I was not at all uneasy about him, for the wood seemed safe enough, and Walnut, now more than six months old, was well able to take care of himself. As for me, I drowsed until about midday, and then looking out again found that the downpour had at last ceased and the sun was shining once more. I missed Walnut, for I was so much accustomed to his nestling beside me; and, stretching lazily, I sallied forth to look for him, stepping daintily along the soaking boughs in order to avoid bringing down upon myself the great drops of moisture which hung on every yellowing leaf. I made straight for the hazel-bushes, which we had found on the first day near to the water’s edge; but when I came in sight of the river I could hardly believe my eyes, so tremendous a change had the great rain wrought. In place of the shallow stream that purled across pebble beds from pool to pool, a broad torrent, red with the clay of the upland fields, was raging down with appalling force and fury. Even where the banks had been highest the flood was level with their tops, and in many places it had overflowed them so that the nut-bushes stood up like islands among wide backwaters where the current eddied lazily, swinging on its discoloured surface millions of dead leaves and sticks. The sight fairly fascinated me, and for the moment I forgot my hunger, Walnut, and everything else in watching the irresistible force of the rushing torrent and noticing the speed at which the logs and sticks which it had tom from its banks were carried downwards. [Illustration: ANOTHER MOMENT FOUND ME COMFORTABLY PERCHED IN THE BRANCHES OF THE HAZEL-BUSHES.] But hunger soon reasserted its claims, and I began to reconnoitre for the best means of reaching the nut-bushes and breakfast. A little further down the stream a low, flat-topped oak extended its spreading branches more than half-way across the flooded river, and I saw that from the point of one of its long limbs it would be easy to drop into a good-sized clump of hazel-bush below. No sooner seen than done, and another minute found me comfortably perched in the branches of the hazel-bushes cracking nuts and eating them with a naturally fine appetite sharpened by forty hours abstinence. That I was on an island completely cut off on all sides by water troubled me not at all. I was much too hungry to worry about that, for I felt sure that I could jump back on to my oak bough, which formed a bridge to bring me back to land again, and so I worked steadily downwards from branch to branch. I was only a foot or two from the ground when a rustle among the thick, mossy stumps below attracted my attention. Glancing down, the sight that met my eyes almost paralysed me with horror. CHAPTER XI MY LAST ADVENTURE