"Quack, quack, quack, quack!" came from out of the reeds, and a
brown duck came sailing out, followed by ten little yellow balls of
down with flat beaks, swimming like their mother, but in a hurried
pop-and-go-one fashion, in and out, and round and round, and
seeming to go through country dances on the water in chase of water
beetles and running spiders or flies, while the duck kept on
uttering a warning quack, and the drake, who, first with one eye
and then with the other, kept a sharp look up in the sky for
falcons and hawks, now and then muttered out a satisfied
"Wirk--wirk--wirk!"
Robin was Just thinking how beautiful it all was, when the danger
for which the drake was watching in the sky suddenly came from the
water beneath.
One of the downy yellow dabs had swum two yards away from the
others and his mother, after a daddy long-legs which had flown down
on to the surface of the water, and had opened its little flat beak
to seize it, when there was a whirl in the water, a rush and
splash, and two great jaws armed with sharp teeth closed over the
duckling, which was visible one moment, gone the next, and Robin
drew an arrow out to fit to his bow-string.
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