358 BROADLAND SPORT 



At one point in the chase a village wiseacre, who sat upon 

 a railing overhanging a partly grown-up but extremely 

 muddy-looking dyke, was holding forth to a gaping crowd, 

 and pointing out to them " where he'd seed the ortters,"- 

 when he was unceremoniously capsized into the dyke by a 

 well-known poacher, who told him to "hold his slarver* and 

 let other folks pass." 



The fun for a time was fast and furious. Leaping the 

 smaller ditches and ferrying over the larger ones provided 

 endless diversion, but minutes shaped themselves into hours, 

 which in turn slipped by with never a sign of an otter. 



Otters there were in the locality beyond doubt, but 

 whether a " find " would be made seemed a vanishing 

 probability. Two keepers said they had only recently 

 despatched an otter by the unique method of one holding 

 it down with a spade while the other slit up its windpipe 

 with a knife, which, considering the chances of the victim 

 wriggling from under the spade, must have been rather a 

 ticklish operation. 



After two hours of skirmishing through swampy thickets 

 and drawing all the most likely spots absolutely blank, a 

 depression seemed to settle on the crowd, and one and all 

 began to feel that their mighty hunt, which started so gaily, 

 would end in miserable failure. Anxious eyes began to scan 

 the horizon for the nearest " pub," when a furious barking in 

 some thick undergrowth of long dry grass brought the 

 hunters together and confusion reigned. A moment after a 

 magnificent otter tumbled headlong out of his lair, towing 

 the irrepressible " Spot " and another terrier, whose teeth 

 were firmly fixed in his quarters, over the banks of the 

 river into the depths below. 



All three, otter and dogs, disappeared together. " Spot " 

 soon reappeared, sneezing and panting for wind, but con- 

 tinued to paddle about, raising himself in the stream, and 

 peering with most comical sidelong glances into the water 

 below to ascertain what had become of his mysterious foe. 



* Idle talk. 



