For a week he slept in the disused lime-kiln on the greensward above the Heddon water, that lost itself in a ridge of boulders above the tide wash. While he was exploring the fresh water a storm broke over the moor, and the roaring coloured spate returned him to the sea. He went westwards, under the towering cliffs and waterfalls in whose ferny sides he liked to rest by day. Once he was awakened by a dreadful mumbling in the wind far above him. As he lifted his head he heard a whishing noise, as of falcons in swoop. Flakes of scree clattered and hurtled past him; then a stag, and three staghounds. The bodies smashed on the rocks, and were of silence again. Soon the cries of seabirds and daws were echoing out of the cliffs. Ravens flew down, and buzzards, and the air was filled with black and white and brown wings, with deep croaking, wailing, and shrill screaming. They jostled and fought for an hour, when a motor-boat, holding a red-coated figure, came round the eastern sheer and drove them into flight. The gulls mobbed Tarka when they saw him slipping down from his resting ledge, but he found the sea and sank away from them. That night, quatting on a rock and eating a conger, the west wind brought him the scent of White-tip. At dawn he was swimming under the sea-feet of the Great Hangman; and he followed the trail until sunrise was shimmering down the level sea and filling with aerial gold the clouds over the Welsh hills. * * * * * At dusk the shore-rats on Wild Pear Beach, searching the weed-strewn tide-line, paused and squealed together when their sharp noses took the musky scent of water-weasels. They ran off chittering as terrible shapes galloped among them. A rat was picked up and killed in a swift bite. The cub did not want it for food; he killed it in fun. He ran into the sea after White-tip, who had been taking care of them since their mother had been trapped under the waterfall. Six hours later Tarka ran up Wild Pear Beach and his thin, hard cries pierced the slop and wash of waves on the loose, worn, shaley strand. He followed the trail over the weeds to the otters' sleeping place under a rock, and down again to the sea. In a pool off Briery Cave he scented otter again, for at the bottom of the pool lay a wicker pot, holding something that turned slowly as the ribbons of the thong-weed lifted and dropped in the water. The long blue feelers of a lobster were feeling through the wickerwork; it was gorged, and trying to get out from the otter cub it had been eating. The cub had found no way out of the cage it had entered at high tide, intending to eat the lobster. _Hu-ee-ic!_ Tarka did not know the dead. Nothing answered, and he swam away, among green phosphoric specks that glinted at every wave-lop.