"Passable," said Bombinator, "but not sufficient Curl"
Each welcomed freedom differently.
The Natterjack went straight into the pond (quite the wrong thing for him), and swam with short-legged jerky sweeps up to the water-lilies. There he met the Water-Rat, of whom more later. The Green Toad sought the nearest tuft of grass, and, scratching with his fore-feet at the roots, contrived a roomy burrow. He backed inside and sat there quite content, blinking his emerald eyes. The Salamander stayed where he was put—and smiled.
The fire-toads climbed upon a stone and practised squiggles—aposematic squiggles.
That resonant epithet comes, I think, from Oxford. It means, you dare to touch me and you'll catch it, or words to that effect. "Apo," get out, and "sema," a sign. It is quite simple, really. Yet its significance (in toads) may need explaining, and, to be master of the sense of it, you must remember that fire-toads, though dusky olive green above, are orange red beneath. A patch of orange underneath each hand, a patch of orange underneath each foot, an orange patchwork waistcoat.
Now orange is a poison-label. It means in wild-folk speech, "Be careful," and yellow means the same; and when black joins the scheme, it means, "Be very careful, here is poison."
Sometimes the colour flaunts itself—witness the salamander, or the wasp. Sometimes it is concealed, witness the fire-toad. But fire-toads have the knack of showing it. Drop one upon his back and there he stays, knowing the underpart of him is fearsome. Startle one as he sits at ease, and he will flick into a knot, crinkly, immovable, unreal, with screaming labels at each corner. To be adept at this, the fire-toad needs spare living, one meal, at most two meals a day. When corpulent he finds the bend beyond him.
But corpulence is transient in toads. The first to find a waist was Bombinator, and Bombinatrix quickly followed. They now could travel with less apprehension. They made five equal hops and stopped. Before them stretched the pond, green-carpeted, a mirror-patch of water here and there, balsam and iris on the fringe of it, and fronting them, upon his leaf, the Rat.
The Natterjack had left him, and was swimming landwards. His head bobbed with each stroke, and he was slow in coming.
"The surliest brute I ever met," he said.