An irritating little flock of gulls may go on thus for a long time; and when at last, screaming and mocking, they take their departure, they have spoilt many a chance and wasted many precious minutes of the big, silent, patient fisher’s time.
The gulls once gone, the heron applies itself with redoubled zeal to its business. From various attacking positions its beak darts down into the water, but often without result, and it has to go farther afield; then at last it captures a little eel.
It is not easy, however, to swallow the wriggling captive. The eel twists, and refuses to be swallowed; so the bird has to reduce its liveliness by rolling up and down in its sharp-edged beak. Then it glides down.
This time, too, fortune is disposed to favour the young pike. The heron, coming up behind her, cautiously bends its neck over the drifting piece of reed. It sees there is something suspicious about it, but thinks it is mistaken, and is about to take another step forward. When only half-way, it pauses with its foot in the air; and the next moment the blow falls.
Grim only once moved her tail. Then she was seized, something hard and sharp and strong held her fast, and she passed head foremost down into a warm, narrow channel.
There was a fearful crush of fish in the channel, and much elbowing with fins and twisting of tails. Something behind her was pushing, but the throng in front blocked the way: she could get no farther.
And yet she glided on! Very slowly the thick slimy water in the channel bore the living, muddy tangle that surrounded her along; she felt the corners of her mouth rub against the sides of the channel; she could scarcely breathe.
In the meantime the heron was flying homewards to its young, carrying Grim and the rest of the catch. Out on the lake lay a boat in which a man sat fishing. Experience told the bird it was a fisherman, but here the bird was wrong. The man had a gun in the boat, and as the bird sailed upwards a shot was fired which compelled it to relinquish a part of its booty in order to escape more quickly.
Grim was among the fortunate ones. Suddenly the crush in the long, dark channel grew less, and the sluggish stream of mud that was bearing her along changed its course. A little later the stream gathered furious pace and carried her with it; she saw light and felt space round her; she was able to move her fins.
Then she fell from the heron’s beak, from a height of about twenty yards. She had time to notice how suffocatingly dry the other world was. It seemed to draw out her entrails, and all her efforts to right herself were in vain.