Remembering what had come with the ground thuds before, when the air of the hollow tree had shaken to the baying of hounds, Tarka ran swiftly to water. The otter had left the river and was standing on the bank, sniffing the night wind. A cloud like the seal of an otter drifted across the moon. Tarka slipped into the river, but returned to his mother, being curious. The alarm cries of the curlews had ceased, and other notes fell from the sky. In the riverside sedges two warblers began to speak to one another. They mixed hastily the notes of song and alarm, with the gentle under-song voice used only to their mates when brooding in the cradles woven to the green flags. A low sound of a human voice came to Tarka, and a hound-like taint which raised the hair of his neck. Immediately the mother yikkered a threat, and with her cubs ran down the bank and hid among the sedges. Clouds hid the shine of the moon. On the bank, dark against the sky, appeared the figures of men, and a long-legged lurcher dog. The men scrambled down to the river's verge. There was a moment of quiet, when the trilling cries of the flying curlews rose above the water-murmurs and the wind in the trees. A scratching noise and the flickering of a small light. It went out. Another match was struck and shielded by a hand, until it spread into a lurid flame, overcasting with ruddy glow the dim shades of trees across the water. The flare lit the faces of two men. One held a pitchfork with gleaming prongs. They stood still and watchful. Then a youthful voice ten yards higher up the river said: "Fine li'l brown dog going through the daggers, Shiner! Wish I'd took hold of 'n." Neither of the men answered. They were staring intently at the water. Slowly the torchbearer raised an arm and pointed. The spear was poised, to quiver over the man's head, while a ream skated over the pool. A hoarse voice whispered "Now!" and the fork was plunged into the pool. A curved flash of fire scattered its ripple. The torch-bearer threw down his torch and waded into the water, followed by the young man, who had run down the bank when he had seen the jumping salmon. They were groping for the fish, guided by the agitated spear-shaft, when the man yelled that one of the prangs had gone through his hand. He held it up, dripping blood, and cursing that the top of one of his fingers was knocked off. The man on the bank picked up the torch--oily rags tied to a stick--and held it as far out as he could over the water without filling his boots. The youth cried out that he had got a grip on the sow's gills and that he couldn't hold it much longer. Before the man could get to him, he had dropped the fish, yelling that he had been bitten in the leg by the little brown dog.