“You ought to be punished,” said Bevis, “you ought to be put on half-rations. Are you quite sure you will never do it again?”
“Never.”
“Well then, this once you are pardoned. Now, mind in future, as you are lieutenant, you set a good example. There’s a summer snipe.”
Out flew a little bird from the shore, startled as Pan came near, with a piping whistle, and, describing a semicircle, returned to the hard mud fifty yards farther on. It was a summer snipe, and when they approached, after getting over the next railings, it flew out again over the water, and making another half-circle passed back to where they had first seen it. Here the strand was hard mud, dried by the sun, and broken up into innumerable holes by the hoofs of cattle and horses which had come down to drink from the pasture, and had to go through the mud into which they sank when it was soft. Three or four yards from the edge there was a narrow strip of weeds, showing that a bank followed the line of the shore there. It was so unpleasant walking over this hard mud, that they went up into the field, which rose high, so that from the top they had a view of the lake.
Volume One—Chapter Five.
By the New Nile.
“Do you see any canoes?” said Mark.
“No,” said Bevis. “Can you? Look very carefully.”