Pond and Stream

Part 1

POND AND STREAM

ARTHUR RANSOME

Author of "The Stone Lady"

NATURE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

With illustrations by Frances Craine

LONDON

ANTHONY TREHERNE & COMPANY, LTD.

12, YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI, W.C.

1906

FOR MOLLY

CONTENTS.

I. About the Book II. The Duck Pond III, Stream and Ditch IV. Lake and River V. Our Own Aquarium

ABOUT THE BOOK

This is a book about the things that are jolly and wet: streams, and ponds, and ditches, and all the things that swim and wriggle in them. I wonder if you like them as much as they are liked by the Imp and the Elf? You know all about the Imp and the Elf, do you not? Those two small jolly children, who live in a little grey house in a green garden, and know the country and all the things in it, almost as well as they know each other? The Imp and the Elf love everything that is wet. They paddle in the streams, and build dams, and make waterfalls, and harbours, and sail boats, and do all the other things that every sensible person wants to do. And they love all the fishy people who live in the water, and the beasts that crawl in the mud, and the birds that hop from stone to stone in the stream.

At home they keep a big glass tank on one of the bookcases in the study. And that is the aquarium. It is a kind of indoor watery home for the people whom they meet when they mess about in the duck-pond, or the becks that trickle down the valley. You know what a beck is? The Imp and the Elf are north country children, and they would not understand you if you called the beck a stream.

I will tell you about some of the guests who come to stay with us, and live in the watery tank. But they must be talked about at the end of the book. For just now I want to tell you about the ponds and streams from which they come, and the things that have happened to us there, and all the other things that you will want to know, and the things the Imp and the Elf, who are sitting side by side in my big chair, say must be told to you.

THE DUCK POND

The Duck Pond is far away at the other side of the village. We walk a mile down over the fields, till we come to the village, and then we go through a little cluster of grey houses, past the tavern with the the picture of the prancing Blue Unicorn hanging out over the door, past the little grey church with the red tiled roof, past the farmyard by the smith's, where there is always a large sized piebald pig grunting in the yard, and out again into the fields. And then, on the left hand side of the road, we come to three stacks, a horse trough, and a piece of commonland.

The common is rough and untidy, with clumps of gorse and thistles and nettles. There is usually a spotty pony chewing the grass, and a goat with naughty looking horns and a grey beard. A tiny donkey with an enormous voice is tethered to a stake in the ground. There is a crowd of geese, who throw out their long necks in vicious curves, and hiss at strangers and sometimes frighten them. They do not hiss at us. Perhaps they know that we would not be very frightened if they did. The Elf likes this last part of the walk, because she loves to imagine she is a goosegirl in a fairy tale, who drives geese, until she meets a noble Prince, who finds out that really she is a Princess all the time. Some days the Imp is quite ready to pretend to be the Prince, and act the whole story. But other days he is in a precious hurry to get to the pond, and the poor Elf has to be a goosegirl without a Prince, and that is a poor business. She soon tires of it, and runs after us across the common.

Long before we reach the pond, we hear the quaack, quaack of the ducks, and see them waddling along with their bodies very near the ground by the muddy edges of the water, flopping hurriedly first on one leg and then on the other. When we get near them we can see that as they lift their feet they turn their toes in in a manner that shows they have not been at all properly brought up. But then without warning they throw themselves forward along the water, and swim, looking, suddenly, quite graceful. Everything looks quite graceful in its proper place, and almost everything looks silly when it is anywhere else. Even swans, who are the most beautiful of all birds in the water, look as ungainly as can be when they walk along the ground. And if you put a fish, who swims beautifully in the pool, out on the dry land, he just flops and dies, and that is not a pretty sight at all.

The duck pond is very big and round. One bank of it is covered with dark trees that overhang and make green pictures of themselves in the water when the wind is still. And partly under the trees, and partly at one side of them, the bank is high and over-hanging and sandy, and in the sand there are little holes where the sandmartins have their nests. The sandmartins are rather like swallows, only instead of building clay nests under the roof edges of a house, they bore holes with their beaks in banks of earth, and make their nests inside them. A very, very long time ago, we used to do just like them, burrowing into the ground, making a passage with a cave at the end of it, and living there under the earth. There are some of these old homes of ours still left in some parts of the country. The Imp and the Elf are fond of the sandmartins, because they are always in a hurry like themselves. It is fine to see them fly swift and low over the pond, and flutter at the mouth of the hole, and then vanish into it, like mice into a crevice in the wall.

But the birds who matter most of the Duck Pond People, are, of course, the Ducks. There are brown ducks, and white ducks, and speckly ducks, and broods of golden ducklings, that the Elf is fond of watching. The little ducklings waddle about just like their mothers, opening and shutting their dirty yellow flat bills that are always far too large for their bodies. They look like bundles of grey fluff, with crooked legs and waggly necks.

Often we lie flat on the green grass by the side of the pond, when the sun is high and hot, and white clouds and a blue sky are reflected in the water of the pond. We lie lazily and watch the ducks swimming about, looking for their food. We see them plunge in from the flat shelving mud, and swim out like a mottled fleet of boats. They move their heads to this side and to that, and suddenly plunge them down into the water, into the rotting leaves and mud that lie at the bottom of the pond. And then, as they swing their head up again, we see that something is going down inside. And sometimes when the thing is big, a young and lively frog, or a wriggling worm, we see it hanging out of the duck's bill, waiting to be flung about, and gulped at, until, at last, it goes politely down.

Ducks swim just like men in canoes, striking out first on one side and then on the other, as if someone inside the duck were driving her along with strokes of a paddle. As we lie on the bank, we can watch the strong neat stroke, and see how the feet turn up to be drawn back ready to strike out again, just as a good oarsman feathers his oars. The really most amazing thing about a duck, though, is to see it when it comes out of the water. You would think it would be wet. But no, it looks quite neat and dry, though it has only just come from swimming and diving its head in the muddy pond. The Imp and the Elf always used to be puzzled at that. And their old nurse had a habit of saying to them:--"Why, to scold you is like pouring water on a duck's back; it does no manner of good." And one day they said to me, "Why does it do no manner of good to pour water on a duck's back?" I did not know then, so we hunted in a wise book and there was the reason, and when we watched a duck a little more carefully than usual we saw the book told the truth. The ducks keep oil in a hidden place in their tails, and oil their feathers with it. That is what they do when they preen themselves. That is how they manage to be always dry. For water will not stay on anything that is oiled, and really, it is just as if the ducks made their feathers into mackintoshes against the wet.

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