The tide beyond the tail of the Shrarshook was divided by a string of froth, made by the leap and chop of waters beginning to move north and south, along the arms of the sea stretching to the Two Rivers. The swans turned north, borne by the tide racing past Crow Island. They paddled out of the main flow, and turning head to tide, began to feed in the shallow over a sandbank. The otters drifted nearer, only their wide nostrils above water. When they were ten yards away from the nearest swan the nostrils sank, and chains of bubbles rose unseen above them. A swan saw a dark form under the water, but before it could lift out its head, Tarka had bitten on to its neck. Heavily its wings beat the water. Every curlew on the sandbank cried in a long uprising whistle, _cu-u-ur-leek, cur-r-r-leek!_, and the alarm flew up and down the estuary as fast as sound travelled. The treble whistle of the redshank was piped from shore to shore, the ring plover sped over the water, turning and wheeling as one bird. Old Nog cried _kra-r-rk!_ Wind from the swans' wings scalloped the water and scattered the spray, and one struck Tarka a blow that made him float slowly away. But Greymuzzle hung to the swan's foot, even when her rudder was nearly out of the water as she was dragged along. The swan trumpeted afar its anger and fear. Bubu the Terrible flew towards the sound. Before the Arctic Owl arrived Tarka was undazed and swimming to help his mate. Seeing and hearing the struggle, Bubu stretched his toes, opened his beak, and gave a loud and terrifying hoot; but when he reached the conflict, fanning above like a shade of chaos, there was nothing to see save only feathers and bubbles. Silent as snow and fog, staring like the Northern Lights, taloned like black frost, the Arctic Owl flew over the Shrarshook and dropped upon Fang-over-lip, but the snarl and the snap of teeth drove him up again. Across the pull of the tide, among the grating ice-floes, the otters took the swan, whose flappings were getting feeble as the death-fear grew less. Tarka had bitten the artery in the neck. When the otters rested the bird lay quiet on the water. It heard the wings of its brethren beating out the flying song of swans, _Hompa, hompa, hompa_, high and remote in the night. It flapped thrice, and died.