A wide stretch of marshland, thickly covered with vegetation, and
difficult of access, with numerous large pools, full of tussocks and
rushes. Century-old peat-pits ran side by side, connected with little
watercourses or half-overgrown ditches.
Willow and cotton-grass covered the hillocks, and naze and headland ran
out into the black water, in which were islands, sometimes fixed,
sometimes floating.
Whole little floating fields of frog-bit and pond-weed would shoot out
from a bank, and completely cover the bronze-coloured water; green and
smiling they looked, and tempted the foot as a trustworthy bridge; but
at a single touch with the tip of one’s boot, the whole mass quivered
and trembled.
Down in the deep water where the black horse-leeches pushed their way
along, and monster larvæ with bent back and open jaws stood motionless,
watching for prey among the refuse, grew the oddest water-forests. They
were neither hard nor stiff; their stems consisted of slender stalks
held up by the water.
There were bluish green, luxuriant “fir-forests,” and whole groves of
palm-like bushes with red flowers upon long stalks. At the edges there
were climbing plants, which formed a matted web of stalks and fibres,
and bulged out in swelling clouds.
What a curling and bending in everything down there! What pliant
shapes! And everywhere there were little, fat, pug-like bastard carp,
dozing and opening their mouths without ceasing, making double chins in
their enjoyment, and rolling their eyes ecstatically.
From the deep, clear lake with its shining waters, Grim had now come to
these low, swampy banks. At first the change was somewhat sudden; but
she possessed the ability of her kind to adapt herself rapidly to her
circumstances.
Nor did she at first have much difficulty in obtaining food. There were
young bream and eels, as well as the “pugs” to go on with; but by
degrees, as she grew bigger and the years went on, she had to make
herself more and more omnivorous in order to exist. She was living, in
a way, like a whale in a lake.
In the winter especially things were difficult. In the lake, which had
been her home for more than thirty years, it had been easy to manage.
It was too big to be frozen over; even in the severest cold the bottom
springs kept large areas open. But this was not the case with the
marsh, for here the “air,” during a long frost, became very close. The
water took up the marsh-gas from the decaying remains of animals and
plants on the bottom, and could not give it off and renew itself with
oxygen.
Grim had then to go where flags and knotgrass pricked tiny, almost
invisible holes in the ice. She found them by the gleams of light, and
noticed that she could breathe freely at such places.
With this exception she generally kept at the bottom during the cold
season, burying herself in the warm, fallen vegetation. There she lay
and slept, her blood circulated more slowly, and for days together she
required no nourishment.
But the torpid state was not complete; now and then she had to move,
and then she satisfied her hunger with mussels and snails, and would
also examine the mud-shafts of the peat-pits.
Here in the muddy labyrinths she came upon tench, olive-green fish,
with black back. Their scales were very small, and their whole body
covered with a thick layer of slime. They were coarse fish, with thick,
leathery fins. Formerly she could never endure them, and had made use
of them chiefly as a kind of healing remedy when she lived in the lake.
When her mouth was full of pricks and scratches from fish-hooks, she
would go into the mud to consult them and to get a healing plaster
stuck upon her wounded snout by rubbing it against their slimy sides;
but now, when hunger sharpened her appetite, she had to turn her former
benefactors to another use, and get as much as possible out of the
consultation. She therefore ate them with pleasure.
In the summer she seldom touched them, but fattened herself on
everything that came in her way. She would take a snake that swam
across, a frog, a mouse; and if a water-rat made its appearance, she
shot up under it, and sucked it in at one mouthful.
In this way she got on fairly well for a few years.
One year, however, there was an unusually dry summer, and in order to
find sufficient water she had to move from peat-hole to peat-hole, and
often had to live for weeks at a time in the pools left in the deeper
hollows. Fortunately for her, as the water sank, all the inhabitants of
the bog gradually came together in these basins. She came across perch
and carp; and eels, leeches and toads were also, like herself,
imprisoned here, until the rain should once more bring an abundance of
water.
She continued to develop, but otherwise than before; ferocity and
cruelty were replaced by cunning and ingenuity. And like all the other
pike in the bog, she soon learned to swing herself over the ridges from
one hole to another, and even to cross land for short distances.
She had the choice between dying of hunger and finding an expedient.
It seemed as if that passage, long ago, from the flying heron’s beak to
the smooth surface of the water had hardened her gills and enabled them
to bear the strong, drying oxygen of the air for a longer time; for she
often ventured over ridges and peat-dams wider than a high-road.
When she could bear her hunger no longer, she ran herself aground and
up into the grass, and then, bending herself together, leaped on in the
direction of the new water. As soon as she was in the dry air, she
could feel which way she ought to take; the neighbourhood of water
affected her sensitive skin and drew her the shortest way. Everything
flickered in a golden mist before her eyes, as she crept on, bending
and leaping.
It was in the early hours of morning, when the grass was wet with dew,
that she made these expeditions overland.
On one of these occasions she got into a large, deep pit, where the
crayfish population that annually migrated from the lake had their
stronghold. All over the perpendicular, blackened sides of the
peat-cutting living crayfish claws opened at her.
Day after day for six months she went hunting here, and had enough to
do with making her way into the hard, perpendicular walls in which the
nippers had their holes. She knew from her experience in the lake that
the crayfish could neither steer nor change their course when, with
flapping tail, they darted backwards through the water, and were
therefore easily caught when once she had hunted them out.
Only one ancient, mussel-scarred fellow, coal-black all over, and with
one large and one very tiny claw, eluded her most ardent endeavours. It
sat in a rocky hole, far in, its spear-armed head with the stalked eyes
resting pensively upon its two unequal claws.
Once or twice it happened that she was aroused from her torpor at night
by feeling a firm, hard grasp upon her body, and she darted round in a
circle like a dog after its tail; but the Nipper always knew when to
let go.
One day she was also obliged to leave _this_ hole. She managed to break
down the ridge between her and a neighbouring pit, where she enjoyed a
few months’ ease and comfort. Here she passed the winter, and cleared
the mud of every tench, every leech, and every snail.
When spring came she ate everything that came in her way. At this
season frogs and toads made their way in multitudes to the pools. The
frogs lay croaking and croaking, and the toads barked and growled, all
of them full of love and delight, and therefore an easy prey.
Later on she revelled in frogs’ eggs, and swallowed great quantities of
the fat, black yolks. Sometimes, too, she could feast on some long
threads that were stretched about the reed-stubble; they were the eggs
of the big toads, threaded like beads upon a string, and laid in the
water to hatch.
On the whole she was glad of the frogs and toads; they kept on
reappearing, afterwards too, when the little tadpoles began to swarm.
She could no longer afford to be fastidious; she had to take
everything, and not let a crumb be wasted.
During the summer nights she was busy at the surface. The big, heavy
moths, which often, in thoughtlessness or carelessness, settled on the
water or on some floating straw, became her booty. She ate them, wings,
straw and all, like a hungry man trying to satisfy his appetite with
prawns.
No wonder that the teeth in her huge mouth gradually developed into
something like the whalebone in the mouth of a whale
But a stomach with the cubic capacity of a _hectolitre_ needed more
than this!
The bog is veiled in a steaming mist, which hangs like cloud-lakes over
the reeds. The moisture penetrates everywhere, and trembling drops hang
from everything; and the thousands upon thousands of spiders’ webs show
up in all their marvellous workmanship.
Thickets of willow and drooping birches cast black shadows all along
the ridges and banks, and large, thick swarms of gnats hang silently in
the air. Only a leaping fish or a bathing swallow disturbs the deep
morning stillness.
The great bog-snail, with its horse-like head and bat-like ears, has
come out of its shell and is feeling everything that comes within its
reach, groping its way along, and then with a jerk dragging its spiral
shell after it. Now it fastens itself to a little dead fish and sucks
out its eyes, and finally comes to rest upon the broad leaf of an iris,
the point of its shell still trembling with the movement of the water.
A boat-bug that has grown tired, and drawn in its oars, also composes
itself to rest. Slowly it sinks to the bottom of the water, where it
settles down comfortably and with discrimination among caddis-worms,
planorbis, and young salamanders. Even a water-beetle that is in a
hurry and, with its head in the mud, is fussing about everywhere, is
roughly tossed aside by the powerful palpi.
Up on the clear surface swims the grebe. Its back is dark, the head,
with the beautiful ruffle round its neck, poised high; but breast and
belly are a glistening slivery white. It never goes on shore, never
even ventures into shallow water; for it must be where it can dive
without hindrance. On its back it carries its tiny young, holding its
wings protectingly round them as they lie buried in its back-feathers
as in a cushioned hollow.
The male swims beside them and dives after food, which he puts into the
gaping mouths of the young as they chirp and flap their little stumpy
wings.
Grim knows the divers well, and they know her--or so, at least, they
think.
This morning, however, in her insatiable hunger, she sets her teeth
into a webbed foot and upsets the little boat, so that all the young
ones fall out. With the greatest possible speed she gulps down the
whole flock, and then, more or less appeased, goes to the bottom,
having learnt feathers do not disagree with her at all.
Until next morning she found herself just as hungry again.
Then she was fortunate enough to gain fresh experience about feathers.
In the early dawn, while the rays from the rising sun shed their
peculiar colours over the bog, and made it shine with green and yellow,
with purple and indigo, she made a dash at a fish on the surface,
without suspecting that up in the air above her there was a winged
rival, who also desired the booty.
The tern swooped headlong downwards as Grim leaped headlong upwards,
and the mouths of the two spoilers closed at the same moment over the
little fish. Grim, however, opened her mouth the wider, and closed it
with the greater force, and she bit with a voracious violence as great
as if she were about to eat the carcass of an ox.
She got the fish and the tern’s head in the same mouthful, noticed that
she was well laden, and backed downwards, drawing the bird with her
into deep water, where she swallowed her strange prey.
What an immense blessing fish with feathers were! For several days she
felt so thoroughly satisfied!
From that time she considered every creature upon the surface of the
water as her lawful booty. No sooner did a wild duck drop on to the
water in its evening flight, than Grim darted up after it from her hole
in the mud. At intervals of a day she took both the grebes and cleared
the creeks of coots and a couple of young storks that had come for the
purpose of learning to fish.
But still the craving for food allowed her no rest. She had to be
constantly extending her domain and finding new territory.
See the marsh now that July has come!--July, luxuriant, mature, with
clouds for hips and swelling breasts, and a sun that seems weary of
journeying. Like sea-birds that have no air under their wings for their
flight, come puffs of wind, throwing themselves into peat-bogs and
marsh-pools. The air is one continuous drowsy hum of flies and gnats;
and the reed-warbler is in full voice.
Grim lies dozing in the tepid water, and sees the world above her
indistinctly and uncertainly as through thick grass. She only notices
that out of the shining blue up there, there now and then appears a
little dark shadow. It comes down suddenly, pauses for an instant as it
touches the water, and is gone again.
It is something alive, she guesses--something for _her_!
Wherefore she disguises her torpedo-body, and awaits her opportunity.
A moment later the vegetation trembles, the thick masses of sphagnum
moss bulge out like clouds, a storm rises on the bottom. The heap of
moss lifts, the surface of the water rocks and is suddenly broken by a
splash as Grim darts up at the very moment that a swallow, with a
graceful swing, skims a gnat off the water.
The surface grows calm, the bubbles float off and burst before reaching
the bank, while Grim sinks back into her bed with the bird on its way
through her gullet.
The water-beetles and gnats were jumbled together in one muddy mass.
Thus the struggle for food was daily sharpening her wits.
Formerly she had resorted to the islands of water-lilies to catch fish;
now there _were_ no fish, but experience had taught her that here the
birds came to drink. With her nose just under the margin of the leaf,
she stood ready; and she captured many a water-wagtail, now the white
with the moon-silvered feathers, now the yellow--yellow as newly-opened
marsh-marigolds.
It sometimes happened, too, that she got a wood-pigeon, or a peewit, or
a snipe; and once she took an old, full-grown heron. She seized it by
the leg and backed with it, drawing it out into deep water, where it
drowned.
But the heron tried repeatedly to spit her upon his beak, and in this
way she lost one of her eyes.