The water of the pool was swimming-deep from the shallow above Canal Bridge to the shallow above Leaning Willow Island. The surface above Tarka mirrored the bed of the river--the dark rocks, the weed, the sodden branches, with the legs and bodies of hounds--until ripples broke the mirror into shards of light. In this underwater realm, where sounds were so distinct--the crush of nailed boots on stones, the tip-tap of poles, the thresh of hounds' legs, and even the flip of cyclops and water-flea--Tarka swam until he was forced to vent, which he did at the river verge, under the banks, or by clumps of yellow flags. Sometimes he crept on the stones, hiding himself under overhanging roots as he sought a refuge, until dreading the nearness of hounds he slipped into the river again, covered with a silver skin of air. As he swam, twin streams of bubbles came out of his nostrils, raced over his head and neck, and shook off his back to lie on the surface in a chain, watched by many eyes. Up and down the pool he went, swimming in midstream or near the banks, crossing from side to side and varying his depth of swimming as he tried to get away from his pursuers. Passing under the legs of hounds, he saw them joined to their broken surface-images. From under water he saw men and women, pointing with hand and pole, as palsied and distorted shapes on the bank. However hard he swam with his three and a half webs, always he heard the hounds, as they spoke to his scent lying in burst bubble, in seal on muddy scour, on leaf and twig. Once in mid-river, while on his way to a clump of flags, his breath gave out, and he bobbed up to breathe a yard from Deadlock. He stared into the eyes of his old enemy; and dived. During forty seconds he swam a distance of seventy yards, to a bed of reeds, where he breathed and rested. No one saw him; but they saw the chain. Up the river again, past the Peal Rock, and under the middle arch of Canal Bridge to the shallow, crossed by a line of men and women, white and blue and green and red and grey, standing close together. _Tally Ho!_ He turned and reached covering water just before hounds. _Get on to 'm! Leu-on, leu-on! Wind him, old fellars!_ The huntsman was wading up to his waist in the water, scooping the air with his grey hat. Bellman, a small-footed hairy black-and-tan, cross between a drafted harrier and a Dumfriesshire rough otter-hound, yelped his impatience, seeming to snap the water as he swam. Sometimes the huntsman gave an encouraging spitnote on his horn. Tarka went down river, but a blurred and brilliant colour band stretched from bank to bank above Leaning Willow Island. He tried to get through the stickle, but stocking'd leg was pressed to stocking'd leg, a fixed barrier behind plying poles. The owl flew out of the willow, miserable in the sunlight with small birds pursuing it.