THE WASTEFUL HUNTERS 59 



prise, they found the bed of the sea alive with 

 tiny shell-fish, which they spurned here and there 

 as they quested. On their left rose a wall of 

 rock, in turning the point of which they came 

 face to face with a turbot, that the otter seized 

 and bore writhing to the surface. The cubs, 

 who rose with her, kept gripping the fish as they 

 swam, and by the time they reached the landing- 

 place it had ceased to struggle. Then all three 

 settled down to the feast. Nothing but the tail 

 and backbone remained when they again took to 

 the water. This time they made the circuit of 

 the rock, and the male cub, rising from beneath, 

 seized a pollack, carried it in triumph to a reef 

 just a- wash with the tide, and there consumed it. 

 Before he had quite finished, the other cub, and 

 later, the otter, were busy devouring wrasse they 

 had taken. When they had eaten their fill, the 

 young otters amused themselves in capturing fish 

 which they no longer needed but left uneaten ; 

 and it was over these abandoned spoils that the 

 gulls clamoured at dawn, whilst the otters lay in 

 a cave they had entered by a submerged mouth 

 at the foot of the cliffs. Curled up in pits on the 

 sand above the line of flotsam, with the roar of 

 the sea to lull them, the cubs soon dropped 

 asleep ; but the mother, her thoughts on the big 



8—2 



