Between him and the lip of the moor lay a tract of marshy ground dotted with rushes and coarse grasses. Here, with a view to checking his pursuer, he leapt from tuft to hummock and from hummock to tuft until he had confused his line. Then he continued on his way, heading for an outlying turf-stack which stood between him and the pool. In the teeth of the hurricane he made slow progress, but he reached it at length, and glad of the shelter it afforded he sat down on the lee side, facing the ground he had just traversed. Soon he saw the lurcher coming, and watched her anxiously as she stood on the brow of the rising ground scanning the moor. The moment she set foot on the marshy ground, where she was lost to view, he quitted his shelter and made for the pool. Many a time he had covered the intervening ground in a minute or two; but the wind seemed bent on arresting his progress; in his exhausted state all he could do battling against it was to make headway. At length he gained the pool, and there his heart fell, for between him and his goal, the islet, lay a stretch of raging water. He had not reckoned on that. He was a miserable creature as he sat on the shore, looking now towards the islet, now back over the moor. He could see no hope; death stared him in the face in both directions; yet the instant he saw the lurcher coming he decided to entrust himself to the pool. Strangely enough, he did not wade in, but galloped a score yards along the strand and then cast himself into the hissing water, striking the spray from the surface. When he rose he struck out for his goal. He was hardly visible even on the crests of the waves; he was completely lost to sight when they broke over him; but he drew nearer and nearer to the islet, and after a terrible struggle at last landed at the otters’ creek. Great as was the hare’s distress, the love of life was greater. Even in his extremity he was careful not to betray himself by any sudden movement to his pursuer, now at the side of the pool. For fear of detection, he stole from the water at a snail’s pace and, so slowly that no eye on the shore would have been aware of any movement, sank down on the sodden fern. There he lay hour after hour whilst his persistent enemy circled the pool and ransacked the waste in search of him.