124 THE LIFE STORY OF AN OTTER 



rubbed the pane, he rubbed his eyes, and looked 

 again ; then he realized — what he had never seen 

 before — that the mere was completely frozen. 

 Despite the depth of the water, the current, and 

 the restless movements of the wild-fowl, the frost 

 had had its way ; the vast sheet was one con- 

 tinuous field of steel-blue ice. The otters had 

 witnessed the sealing of the mere, had watched 

 the ducks, geese and swans take wing and melt 

 into the night, before they realized their desperate 

 situation ; then, had the cubs been able to travel, 

 they would at once have turned their back on 

 the marshland, as the wild-fowl had done, and 

 made across country for the salmon river, where 

 fish crowded the spawning-beds. But as yet the 

 cubs could only sprawl, and to carry them over 

 the miles of moorland that lay between or to 

 attempt to reach it by way of the sea and the 

 estuary was out of the question ; they had no 

 choice but to stay and face the famine that 

 threatened. 



As yet they had not suffered at all ; indeed, 

 they had caught more fish than they needed, and 

 for their leavings the hill-foxes regularly visited 

 the ice. Amongst them was a poor, half-starved 

 vixen, who, along with the otters, witnessed the 

 ice meet across the strait of open water. Thin 



