A SWELTERING DAY 41 



like floating skins as the current bore them along; 

 but soon after passing the heron, spectral in the 

 uncertain light, they began swimming, and so 

 entered the cave, where they shook their coats 

 and lay down in the places they had occupied 

 the day before. The lapping of the tide was 

 their slumber-song, and the happy creatures were 

 sound asleep before the last of the bats came 

 flitting in to roost. 



That day a fiery sun beat down upon the 

 country-side and exhausted toiler and sportsman 

 abroad in the sweltering heat. The mower 

 sweated and panted behind the scythe, the 

 otter-hunters crossing the moor longed for the 

 cool woods they had left, and the boy on the 

 smack at the end of the creek gobbled up his 

 pasty to spend the dinner -hour in the pool 

 beneath the bridge. Not only man and boy 

 suffered from the heat ; beast and bird too 

 sought the shade, abandoning their haunts to 

 the insect hosts that revelled in the scorching 

 rays. The flower-gay selvage margining the far 

 shore of the creek and the tangle of honeysuckle 

 and wild-rose that curtained the portals of the 

 otters' lair, hummed with the noise of countless 

 wings. Honey-bees were there, green-bodied 

 flies and blue, and, preying on them, dragon- 



6 



