Part 11

If she were high in the water, and the bird suddenly rushed down towards her, she darted to one side and hastened out of the way. It was different when the boat came slowly gliding along; then she only moved so as not to be run down.

But it was many a day before she came to understand that it was they especially who wanted to harm her.

One evening the old angler was rowing home late from his fishing-ground. The moon had risen, and shed her silvery light around his oars. They dipped down rhythmically, and came up with the silver dripping from them. Suddenly he noticed that one of them struck something, and the shock passed through the oar up into his arm. He was dragging something heavy, and could not bring the oar forward; and then he pulled the head of a pike up above the water. At the same moment the fish dropped, and the oar was free; but Grim was wiser after that.

As the years passed she developed into a powerful ruler, and increasingly felt herself to be the divinely-favoured inmate of the lake. She was not one of the rabble! She hunted large and small, and lorded it over the inhabitants of the lake as far as she possibly could.

By more frequent and longer expeditions, she increased her knowledge of the lake, and learned the routes to all the reefs, creeks and banks; and she ascertained that in certain directions her world was immense. It was only the surface that she shunned, and the deepest depths; for there were great crayfish--to whom the Creator had been so good as to set their maxillary half at the end of a pair of long, jointed claws--and there, too, lived Oa, the dreaded fish-monster.

Grim’s territory lay half-way between these.

In the pure light of early dawn, when the night flies and moths, drowsy and intoxicated with their nocturnal visits to the flowers, fell by hundreds into the water on their way home; when the swallows relieved the bats, and the whirligigs in the sheltered nooks began their noiseless scurrying over the water, beneath which the water-plants were beginning to appear in green, yellow and rust-red colours; when the day dawned down where Grim had her home, and the wide surface above her was filled with light and radiance--then she hunted most keenly, and felt most voracious, and then there was terror in her splash and snap.

One morning early, a breeze is ruffling the surface of the lake, and winding, white-foamed currents are eating their way out among black shallows. The terns are diving down after small fish, and along the rush-bordered banks the rising sun is treading the water.

Grim is abroad, pushing herself forward like a shadow along the bottom. Her cunning crocodile eyes are turned up so that they project from her head.

A number of roach are thronging about a clump of rushes, examining leaves and stalks just as long-tailed tits search tree-tops and bark; they are inside it and outside it, sucking up the water-snails and insects.

Grim stops with a jerk. She scarcely moves her ventral fins, and breathes very gently. At each breath she cautiously opens her mouth and draws back her tongue, thus filling the spiked barrel with water; then she carefully closes it again, shoots her tongue forward, and emits the water through her gills.

The little fish gambol unwittingly close to her mouth. Her upturned eyes look still higher, and see the gleam of their white-scaled bellies.

Now she is ready to spring.

There is just a movement of the extreme tip of the tail. Only the shifting shadow-lines that the reeds cast over her body indicate that she is moving forward. She peers about continually, peevishly, and evilly. Only one thing troubles her; she can never decide which fish out of the swarming multitude she will take. True, she has made a special study of the way to direct her attack--as the ardent hunter his aim--where the throng is thickest; but the roach are nimble, and she seldom gets more than one at a stroke.

Slowly and imperceptibly she rises, while all the fin-tips wag and wave in lingering enjoyment.

Suddenly a little scarlet roach-eye discovers her black back, which up to the present had looked just like part of the bottom, and they fly away from her in a panic of terror. In one moment the rushy margin is empty.

An accident that may happen even to the best of us! And Grim has to move on to fresh hunting-grounds.

Among the floating forests of green feather-foil go big, broad-scaled bream. They follow close in one another’s wake, and lie on the surface, letting the sunlight play upon their golden scales. Their fat bellies with the lobster-red fins, and their large, cod-like mouths, give an impression of simpleness. Yet they are cunning enough, and very cautious in all their behaviour.

Several of them are covered with cuts and wounds on the back and sides, and it is evident they have already made acquaintance with a pike’s mouth. The body of one of them is still bloody, and threads of flesh and torn scales make it look quite woolly as it moves through the water.

They come from deep down at the bottom, and shine with mud and slime and water-moss. They whisk along with much movement and many strokes of the tail. Reeds and rushes swing and sway as they stop for a moment to rub themselves against them. As they pass through the open water, between the masses of vegetation, where the sun suddenly shines upon their amber scales, Grim hastily conceals herself in the forest of weed.

The pliant water-plants, with their long stalks, accommodate themselves to the current, hanging westwards for an hour, only to turn just as unresistingly the opposite way the next. Stiff collars of leaves, like life-belts, hold up the naked stalks, and form a close, flickering thicket about the lurking lynx. Without the slime on her body, she would never get through.

Soon the fat-bellies are before her; they are slouching along in little companies, with a thick, greenish, juicy rim to the corners of their fat mouths.

Her purpose strengthens, her powers are doubled, but she is able to restrain herself: the moment has not yet come.

Not until the last “water-cow” is straight in front of her does she reveal herself; and the water flashes and bubbles as Grim twists and turns in her efforts to come up with her prey.

The flank attack, however, does not come altogether as a surprise to the “cow”; it has been prepared for it in this narrow passage, and therefore kept close to the bottom. As a stone bores its way into the ground, so does it plunge into the mud, stirring up the water, and digging itself in, so that Grim gets only mud and grains of sand between her teeth.

Another accident which only sharpened her appetite and made her ungovernably fierce; and just then a little roach swam past.

Grim started. Her embarrassment at her failure almost disappeared, and she involuntarily stiffened as she stood. She could see with half an eye that the little roach, which was limping along without any frolicsome jumps and twists, would be an easy prey.

What luck! Roach were generally lively little fish, and not easily got hold of; and although they formed part of her daily fare, she had to use all her powers and unfold all her energy in order to catch two or three, at the most five, a day. It was only in May, when they lay in bundles among the rushes, amorously flicking their tails, that she had her fill of them, taking as many as a score in the day.