WINTER DAYS ON BREYDON 23 



The rime frost still hung about thickly when I set off 

 homewards, and the tide was falling. Already some of the 

 flats had drained dry, and the ice had settled on them in 

 broken hummocks, whose edges pointed at various angles. 

 On approaching the North Wall drain I found open water, 

 and the ebb was drawing downstream floe after floe of 

 broken ice. Now one floe would catch in the mud, stop a 

 moment, and then turning, swing again into the tide-way, 

 dashing into another stranded floe with a loud, crackling 

 crash ; then the two floes would go on together, splintering, 

 crackling, and sweeping down towards the channel, to con- 

 tinue grating against others coming down with the tide. Now 

 one would catch its edge over another and slide well on to it 

 with a roar, as if at some rough play ; then endways up it 

 would go and bury itself in the dark waters, coming up under 

 another as if possessed with the spirit of mischief. One huge 

 floe would crash against one of the stakes, shaking it to its 

 foundations in the ooze below, breaking itself in halves, the 

 severed portions joining forces again directly in the eddy. 

 And so downward to the sea sped acres of broken ice-slabs. 

 In a wake, among the floating ice, swam and dived a poor 

 little dabchick, struggling now for its life, and forgetting 

 its struggle for a dinner; wishing summer days back again, 

 no doubt, and hours of peace and plenty in the Broadland 

 reed-clumps. 



A few dunlins were running wonderingly along on the 

 denuded edge of a mudflat. They were hard pressed for food, 

 for the mudworms had sunk lower into the ooze ; it may be 

 there were some to be found that the moving ice had scooped 

 out, and left to freeze in their nakedness. One wretched bird 

 whose right leg had been shot away hopped about pitifully, 

 probing here and there for a morsel. A few black-headed 

 gulls were hanging round the mouth of the Bure, snatching 

 up fragments floating upon the surface of the sewage- 

 polluted water. 



It is about our own noontide ; and our interesting excur- 

 sion has ended. 



