AN AFTERNOON OFF. 95 
and knife-blade rushes, a black, jerking, 
swimming form—a moorhen. Coral was his 
nose-cap, and coral too were his garters, but 
his tail was stuck up in the air, and his eye 
was sinister. 
The old gull rose to argue with a fellow-gull. 
The moorhen came straight on towards the 
nest—came to the nest—seized a youngster, 
and hammered it. He would have drowned 
it, perhaps, if the old gull had not at that 
moment arrived like ten furies. 
But there was no moorhen—only a broaden- 
ing ring on the water where he had dived. 
