Chapter IV: Lake and River

One month in every year the Imp and the Elf and I go to stay in a farmhouse close by the shores of a lake, that is bigger than the biggest pond you have ever seen. Out of the lake flows a river, that is bigger than the biggest stream. But when we go there we always feel very much like we do when we go over the common to the duck pond, or follow the beck from the woodland to the valley. Only, now, instead of lying on the bank at the side of the water, we go in a boat, and row out with the water lapping round us. It is as if we were in an enormous ship of our own, and quite safe, for the boat is so broad in the beam that not even the Imp or the Elf could tumble out if they tried.

Of course we are pirates, and Sir Francis Drakes, and vikings, and other sea rovers, from time to time. I often find that I have been a villainous pirate mate, when, for all I knew, I had been peaceably reading a book in the stern, and we none of us know when we set out in the morning what manner of gay adventures we shall fashion for ourselves upon the water. But, if I were to tell you about all that, I should have no room left in which to write of the water folk, and that would never do.

This is a chapter mainly about the lake things, and they are very like the pond and stream people, only bigger. You remember the little eels we used to find in the stream, clustered like massing black hair below the stones in the running water? Often, when we are floating on the lake, where the bottom is sandy, and not so deep that we cannot see it from the boat, we look over the gunwale and see long brown slimy eels, with silver bellies, twisting along the ground below. Sometimes we drop a worm exactly over an eel, and watch it fall like a curling coral in the water until the eel shoots at it, and gulps it in. Eels are really very like water snakes, but they are fish, with fins just like the trout, and funny little snoutheads, that make us think of pike. Pike are the ugliest and wickedest-looking of all the fish. Big and hungry they are, with evil eyes and long snouts, and mouths set full of teeth that point back down their throats, so that if a little trout or a hand once got inside it has not much chance of escape. The pike lie under the thick weeds round the shores of the lake, and among those rushes that rise out of the water like a forest of green spears. Then when a shoal of big minnows or small perch float by the pike darts out, and there is one perch or one minnow the less in the frightened shoal of little fish. Pike do not like perch very much, because a swallowed perch means a sore pike. For those gay perch with their scarlet fins and golden bodies barred with olive green are not defenceless at all. The fin that runs down their backs is built on firm, sharp spikes that they can lift when they want, and no perch is mild enough to let himself be swallowed without lifting his spines and tearing the throat of the swallower.

As we row on down the lake, watching the reflection of the boat rocking in the ripples, and the reflections of the hills and the trees on the shore of the lake we sometimes hear a long whistling cry, and a curlew swings high over our heads from one side of the valley to the other, like a pendulum-bob without a string, his long curved beak stretched out far before him. And sometimes when the weather is going to be stormy we hear a shrill shriek repeated again and again, and see a white cloud of seagulls lift from the marshy shores and flap away and back and settle again. And more than once we have seen wild duck, and a drake in a gorgeous shimmer of colour fly across the marshland by the head of the river. Half-way down the lake there is a little rocky island, where we have often seen the yellow wagtails, and on a promontory opposite a kingfisher has his nest in a deep hole in the rock. We row the boat close up to the nest, and look at the pile of fishbones outside the hole. The Kingfisher is a fisher as well as a king, and lives on the fish that he catches. It is fine to see him fly across in the sunlight from the rock to island, from the island to the rock, "Just like a rainbow without any rain," as the Elf says, for he is the most gaily coloured of the birds. "Because he is the king," says the Imp. And indeed his kingly robes are very splendid--blue, and green, and red, and white, and orange--as fine a cloak for a monarch as you could wish to see.

There is another fishing bird whom we are always glad to see. He is bigger than I do not know how many Kingfishers put together, and though he is not brightly coloured he is very beautiful. He is a heron, and herons are like the storks of Hans Andersen's fairy stories. He is a grey bird, tall and thin, with a black crest lying back from the top of his head. His legs are long, and he is fond of standing on one leg by the edge of the water, or on a stone at the end of some little promontory, tucking the other leg up in the air, and watching the water with his head on one side, ready at any moment to dive his long beak into the lake and snatch a little fish out of it. When he flies he crooks his long neck back on his shoulders and hangs his legs straight out behind, so that it is impossible not to know him when you see him.

In the little harbour, where our boat is kept, there are often so many minnows that when we look into the water it seems as if the bottom were made of moving tiny fish. People who are going to fish for perch often catch the minnows dozens at a time in nets in their boathouses, when the water is shallow, and the minnows swim up into the shadows of the boats. And there are caddises there too, if we choose the right places to look for them.

As we walk down through the fields from the farm to the boathouse, the Imp and the Elf leaping for joy in themselves, and the sunshine, and the cool wind, and the blue hills, we plan what we shall do with the day, and where we shall go, and whom of the lake people we shall try to see. And one morning or other, as we leave the farmyard, the Imp cries out, "I say, Ogre, isn't to-day the day for a picnic down the lake?" And the Elf says, "Yes. Say yes, Ogre, do," and in three minutes we are all as happy as pioneers arranging an expedition. After lunch we start, and by that time the sandwiches are cut, and the bun-loaves, and the marmalade, and the tea (hot and corked up in a bottle), and the mugs, and everything else are all packed into two baskets by the jolly old farmer's wife, and we go off together, the Imp and the Elf carrying one basket between them, while I carry the other.

We run the boat out of the boathouse, and when we have settled down, the Elf and the baskets in the stern, and the Imp lying flat on his stomach in the bows, we slip away down the lake rippling the smooth waters, and leaving long wavelets behind us that make the hills and trees dance in their reflections. We glide quietly away down the lake, looking up to the purple heather on the moors, and the dark pinewoods that run right down to the water's edge, and watching the fishermen rowing up and down trailing their lines behind them, or casting again and again over the waters of the little rocky bays that break the margin of the lake. That is one way of being interested in the water people; to want to catch them on a hook at the end of a line, but it is not our way. We think of the water folk as we think of the fairies, as of a strange small people, whom we would like to know.

We row down the lake, lazily and slowly, past rocky bays and sharp-nosed promontories, and low points pinnacled with firs. The hills change as we row. At the head of the lake they are rugged and high, with black crags on them far away, but lower down the lake they are not so rough. There are fewer rocks and more heather, and the hills are gentler and less mountainous, until at last at the foot of the lake they open into a broad flat valley, where the river runs to the sea. A little more than half way down there is an island that we can see, a green dot in the distance, from our farmhouse windows, and here we have our tea.

We run the boat carefully aground in a pebbly inlet at one end of the island. We take the baskets ashore, and camp in the shadow of a little group of pines. There is no need to tell you what a picnic tea is like. You know quite well how jolly it is, and how the bun-loaf tastes better than the finest cake, and the sandwiches disappear as if by magic, and the tea seems to have vanished almost as soon as the cork is pulled from the bottle.

As soon as tea is over we prowl over the rockinesses of the little island, and creep among the hazels and pines and tiny oaks and undergrowth. Do you know trees never look so beautiful as when you get peeps of blue water between their fluttering leaves? When we have picked our way through to the other end, we climb upon a high rock with a flat top to it, and heather growing in its crevices; and here we lie, torpid after our tea, and pretend that we are viking-folk from the north who have forced our way here by land and sea, and are looking for the first time upon a lake that no one knew before us. The Imp tells us a story of how he fought with a red-haired warrior, and how they both fell backwards into the sea, and how he killed the other man dead, and then came home to change his wet clothes, long, long ago in the white north. And the Elf, not to be beaten, has her story, too, how she rode on a dragon one night and saw the lake--this very lake--far away beneath her, like a shining shield with a blue island boss in the middle of it. And how the fiery dragon flapped down so that she could pick a scrap of heather from the island, and how here was the very heather that she picked. And then I tell them stories, too, of the old times, when the great fires were lit on the crests of the hills, as warning signals to people far away. And so the time slips away, and we suddenly find that we are ready to row on again to have just one peep at the river.

All round the low end of the lake there are tall reeds growing and bulrushes, and there is soft marshy ground that make damp islets among the reeds. As we row down we are nearly sure to see one or two big white birds with proud necks swimming slowly along the reeds. Sometimes we have seen them rise into the air with a great whirring of wings and splashing of water, and then sink again on the surface of the lake, beating up a long mane of foam as they fall. These are the swans, and on one of the islets in the reeds they have a nest; more than once, when I have been here earlier in the year, I have seen the mother swan sitting white and stately on her home, and then the little grey cygnets break out of the eggs and swim with their parents, looking so fluffy and dirty and odd that the Imp and Elf can hardly believe that some day they will turn out to be tall swans like the big white birds they love, who swim through the water like the ships of a fairy queen.

The river flows away out of the lake through a broad opening in the reeds. We row in there, and then let ourselves drift, just guiding the boat with gentle strokes of the oar, until we leave the reeds behind us, and move on the running river between green banks, thick with bush and rough with rocks. Here on the banks we sometimes see the remains of a dead fish half pulled to pieces. We know what that means, "The otter," says the Imp, and we stare about with eyes wider than before, doing our best to imagine in very stir in the bushes or under the banks that we can see his dark body, like a beaver, for he can swim in the water and dive like a fish, and run along the bank as well. But we have never seen him, though we know that he is there. And otters are growing fewer and fewer. Every year men and women with dogs come to hunt them and kill them. Some day there will be no otters left at all.

We wait in the river till the evening, and then set out to row the long way back again. As we row up the river into the lake again we can see the trout rising in big circles of ripples, and hear the peewits screaming on the marshland. It is odd how we seem to notice sounds at evening that we should not at other times. Everything seems so quiet that little noises seem to matter. When we hear the frogs croaking we do not think how loud they are, but only how silent is everything-else. It is evening now, when we row round the promontory at the low end of the lake, and already we are wondering if we shall get home before the owls begin to call. Long ago the Imp and the Elf should have been asleep in bed.

The lake is very still, and the sky is less brilliant than it was. The sun has dropped below the hills, and their outlines are clear against the rose of the sunset. The Imp and the Elf say nothing, but listen for the night noises, and watch the sky working its miracles in colour. This evening is a new dream world for them, and they are wondering whether the water people are awake or asleep. "There never is a time when everything goes to bed, is there?" says the Elf, sleepily, as we lift her out of the boat. And as the two of them go off to bed, very happy and very, very tired, we can hear the long kr-r-r-r-r-r of the nightjar in the pinewoods up the hills, and below us in the woods at the head of the lake two owls are answering each other.