This was the instant that the hare awaited; the otter knew it, and the hare saw that she knew it; the sudden gathering of her limbs proclaimed it. With a tremendous bound he was off, with the otter in hot pursuit. It was a close chase; for though the hare gained the rock a good ten feet ahead of the otter and increased his lead to fully fifteen at his next spring, the water, as he had foreseen, impeded his further progress so much that he seemed to be at the mercy of his swiftly advancing enemy. What floundering, what splashing by the hare! What ploughing of the water by the otter in her desperate haste! Foot by foot she gained till at last her nose all but touched his hind legs. It looked as if she must seize him; so she would have done but for a timely rock which gave the hare the foothold he needed. The spring he made from it was one of the longest of his life; it landed him well on to the shallows; two more leaps and he was on the heather, over which he sped like the wind. How good the herbage felt under his feet! Further pursuit was vain; yet the otter, maddened at the loss of the prey she had accounted hers, held on at her best speed to the corner of the pool before checking her steps to watch the hare. He stood awhile and returned her gaze. Then he shook his coat and resumed his way over the darkening moor. CHAPTER VI BACK ON CARN BREA On leaving the moor the hare headed as if to return to Tregonebris, but in the dip below the stone-circle he suddenly changed his course and made straight for Brea. He had that instant formed the resolve to forage on the farm there and to harbour afterwards on his native hill. His panic pace, even more the staring eyes turned ever behind him, bespoke his nervous condition; but the farther he went the more composed he grew, and he was almost his normal self by the time he reached his destination. There he roamed in search of food from pasture to pasture, wondering to see the change that had come over them since his early leveret days. Then the corn and the grass rose high above his head; he recalled how he had stood on his hind legs and looked over the array of ears; now there was not herbage enough to cover his pads. But despite the nakedness of the enclosures he experienced no sense of strangeness: the bushes on the hedges, the gates, the gaps and the linhay in the field beyond the old mine-heaps were the same as ever. He remembered them all, even the hole in the wall of the three-cornered enclosure; and through this, in the small hours, he squeezed his way to the turnip-field that runs like a narrow promontory into the waste. The sight of the turnips gladdened his eyes, for he had gleaned little on the closely browsed grass-land and was very hungry.