him. He listened to them baying in the narrow channel below the island.
Deadlock clambered up the dry bank, ran a few yards among the grasses, threw up his head, sniffed, and turned away. Tarka held his breath. Other hounds followed, to sniff and run down the bank again. Tarka listened to them working among the roots under the island bank, and across the river. He heard the chaunting voices of huntsman and whippers-in; the noises of motor-cars moving slowly along the hard-rutted trackway, the old canal-bed, above the right bank of the river; the voices of men and women getting out of the motor-cars; and soon afterwards, the scrape of boots on the steep rubble path down to the dry, stony bed.
Tarka had been l3nng among the cool and stinking garlic plants of Elm Island for nearly five minutes when he heard gasping and wheezing noises at the top of the island. The two terriers, Bite’m and Biff, were pulling at their chains, held by the kennel boy. Their tongues himg long and ​limp, after the two-mile tug from the mills over sun-baked turf, dusty trackway, and hot stones, to Elm Island. Just before, while tugging down the path, Bite’m had fainted with the heat. A lapping sprawl in the river had refreshed the couple, and now they strove against the collars pressing into their windpipes.
Tarka started up when they were a yard from where he lay. The kennel-boy dropped the chain when he saw him. Tarka ran towards the river, but at the sheer edge of the island he saw men on the stones six feet below. He ran along the edge, quickening at the shout of the kennel-boy, and had almost reached the island’s tail when Bite’m pinned him in the shoulder. Tissing through his open mouth, Tarka rolled and fought with the terriers. Their teeth clashed. Tarka’s moves were low and smooth; he bit Bite’m again and again, but the terrier hung on. Biff tried to bite him across the neck, but Tarka writhed away. The three rolled and snarled, scratching and snapping, falling apart and returning with instant swiftness. Ears were torn and hair ripped out. Hounds heard them, and ran baying under the island cliff to find a way up. The kennel-boy tried to stamp on and recover the end of the chain, for he knew that in a worry all three might be killed. White terriers and brown otter rolled nearer the edge, and fell over.
The fall shook off Bite’m. Tarka ran under the legs of Dabster, and although Bluemaid snapped at his flank he got into the water and sank away.
Tally Ho! Tally Ho! Yaa-aa-ee on to'm!
​By the bank, fifty yards below Elm Island, stood the Master, looking into water six inches deep. A fern frond, knocked off the bank upstream, came down turning like a little green dragon in the clear water. It passed. Then came an ash-spray, that clung around the pole he leaned on. Its leaves bent to the current, it stayed, it swung away, and drifted on. A dead stick rode after it, and a fly feebly struggling—and then the lovely sight of an otter spreading himself over the stones, moving with the stream, slowly, just touching with his feet, smooth as oil under the water. A twenty-pound dog, thought the Master, remaining quiet by the shallow water, listening to the music of his hounds. There was a stickle below Rothern Bridge.
The hounds splashed past him, stooping to the scent. Tarka’s head showed, and vanished. He swam under Rothern Bridge, whose three stone arches, bearing heavy motor-transport beyond their old age, showed the cracks of suffering that the ferns were filling green. A sycamore grew out of its lower parapet. Deeper water under the bridge; the frail bubble-chain lay on it. A cry above the bridge; a line of coarser bubbles breaking across the stickle, where six men and two women stood in the river.
Tarka’s head looked up and saw them. He lay in the deep water. He turned his head, and watched hounds swimming down through the arch. He dived and swam up; was hunted to shallow water again, and returned, making for the stickle. The water was threshed in a line from shillet-bank to shillet-bank, but he did not turn ​back. As he tried to pass between a man in red and a man in blue, two pole-ends were pushed under his belly in an attempt to hoick him back. But Tarka slipped off the shillet-burnished iron and broke the stickle. The whips ran on the bank, cheering on the hounds.
Get on to’m! Hark to Deadlock! Leu-on! Leu-on! Leu-on!
A quarter of a mile below Rothern Bridge the river slows into the lower loop of a great S. It deepens until half-way, where the S is cut by the weir holding back the waters of the long Beam Pool. Canal Bridge crosses the river at the top of the S.
Where the river begins to slow, at the beginning of the pool, its left bank is bound by the open roots of oak, ash, alder, and sycamore. To hunted otters these trees offered holding as secure as any in the country of the Two Rivers. Harper, the aged hound—he was fourteen years old—knew every holt in the riverside trees of Knackershill Copse, and although he had marked at all of them, only once had he cracked the rib of an otter found in the pool. Leeches infested the unclear water.
Tarka reached the top of the pool. Swimming in the shade, his unseen course betrayed by the line of bubbles-a-vent, he came to the roots of the sycamore tree, where he had slept for two days during his wandering after the death of Greymuzzle. He swam under the outer roots, and was climbing in a dim light to a dry upper ledge when a tongue licked his head, and teeth playfully ​nipped his ear. Two pale yellow eyes moved over him. He had awakened the cub Tarquol.
Tarka turned round and round, settled and curled, and closed his eyes. Tarquol’s nostrils moved, pointing at Tarka’s back. His small head stretched nearer, the nostrils working. He sniffed Tarka’s hair from rudder to neck, and his nose remained at the neck. It was a strange smell, and he sniffed carefully, not wanting to touch the fur with his nostrils. Tarka drew in a deep breath, which he let out in a long sigh. Then he swallowed the water in his mouth, settled his ear more comfortably on his paw, and slept; and awoke again.
Tarquol, the hairs of his neck raised, was listening at the back of the ledge. He was still as a root. The ground was shaking.
Go in on’m, old fetters! Wind him, my lads! B!hoys! B’hoys! Come on, b’hoys, get on to’m.
The otters heard the whimpers of hounds peering from the top of the bank, afraid of the fall into the river. They watched the dim root-opening level with the water. Footfalls sounded in the roots by their heads; they could feel them through their feet. Then the water-level rose up and shook with a splash, as Deadlock was tipped into the river. They saw his head thrust in at the opening, heard his gruff breathing, and then his belving tongue. Other hounds whimpered and splashed into the river.
Pull him out, old fetters! Leu-in there, leu-in, leu-in!
Heavy thuds shook down bits of earth on the otters’ heads and backs. The iron-bar, with its ball-handle, started to break through the top of ​the holt. Tarquol tissed, moving to and fro on the ledge in his fear of the unknown. Often he looked at the opening, wanting to escape. The bar was poxmding a root.
Tarka quatted on the ledge; he knew that Deadlock would follow him wherever he swam in water. Tarquol, twisting and weaving his head, ran down on roots to the water, dragging his rudder for a dive; but a whitish light alarmed him and he ran up to the ledge again. The whitish light was reflected from the breeches of a wading man. A voice sounded near and hollow. Then a pole pushed through the opening between two roots. Its end was thrown about, nearly striking Tarquol’s head. It was pulled out again, and the whitish light moved away. The pounding of the bar stopped. Tarka heard the whining of Bite’m.
Hands held and guided the terrier past the outside root. Tarquol tissed again as the dim light darkened with the shape of the enemy, whose scent was on the hair of Tarka’s neck. Bite’m whined and yapped, trying to struggle up to the otters. His hind feet slipped off the roots, and he fell into the water below. Plomp, plomp, plomp, as he trod water, trying to scramble up the side.
Again the opening grew dark with arms holding and guiding another terrier, and Biff began to climb. Wough! wough! wough! Soon she fell into the water. The terriers were called off. Tarka settled more easily, but Tarquol could not rest. Hounds and terriers were gone, but still the voices of men were heard. The sound was low and regular, and Tarka’s eyes closed. Tarquol quatted beside him, and for many minutes neither moved. ​Then the murmur of voices ceased with footfalls along the bank, coming nearer, and stopping above. A man climbed down the bank and slid feet first into the water; the chalky light was reflected in at the opening. An arm was thrust in, and the wrist-jerk sent a handful of small pieces of rock into the holt. The pieces hissed when they met the water, and gave off streams of bubbles. The otters gazed down at them. The man moved away from the holt, and his friends hauled him to the top of the bank.
Silence, except for the hissing and bubbling in the holt. The otters were immobile in curiosity. Neither Tarka nor Tarquol thought of the strange bubbling as an act of the man. Often they had seen bubbles arising from the holes of eels and ragworms in mud. Sometimes in solitary underwater play they had blown bubbles, and tried to bite them before they broke at the surface.
Tarka and Tarquol moved lower along a root to be nearer the strange bubbles. Tarka was lower than the cub, near the water, when he started and sprang as though trapped, gave a retching cough, and tumbled into the water. Tarquol hissed with fright, gaped when he breathed the acetylene gas, and followed Tarka out of the holt. He saw Tarka’s chain rising bright before him. He turned upstream and was alone.
Seventy yards from the holt he rose imder the bank to rest, and heard the baying of hounds. He dived again and went on upstream at his greatest speed. At his next vent he knew that the terrible beasts were following him. He swam ​out of the pool, turned back again, saw their heads in the water from bank to bank, became scared, and left the river.
Galloping across the meadow faster than he had ever run in his life, with the hunting cries behind him and the thudding hooves of bullocks cantering away from hounds on his left, Tarquol came to sheds where farm machines were stored, and going through a yard, he ran through a gap in a hedge into a garden, where an old man was picking oft the tops of his broad beans in a row, muttering about the black-fly on them. Tarquol passed him so near and so swiftly that the granfer’s short clay pipe dropped from between his gums. He muttered in the sunshine and pondered nearly a minute. Hardly had he stooped to pick up his pipe when a great black and white hound crashed through the hedge and ran over his tetties and sun-dried shallots, followed by three more hounds, and after them a couple, and then his garden was filled with them.
Git’oom!
The hounds were gone, leaving him staring at his broken beans.
Tarquol had run round the walls of the cottage and into a farmyard, scattering fowls in terror before him. One of the hens, who was broody, ran at him and leapt at his back, pecking and flapping. Tarquol kicked a little dust behind his straight rudder. At full speed he ran into a pigsty, where a sow was lying on her side with a farrow of eleven tugging at her. Seeing him, they stopped tugging, stared together, squeaked together, and sccimpered away into comers. The ​sow, too fat to get up quickly, tried to bite Tarquol as he rippled from comer to comer. The baying of the pack grew terribly loud, and still Tarquol darted about the sty, seeking a way of escape. The sow, after many grunts, flung herself on her trotters and bundled her flabby mass to the door, unlocking her dirty teeth to bite Deadlock, who had just arrived. Squealing with rage, her bristly, mud-caked ears flapping on her chaps, she chased him out of the sty, followed him back into the yard, and scattered the rest of the pack.
Tarquol had run out behind the sow. He gained three hundred yards before hounds found his line again. He ran with the sun behind him for two hundred yards over grass, then he turned and went through a thorn hedge, climbed the railway embankment, and ran up over Furzebeam Hill, leaving an irregular trail. He ran for three miles on land, hiding among the dry spikes of gorse, and under branches. Sometimes he mewed in his misery.
Hounds ran far ahead of the men and women. Eventually the pack—with the exception of Pitiful, who was lost—hunted him back to the railway line, to where he was crouching low in the thorn hedge. A bird with a loud rasping voice, and a beak like a bent iron nail, clacked and chattered on a briar rising out of the hedge. It was a bird of property, or red-backed shrike, and Tarquol was quatting by its larder of bumble-bees, grasshoppers, and young harvest mice impaled on thorns. The mice were dead, but the bees still moved their legs.
Tarquol ran out of the thorns just before ​Render’s muzzle pushed into his hiding place; but hounds leapt the low hedge and overtook him, before he had gone very far on his short, tired legs. Deadlock seized him and shook him and threw him into the air. Tarquol sprang up as soon as he fell, snapping and writhing as more jaws bit on his body, crushed his head, cracked his ribs, his paws, and his rudder. Among the brilliant hawkbits—little sunflowers of the meadow—he was picked up and dropped again, trodden on and wrenched and broken, while the screaming cheers and whoops of sportsmen mingled with the growling rumble of hounds at worry. Tarquol fought them until he was blinded, and his jaws were smashed.