The pool is very deep, with perpendicular, overgrown sides, save in one place where the peat had once been dragged up a slope, making a gradual transition from water to land. The stiff clay is covered with the foot-prints of cattle, and the herbage on the mounds round about is cropped.
This is a watering-place.
Often, when in a famished condition, a transport of hunger which makes her lash her tail-fin round madly in a ceaseless search for food, she has stopped suddenly at the sight of a pair of big, thick legs stirring up the mud. It is a grazing bull or heifer that has come to the watering-place, and has splashed out far enough to be able to feel cool water under its nose.
One day when this occurred, the big-jointed legs and broad chest of the bull inspired Grim with hope, and her over-excited imagination began to conjure up the possibility of at last getting hold of something worth catching.
She steals forward, and her obliquely-set eye, which can look upwards with such ease, fastens, as though cast in that position, upon the great horned head of an ox.
She pushes on among the black cat’s-tails, hidden under the long-ribbed fans of weed, until she is just in front of the drinking animal, and can see through the glimmering surface of the water the sucking, fleshy nose.
At this she can no longer control her voracity. Where her stomach wills, her body must follow after. Her shrewdness may warn her, and experience urge her to caution, but in vain: when her stomach wills, she rushes into the fray.
The ox throws up its head with such violence that Grim is dragged up with it halfway; but she does not relax her hold, and when she sinks back into deep water, she takes a large piece of the ox’s snout with her.
The marsh, with its miles of reed-beds, was a favourite haunt of game, for coolness in the midsummer heat, and for warmth in the winter cold. Here were peaceful spots to hide when chased by men with the report of guns and the barking of dogs. And Grim knew how to benefit by this abundance of game.
Just as it had long been her way to snatch her prey by springing out of her element, so she now created a new means of support by lying in wait at the drinking-places like a crocodile.