The Life Story of an Otter

e downpour, which lasted off and on for hours, ceased towards sundown, and at star-peep the sky had cleared of clouds, save where a black pall hung over the

otter dropped the mussels she carried, seized one between her paws, bit off the end of the shell and devoured the fish. Scarcely had she swallowed it before the cubs were busy breaking the brittle shells and feasting on the succulent contents; and the crackling noise that broke the silence would have puzzled any chance visitor to the wood, but was no unfamiliar sound to the birds that roosted in the overhanging oaks. The otters made several journeys to and from the mussel-bed, till they had eaten their fill;

ng skins as the current bore them along; but soon after passing the heron, spectral in the uncertain light, they began swimming, and so entered the cave, where they shook their coats and lay dow

heat; beast and bird too sought the shade, abandoning their haunts to the insect hosts that revelled in the scorching rays. The flower-gay selvage margining the far shore of the creek and the tangle of honeysuckle and wild-rose that curtained the portals of the otters' lair, hummed with the noise of countless wings. Honey-bees were there, green-bodied flies and blue, and, preying on them, dragon-flies tha

ing it, they moved forward, climbing every rock, and resting there as if they enjoyed the warmth till, two miles beyond the pool, they came to where the creek broadens between marshy flats given over to wild-fowl. As it was in this reach that the otter intended to hunt when the coming tide had brought up the fish that came there to feed, she and

stopped within a foot of the spot where the restless eyes were watching her, while the cubs, who had shot past, turned, full of wonder, and rejoined their mother. Then the otter stretched out a fore-leg, touched the plaice through the thin layer of sand and put it to flight. The cubs, taken aback by the unexpected appearance of the fish, did not move till it had got some yards away, but once in pursuit the male cub soon recovered the lost ground, seized the prey, rose to the surface, and swam ashore. Two more plaice were captured within the hour, one by the cubs without assistance, and from that moment their mother let them quarter the sand alone.

es without sign of man's neighbourhood, save a disused limekiln, until the last bend brought them within sight of a bridge and of the hamlet that straggles down the hillside to a wharf on the water's edge. When they were abreast of it the bass began to rise, and drew them in pursuit. Shooting up from below, the hunters seized the unsusp

e day. The cubs had never hovered in such scant quarters before, but their discomfort was as nothing in comparison with the terror which the rumbling of a van over their heads occasioned them. In the course of the morning, towards noon, things were still worse. A sheep-dog with a nose for otters winded them, and came and sniffed at the grating within a couple of yards of where they lay. In his excitement he kept pawing the iron bar

ening at the mouth, stole out into the moonlight. They ran some danger of being seen as they approached the

others feeding there, gained the shelter of the bank. Balked of her prey, the otter stood for a moment where the unavailing leap had taken her, but as soon as the cubs came up she made for the biggest of the holes, and through it all three disappeared. Rabbits popping out here and there along the bank showed how quickly the otters traversed the set, and presently the male cub, looking with its arched back like a big ferret, issued from the hole out of which a rabbit had come and, following the scent with great eagerness, entered another hole into which it had darted. The mother otter, meanwhile, had been mor

sported in the great eddy there; at times they landed on the cone-shaped rock that rose amidst the swirl and cast its inky shadow on the silvery surface. The playful creatures seemed to have set aside their fears and lingered till sunrise, when the shout of a farm-boy to a nei

y very heavy rain fell, and continued till a late hour, soaking the country-side and causing even the cave to drip, to the discomfort of the otters, who repaired there on the morrow. This decided the otter to make without further delay for the sea, and that night, after a big feast on the mussels, she led the cubs along the widening reaches to the estuary and couched on an island at the meeting of the waters. A barge drifted by at sunrise; later a peel

stant they rounded the bend; and little wonder, for the burly figure was clearly outlined against the latticed window of the keeper's cottage. Had he moved, they would merely have sunk out of sight; had he coughed or sneezed, they would have dived, to reappear a furlong below. But to scare them was the last thing he wished, and, excited though he was, he never moved a

kely she could mistake the spot, for she had stood by him till at dawn the footfall of the keeper had driven her away. She had even returned the two following nights, and called and called and called before going off alone to prepare a nest for her unborn cubs. And now another trouble beset her: the male cub persisted in following the trail, and, owing to his great strength, succeeded, despite all her e

fter passing two branch creeks, musical with the whistlings of night-feeding birds, came to the deeper water, where hulks rode at their last anchorage, and, farther on, to the landlocked haven in which tall-masted vessels swung to their moorings, and the lights of a little seaport and fishing village winked at one another