Until next morning she found herself just as hungry again.
Then she was fortunate enough to gain fresh experience about feathers.
In the early dawn, while the rays from the rising sun shed their peculiar colours over the bog, and made it shine with green and yellow, with purple and indigo, she made a dash at a fish on the surface, without suspecting that up in the air above her there was a winged rival, who also desired the booty.
The tern swooped headlong downwards as Grim leaped headlong upwards, and the mouths of the two spoilers closed at the same moment over the little fish. Grim, however, opened her mouth the wider, and closed it with the greater force, and she bit with a voracious violence as great as if she were about to eat the carcass of an ox.
She got the fish and the tern’s head in the same mouthful, noticed that she was well laden, and backed downwards, drawing the bird with her into deep water, where she swallowed her strange prey.
What an immense blessing fish with feathers were! For several days she felt so thoroughly satisfied!
From that time she considered every creature upon the surface of the water as her lawful booty. No sooner did a wild duck drop on to the water in its evening flight, than Grim darted up after it from her hole in the mud. At intervals of a day she took both the grebes and cleared the creeks of coots and a couple of young storks that had come for the purpose of learning to fish.
But still the craving for food allowed her no rest. She had to be constantly extending her domain and finding new territory.
See the marsh now that July has come!--July, luxuriant, mature, with clouds for hips and swelling breasts, and a sun that seems weary of journeying. Like sea-birds that have no air under their wings for their flight, come puffs of wind, throwing themselves into peat-bogs and marsh-pools. The air is one continuous drowsy hum of flies and gnats; and the reed-warbler is in full voice.
Grim lies dozing in the tepid water, and sees the world above her indistinctly and uncertainly as through thick grass. She only notices that out of the shining blue up there, there now and then appears a little dark shadow. It comes down suddenly, pauses for an instant as it touches the water, and is gone again.