There seemed indeed more weed than water, great water-docks at the margin with leaves almost a yard long, branched water plantains with palm-like leaves and pale pink flowers; flags already a little brown, then sedges and huge tussocks; these last—small islets of tall grass—were close together in the shallow water like the ant-hills in the Waste. No course could be forced through or twisted in and out such a mass, and beyond it were beds of reed-grass, out of which rose the reddish and scaling poles of willow. At the distant margin they could see the tops of the trees of the jungle on the mainland. Where the water was visible it had a red tinge and did not look good to drink, very different from that at New Formosa. This was stagnant.
The current, slight as it was, from Sweet River Falls, passed between New Formosa and Serendib, hence the deep channel, and rendered the water there always fresh and pure. Over the pond-weed blue dragon-flies were hovering, and among the willows tits called to each other.
“It’s South America,” said Mark. “It’s a swamp by the Amazon.”
“I suppose it is,” said Bevis. “We can’t go any farther.”
Without wading-boots it was impossible to penetrate the swamp, and even then they could not have gone among the black-jointed horse-tails, the stems of which were turning yellowish, for they would have sunk in ooze to the waist. It would have been the very haunt of the bearded-tit had not that curiously marked bird been extinct on the shores of the New Sea. They had never even heard of the bearded-tit, so completely had it died out there.
They moved a few yards along the bank, but found it was a ceaseless climb from stole to stole, and so went back to the raft, and poled close to the shore looking for traces of the creature. They poled from one end to the other, up to the banks of weeds and flags, but without seeing any sign. So far as they could tell the creature had not started from this place, but it might have swum out from any other part of the shore.
“He’s not here,” said Bevis. “We shall never hunt him out of all these sedges; I think we had better set a trap for him.”
“In the reeds at home,”—New Formosa was home now.
“In his trail.”
“Dig a pit,” said Mark. “They dig pits for lions.”