To look along the surface, as Mark did, was like kneeling and glancing over a very broad and well polished table, your eyes level with it. The slightest movement was visible a great way—a little black speck that crossed was seen at once. The little black speck was raised a very small degree above the surface, and there was something in the water not visible following it.
The water undulated, but less than behind the rat; now the moorhens nod their heads to and fro, as you or I nod: but this black speck waved itself the other way, from side to side, as it kept steadily onwards. Mark recognised a snake, swimming swiftly, its head (black only from distance and contrast with the gleam of the crystal top of the polished table) just above the surface, and sinuous length trailing beneath the water. He did not see whence the snake started, but he saw it go across to the weeds at the extreme end of Serendib, and there lost it.
He thought of the huge boa-constrictors hidden in the interior of New Formosa, they would be basking quite still in such heat, but he ought to have brought his spear with him. You never ought to venture from the stockade in these unknown places without a spear. By now the shadows had moved, and his foot was in the sunshine: he could feel the heat through the leather. Two bubbles came up to the surface close to the shore: he saw the second one start from the sand and rise up quickly with a slight wobble, but the sand did not move, and he could not see anything in it.
His eyes closed, not that he slept, but the gleam of the water inclined them to retire into the shadow of the lids. After some time there was a shrill pipe. Mark started, and lifted his head, and saw the kingfisher, which had come back towards his perch on the willow trunk. He came within three yards before he saw Mark; then he shot aside, with a shrill whistle of alarm, rose up and went over the island.
In starting up, Mark moved his foot, and a butterfly floated away from it: the butterfly had settled in the sunshine on the heated leather. With three flutters, the butterfly floated with broad wings stretched out over the thin grass by the shore. It was no more effort to him to fly than it is to thistledown.
The same start woke Pan. Pan yawned, licked his paw, got up and wagged his tail, looked one way and then the other, and then went off back to Bevis. The blue float was still perfectly motionless. Mark sat up, took his rod and wound up the winch, and began to wander homewards too, idly along the shore. He had gone some way when he saw a jack basking by a willow bush aslant from him, so that the markings on his back were more visible than when seen sideways, for in this position the foreshortening crowded them together. They are like the water-mark on paper, seen best at a low angle, or the mark on silk, and somewhat remind you of the mackerel.