Grim was now about five feet long, and weighed something like fifty
pounds. As with all pike that live in small lakes, her head had grown
inordinately. Her daily fight for food necessitated constant use of her
head-muscles, which had developed accordingly. In her mouth alone a
wooden shoe could easily have been hidden.
The old bright colours along her back and belly were now quite altered.
The body vied in blackness with the evil-smelling mud of the bog, and
broad, golden-bronze streaks shaded the dull sides. Out in the sunshine
she had quite a rusty, coppery appearance.
She was a mythical pike, one of those old-time fish about which the
late lamented angler had told wonderful tales in his day. Even the
regular mane of scales of a finger’s length, from the back of the neck
down over the pectoral fins, was not wanting.
But her eye was evil, a mixture of yellow and green, cold and deceitful
as the foam of the bog-waves; it always shone with a fierce hunger, and
even on the rare occasions when the hunger was appeased, the expression
of that eye was one of insatiable voracity.
She has succeeded in clearing the bog-holes nearest to her own quarters
of every frog, water-rat, and wild duckling; and she has eaten up all
the swallows that have come to drink as they flew. Again she has had to
travel a good way overland, until at last she has come to rest in a
wild, wide pool, which she has never before visited.
Here she has had a fresh, welcome success. She has overcome and
swallowed another big, muddy specimen of a bog-pike, even heavier than
Terror; the fellow had just bolted a smaller one of his own species,
and in it lay a full-grown mallard.
Food! Food!
It is true she always felt her stomach rather heavy, for in the course
of time she had got it paved with the most remarkable things. Besides
various hooks and wire traces, there was a large key that once, in her
youth, when she had been standing beneath one of the great water-birds,
had come darting like a roach through the water. There was also a
dessert-spoon acquired under similar circumstances, a plummet, and,
lastly, a watch-chain, from the ill-fated angler’s vest. All these had,
however, become encysted, and were not for consumption; at the very
most they were an aid to digestion!
She has been a week over her last splendid catch.
She makes another and another; but after a couple of months she has
emptied this bog-pool too. What now, and whither?
One evening she works her way in among flowering iris, club-rushes, and
marsh-grass, and peers enviously up at the big dragon-flies that are
chasing fat flies not an inch above her head. She grows hungrier than
ever, and sets to work to devour black horse-leeches in place of eels,
and the roots of certain water-plants, which she tries to persuade
herself are worms.
In the warm, still, summer evening, the shadows shoot from the banks
and ridges, framing the blood-red sunset hues in ebony. Had there been
but a few roach left, they would have been playing ducks and drakes
over the smooth water.
A reed just beside her moves, and from her hiding-place at the edge of
the rushes she sees the reed-warbler flitting about up above. The
crafty expression comes into her flat eye; she calculates her distance,
and makes a spring.
The first time the bird is too quick for her, but the next time her
effort is crowned with success; and the third time she closes her jaws
on the reed-warbler’s foster-child, a large, red-eyed young cuckoo!
Grim was an artist in her way, and had her own peculiar tricks. Since
the day when she had leapt out of the angler’s boat, she had developed
into a regular flying-fish.
Food! Food! The constant refrain both above water and below. To have
something in the maw--to have _much_--as much as possible. Food! Food!
The pool is very deep, with perpendicular, overgrown sides, save in one
place where the peat had once been dragged up a slope, making a gradual
transition from water to land. The stiff clay is covered with the
foot-prints of cattle, and the herbage on the mounds round about is
cropped.
This is a watering-place.
Often, when in a famished condition, a transport of hunger which makes
her lash her tail-fin round madly in a ceaseless search for food, she
has stopped suddenly at the sight of a pair of big, thick legs stirring
up the mud. It is a grazing bull or heifer that has come to the
watering-place, and has splashed out far enough to be able to feel cool
water under its nose.
One day when this occurred, the big-jointed legs and broad chest of the
bull inspired Grim with hope, and her over-excited imagination began to
conjure up the possibility of at last getting hold of something worth
catching.
She steals forward, and her obliquely-set eye, which can look upwards
with such ease, fastens, as though cast in that position, upon the
great horned head of an ox.
She pushes on among the black cat’s-tails, hidden under the long-ribbed
fans of weed, until she is just in front of the drinking animal, and
can see through the glimmering surface of the water the sucking, fleshy
nose.
At this she can no longer control her voracity. Where her stomach
wills, her body must follow after. Her shrewdness may warn her, and
experience urge her to caution, but in vain: when her stomach wills,
she rushes into the fray.
The ox throws up its head with such violence that Grim is dragged up
with it halfway; but she does not relax her hold, and when she sinks
back into deep water, she takes a large piece of the ox’s snout with
her.
The marsh, with its miles of reed-beds, was a favourite haunt of game,
for coolness in the midsummer heat, and for warmth in the winter cold.
Here were peaceful spots to hide when chased by men with the report of
guns and the barking of dogs. And Grim knew how to benefit by this
abundance of game.
Just as it had long been her way to snatch her prey by springing out of
her element, so she now created a new means of support by lying in wait
at the drinking-places like a crocodile.
Several times she molested horses when watering, and on one occasion
she bit off half the tongue of a poor calf.
One afternoon a roe-deer comes down with its young. The day is hot, and
they run far in, one of them, unable to stop, going in up to its chest.
Grim darts up, seizes it by the body, overturns it, and then drags it
out with her.
Another day a small dog suffers the same fate. It is caught by the
fore-leg and drawn down, while a storm of rings spreads out on all
sides.
All she had dreamed of in earliest youth has been realized; no prey is
now too large for her.
When she moves slowly in the deep water, long waves rise above her, and
whirlpools gyrate upon the coffee-coloured water; and if she shoots up
on to the grass after a frog or a water-rat, and churns the water into
foam, the whole pool is filled with breakers.
Grim is a remnant of primeval ages, a creature from the time of the
great swamps.
Late in the autumn, when the dock was turning red, and the stiff spikes
of the mare’s-tails were bent like withered grass, black autumn showers
filled the marsh to overflowing. The wet mud lay far up over the
meadows and pastures, and poured like rivers through the ditches. Pool
ran into pool, and the peat-cuttings, which lay side by side, only
separated by high, narrow ridges, became one huge pit. It was a regular
deluge.
Grim swam far and wide, and almost fancied herself in the lake once
more. She found her way into new oases where food was abundant, and
made great inroads upon the numerous eels and tench that were flocking
up from the brook through the ditches and channels. That autumn she
really gained ground, and had something with which to withstand the
winter.
But one day in October it happened that an osprey that had got out of
its course strayed in over the marsh. The morning mist had just
disappeared, but the sun was not quite up, when the grey-brown bird was
seen sailing high up in wide circles, its mottled breast gleaming in
the sunlight; and with a black, hooked beak beneath a pair of sharp,
sagacious eyes.
The bird had come far and had not yet breakfasted; it came down nearer
and nearer to the ground. All the little birds in the reeds began to
cry out, and the coots sought shelter in the larger clumps of reeds.
Like a kestrel, the bird kept at tree-height above the water, sailing
backwards and forwards, keeping a sharp watch below.
There was frost in the air, and the great, hungry fisher probably had a
presentiment of the bolt that would soon close its larder. In any case
it was quite determined to take both little and big, and leave nothing.
It sailed on perseveringly from pool to pool, over the rushes in the
muddy water and the bog-myrtle along the banks, moving slowly, with
hanging claws.
Grim comes up from deep water on her morning round, making the most of
her time while the shadows still conceal her and veil her movements.
Now and again she stops and lies in wait among the water-plants, with
her torn, dorsal fin, still but half healed, standing a little above
the water.
On one of these occasions the osprey discovers her, and without
recognizing what sort of a fish it is, hovers above the spot.
More than once it descends in vain, but is at last successful.
Unobserved by Grim, the bird darts upon her from behind with
outstretched claws, and drives them with full force into her back. It
feels its claws sink in, and the pleasant struggling of something
alive.
[Illustration: “The bird darts upon her from behind with outstretched
claws, and drives them with full force into her back.”]
Its body is partly in the water, but the wings are quite clear, and it
flaps vigorously, knowing it must lift its treasure with a quick
movement.
A shudder passes through Grim. At the first moment she fancies herself
attacked by some scaly enemy, and shakes herself and whirls round,
snapping fiercely. But there is nothing to get hold of; the surface of
the water seems, as it were, to hold her fast.
The osprey screams and beats his wings, sending up fountains of spray
all round. Like others of his species, he is accustomed to master even
the largest booty, and he still entertains the highest hopes and will
not let go.
Then all at once danger is imminent! The rash captor notices that the
sustaining volume of air beneath his wings is growing less. Now his
wings are beating the water. He tries to get rid of his prey, but
cannot get his claws out quickly enough; and the next moment he is
drawn down and, to his terror, feels--what he has never quite
believed--that water is not after all his true element.
Life is quickly departing from the hitherto victorious bird; the bold
flyer, who has darted down hundreds of times and let the water close
over his light, oiled feathers, to rise a moment later in a shower of
spray and ascend proudly to dizzy heights, now sways, suffocated,
ruffled and limp, upon feet whose claws seem rooted in fish-flesh.
Grim lived all that winter with the eagle on her back, and felt
strangely hampered in her movements. The bird gradually decomposed, and
at last was only a skeleton that sometimes appeared weirdly above the
surface.
In the spring the whole rotted away, but Grim never got rid of the
claws. To the day of her death they remained embedded in her back.
She now began to find more dangerous enemies. Her various predatory
attacks, which had not all passed unobserved, attracted an
ever-increasing amount of attention. In the surrounding districts,
where she was spoken of as a serpent and a dragon, myths began to be
formed; she had once more to guard against man.
They fired guns at her, and once she got a couple of stray shot in her
side, but otherwise escaped with only a fright. Traps were set out, but
they were fortunately much too small to allow of _her_ getting into
them.
One day she lay burrowing in the mud, so far down that not even the
tiniest ripple reached the surface. There were indications
nevertheless. From time to time little green-bearded, slime-covered
pieces of reed came up vertically through the water, and lay flat as
soon as they reached the surface. A farmer’s lad, out spearing eels,
sent his fork down eagerly. He missed his mark--as the shot had done
before.
One day, in the early summer, however, Grim came very near to finding
her match.