Arthur Ransome

“ We think of the water folk as we think of the fairies, as of a strange small people, whom we would like to know.
We row down the lake, lazily and slowly, past rocky bays and sharp-nosed promontories, and low points pinnacled with firs. The hills change as we row. At the head of the lake they are rugged and high, with black crags on them far away, but lower down the lake they are not so rough. There are fewer rocks and more heather, and the hills are gentler and less mountainous, until at last at the foot of the lake they open into a broad flat valley, where the river runs to the sea. ”

“ As we row up the river into the lake again we can see the trout rising in big circles of ripples, and hear the peewits screaming on the marshland. It is odd how we seem to notice sounds at evening that we should not at other times. Everything seems so quiet that little noises seem to matter. When we hear the frogs croaking we do not think how loud they are, but only how silent is everything-else. It is evening now, when we row round the promontory at the low end of the lake, and already we are wondering if we shall get home before the owls begin to call. ”

“ We run the boat out of the boathouse, and when we have settled down, the Elf and the baskets in the stern, and the Imp lying flat on his stomach in the bows, we slip away down the lake rippling the smooth waters, and leaving long wavelets behind us that make the hills and trees dance in their reflections. ”

“ As we row on down the lake, watching the reflection of the boat rocking in the ripples, and the reflections of the hills and the trees on the shore of the lake we sometimes hear a long whistling cry, and a curlew swings high over our heads from one side of the valley to the other, like a pendulum-bob without a string, his long curved beak stretched out far before him. ”

“ Long before we reach the pond, we hear the quaack, quaack of the ducks, and see them waddling along with their bodies very near the ground by the muddy edges of the water, flopping hurriedly first on one leg and then on the other. When we get near them we can see that as they lift their feet they turn their toes in in a manner that shows they have not been at all properly brought up. ”

“ We glide quietly away down the lake, looking up to the purple heather on the moors, and the dark pinewoods that run right down to the water's edge, and watching the fishermen rowing up and down trailing their lines behind them, or casting again and again over the waters of the little rocky bays that break the margin of the lake. That is one way of being interested in the water people; to want to catch them on a hook at the end of a line, but it is not our way. ”

“ As we walk down through the fields from the farm to the boathouse, the Imp and the Elf leaping for joy in themselves, and the sunshine, and the cool wind, and the blue hills, we plan what we shall do with the day, and where we shall go, and whom of the lake people we shall try to see. ”

“ The sea spreads inland in a broad pale sandy bay, with marshland grown over with sparse reedy grass, and covered with pools of salty water, and channels full of sandy mud. The stream flows out into this bay, and at some times of the year, when we walk up from the bay along its banks, we see stones that look as if they were heads, with a waving mass of black hair flowing from them down the current. When we look closer, we see that the black hair is a mass of tiny eels. ”

“ And, best of all, perhaps we see a blue flash, and then another blue flash, and then another, and we know that there is a dragon fly shooting about over the water, and among the water plants, like a small azure comet. Sometimes, when he hovers over a flower, we can see him, but we can never see his wings. ”

“ We know what that means, "The otter," says the Imp, and we stare about with eyes wider than before, doing our best to imagine in very stir in the bushes or under the banks that we can see his dark body, like a beaver, for he can swim in the water and dive like a fish, and run along the bank as well. But we have never seen him, though we know that he is there. And otters are growing fewer and fewer. Every year men and women with dogs come to hunt them and kill them. Some day there will be no otters left at all. ”

“ III STREAM AND DITCH
"You can have more fun with a running stream than with a pond," says the Imp. And that is because the galloping water, that leaps and runs over the pebbles, seems to do things to you all the time, while the water in a pond just stays still and lets you do things to it. A thousand games can be played with moving water; at every game it is as fresh as if no one had played with it before. ”

“ Besides, they look jollier in the pond, and are probably very much happier. As the Elf said, "We should try to think how we should like it if other things collected us." It certainly would not be pleasant to be bottled up in muddy water for the little newts to see. It is far best to leave them alone, and, when we want to see them, to come quietly over the common to the edge of the pond, when we may easily see half-a-dozen water-dragons run out from the soft mud, and swim, with quick, hasty flaps of their tails, and jerky paddlings of their arms and legs, out into the depths of the pool. ”

“ As soon as tea is over we prowl over the rockinesses of the little island, and creep among the hazels and pines and tiny oaks and undergrowth. Do you know trees never look so beautiful as when you get peeps of blue water between their fluttering leaves? ”

“ It is a beautiful little world, with its clear water, and green weed, with the little fishes swimming under the roots of the weeds, and darting among the crevices of the stones. And it is a little world that is not very difficult to manage. ”

“ A house is no place for a little wet frog. He wants a pond or a muddy brook, and plenty of duckweed to hide under.
The duckweed in the pond is stirred by other things besides frogs, as I have told you already. The Elf and the Imp would be very angry with me, if I did not tell you all about the newts. For they are the most exciting of all the watery things that are not simple fishes. They are like water lizards, or like tiny water dragons, with four legs and a waving tail. ”

“ All our six eyes and our three heads see nothing and think of nothing except the thing we want. And when we see him, what do you think he is? A little dark beetle with a pale ring round him, shaped like a tiny boat, comes up to the surface for air, and waits a moment, and then goes quickly off again, this way and that, rowing himself with two of his legs that are stronger than the others, and stick straight out from his body, like oars from a boat. ”

“ In a little hollow of the stream, below the waterfalls, where the falling water has churned out a basin for itself, we sometimes see a trout, silvery bellied, and dark of back, with spots along his sides. But the place where we go to look for fish and other water folk is farther down the stream, below the wood and moorland. ”

“ Everything looks quite graceful in its proper place, and almost everything looks silly when it is anywhere else. Even swans, who are the most beautiful of all birds in the water, look as ungainly as can be when they walk along the ground. And if you put a fish, who swims beautifully in the pool, out on the dry land, he just flops and dies, and that is not a pretty sight at all.
The duck pond is very big and round. ”

“ When we have picked our way through to the other end, we climb upon a high rock with a flat top to it, and heather growing in its crevices; and here we lie, torpid after our tea, and pretend that we are viking-folk from the north who have forced our way here by land and sea, and are looking for the first time upon a lake that no one knew before us. The Imp tells us a story of how he fought with a red-haired warrior, and how they both fell backwards into the sea, and how he killed the other man dead, and then came home to change his wet clothes, long, long ago in the white north. ”

“ And one day they said to me, "Why does it do no manner of good to pour water on a duck's back?" I did not know then, so we hunted in a wise book and there was the reason, and when we watched a duck a little more carefully than usual we saw the book told the truth. The ducks keep oil in a hidden place in their tails, and oil their feathers with it. That is what they do when they preen themselves. That is how they manage to be always dry. For water will not stay on anything that is oiled, and really, it is just as if the ducks made their feathers into mackintoshes against the wet. ”

“ Often we lie flat on the green grass by the side of the pond, when the sun is high and hot, and white clouds and a blue sky are reflected in the water of the pond. We lie lazily and watch the ducks swimming about, looking for their food. ”

“ We have seen the stickleback lords dash at each other again and again, trying to rip each other up with their sharp spears, and, at the last, we have seen the conqueror sailing proudly away, even more gorgeous than before. ”

“ The Imp loves the sticklebacks because they are so bold and jolly and move so quickly and so jerkily that it is hard to follow them. But the Elf loves them for quite another reason. She loves them because they are homely. Most of the water people, like the frogs and newts, take no bother at all about their eggs, but just leave them to themselves without ever caring whether they hatch or no. ”

“ And sometimes when the weather is going to be stormy we hear a shrill shriek repeated again and again, and see a white cloud of seagulls lift from the marshy shores and flap away and back and settle again. ”

“ The best of the meadow things, purple orchids, and kingcups, like enormous buttercups twice gilded, and the delicate butterfly orchids, who are rare indeed, with their pale green spikes, with the white flowers tinted with green, fluttering round them. ”

“ He builds it about his own body all round him, adding stick by stick in the neatest, cleverest manner. He builds with anything he can find, and it is often possible to make him a present of a twig, and see him use it up as a new log in the walls of his house. Nothing comes amiss to him. If the stream he lives in is full of little snails, he is quite ready to cover his home with their shells. ”

“ There is no need to tell you what a picnic tea is like. You know quite well how jolly it is, and how the bun-loaf tastes better than the finest cake, and the sandwiches disappear as if by magic, and the tea seems to have vanished almost as soon as the cork is pulled from the bottle. ”

“ We rather think that the jelly helps a little in keeping the tiny black eggs from being gobbled before they have had time to grow up. But in spite of its slippery sloppiness, we get a little of it inside the jampot, and when we have dipped the jampot in the pond to give the eggs some water, and dropped in a wisp of weed, that loses its wispiness as soon as it can float again, we set off on our way home, planning all sorts of things for little frogs, and making frog tales. Frog tales, the Elf says, are best in summer, "they make you feel so cool." ”

“ They do not hiss at us. Perhaps they know that we would not be very frightened if they did. The Elf likes this last part of the walk, because she loves to imagine she is a goosegirl in a fairy tale, who drives geese, until she meets a noble Prince, who finds out that really she is a Princess all the time. Some days the Imp is quite ready to pretend to be the Prince, and act the whole story. But other days he is in a precious hurry to get to the pond, and the poor Elf has to be a goosegirl without a Prince, and that is a poor business. She soon tires of it, and runs after us across the common. ”

“ In the little harbour, where our boat is kept, there are often so many minnows that when we look into the water it seems as if the bottom were made of moving tiny fish. People who are going to fish for perch often catch the minnows dozens at a time in nets in their boathouses, when the water is shallow, and the minnows swim up into the shadows of the boats. ”

“ A tiny donkey with an enormous voice is tethered to a stake in the ground. There is a crowd of geese, who throw out their long necks in vicious curves, and hiss at strangers and sometimes frighten them. ”

“ Footpaths cross the meadows, and where they come to the brook, bridges have been made by simply laying a huge flat slate stone from bank to bank across the water. One of our favourite ways of picnicking is to take our basket of food across the meadows and camp in the long grass close by one of these bridges. ”