The wind plays its autumn hymn upon the rushes, and ruffles the water between the yellow-spotted water-lily leaves, while the sun’s rays, as they come and go, light flaming torches among the trees and reeds. They gleam, they sparkle, they flash; and great, heavy, September clouds drift over the lake.
At last the shrewd fisherman has the upper hand, and cautiously draws his captive close up to the boat. He bends down, with his knees upon the gunwale, and leans over with the landing-net, in his right hand.
Grim suddenly finds herself close to the great “water-bird,” and gives a violent jerk. The fisherman reaches out with his arm, and the upper part of his body as far as they will go; but he forgets that he is in a boat and on unsafe ground, loses his balance, and falls overboard with a splash, upsetting the boat as he does so.
No one sees the accident, and his heavy waders drag him quickly down.
Grim darts this way and that, winding the line round him and drawing him to the bottom. And then, among the rocks of the reef, the line breaks; the angler’s body drifts in among the reeds.
Towards evening the sky becomes overcast and the troubled water looks thick and muddy. Little waves leap up, stand for a moment at their height as if trying to keep their balance, and then give up the attempt and roll down.
A solitary little sunbeam still now and again brightens up all the grey-veiled colours, and then the water takes the hues of a fallow-deer, and the water-lily leaves become floating patches of rainbow.
In the muddy valley between the bottom-springs, Oa is beginning to move. She blinks her cunning eyes, and their blue-black pupils become large and round. Then she sets out on a nocturnal expedition across the lake, steals into the rocky grottos of the cloister-cells, and finds a new hiding-place beneath the wreck of a boat--a new arrival. With her snout just in the rent between the bottom and the gunwale, she lies like a dog in its kennel, until night closes in and all is dark and silent.
Then she lets herself slowly drift along the edge to the reedy borders of the lake, taking every drowned dog or cat as gifts from the Creator’s hand.