She was shut in!
[X: IN THE MARSH]
A wide stretch of marshland, thickly covered with vegetation, and difficult of access, with numerous large pools, full of tussocks and rushes. Century-old peat-pits ran side by side, connected with little watercourses or half-overgrown ditches.
Willow and cotton-grass covered the hillocks, and naze and headland ran out into the black water, in which were islands, sometimes fixed, sometimes floating.
Whole little floating fields of frog-bit and pond-weed would shoot out from a bank, and completely cover the bronze-coloured water; green and smiling they looked, and tempted the foot as a trustworthy bridge; but at a single touch with the tip of one’s boot, the whole mass quivered and trembled.
Down in the deep water where the black horse-leeches pushed their way along, and monster larvæ with bent back and open jaws stood motionless, watching for prey among the refuse, grew the oddest water-forests. They were neither hard nor stiff; their stems consisted of slender stalks held up by the water.
There were bluish green, luxuriant “fir-forests,” and whole groves of palm-like bushes with red flowers upon long stalks. At the edges there were climbing plants, which formed a matted web of stalks and fibres, and bulged out in swelling clouds.
What a curling and bending in everything down there! What pliant shapes! And everywhere there were little, fat, pug-like bastard carp, dozing and opening their mouths without ceasing, making double chins in their enjoyment, and rolling their eyes ecstatically.
From the deep, clear lake with its shining waters, Grim had now come to these low, swampy banks. At first the change was somewhat sudden; but she possessed the ability of her kind to adapt herself rapidly to her circumstances.
Nor did she at first have much difficulty in obtaining food. There were young bream and eels, as well as the “pugs” to go on with; but by degrees, as she grew bigger and the years went on, she had to make herself more and more omnivorous in order to exist. She was living, in a way, like a whale in a lake.