A number of roach are thronging about a clump of rushes, examining leaves and stalks just as long-tailed tits search tree-tops and bark; they are inside it and outside it, sucking up the water-snails and insects.
Grim stops with a jerk. She scarcely moves her ventral fins, and breathes very gently. At each breath she cautiously opens her mouth and draws back her tongue, thus filling the spiked barrel with water; then she carefully closes it again, shoots her tongue forward, and emits the water through her gills.
The little fish gambol unwittingly close to her mouth. Her upturned eyes look still higher, and see the gleam of their white-scaled bellies.
Now she is ready to spring.
There is just a movement of the extreme tip of the tail. Only the shifting shadow-lines that the reeds cast over her body indicate that she is moving forward. She peers about continually, peevishly, and evilly. Only one thing troubles her; she can never decide which fish out of the swarming multitude she will take. True, she has made a special study of the way to direct her attack--as the ardent hunter his aim--where the throng is thickest; but the roach are nimble, and she seldom gets more than one at a stroke.
Slowly and imperceptibly she rises, while all the fin-tips wag and wave in lingering enjoyment.
Suddenly a little scarlet roach-eye discovers her black back, which up to the present had looked just like part of the bottom, and they fly away from her in a panic of terror. In one moment the rushy margin is empty.
An accident that may happen even to the best of us! And Grim has to move on to fresh hunting-grounds.
Among the floating forests of green feather-foil go big, broad-scaled bream. They follow close in one another’s wake, and lie on the surface, letting the sunlight play upon their golden scales. Their fat bellies with the lobster-red fins, and their large, cod-like mouths, give an impression of simpleness. Yet they are cunning enough, and very cautious in all their behaviour.
Several of them are covered with cuts and wounds on the back and sides, and it is evident they have already made acquaintance with a pike’s mouth. The body of one of them is still bloody, and threads of flesh and torn scales make it look quite woolly as it moves through the water.