CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



wings on the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees 

 that overtop the only tower left of the old castle. 

 Another eel! and we too can crawl silent as the sinu- 

 ous serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes dead — nO, not 

 dead — but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as 

 head over heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the 

 serene unsettling of himself from sod or stone, when, 

 his hunger sated, and his craw filled with fish for his 

 far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk into the 

 air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away 

 like a wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the 

 current of air homewards flowing, urged swifter and 

 swifter his easy course — laggard and lazy no more — 

 leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your 

 motion in watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible 

 among the woods ! 



The disgorged eels are returned — some of them 

 alive — to their native element — the mud. And the 

 dead heron floats away before small winds and waves 

 into the middle of the tarn. Where is he — the match- 

 less Newfoundlander — nomine gandens Fro, because 

 white as the froth of the sea? Off* with a colley. So — 

 stript with the first intention, we plunge from a rock, 



and, 



"Thoiigh in the scowl of heaven, the tarn 



Grows dark as we are swimming^ 



Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with 

 [65] 



