She liked best to hide where the water-lilies floated in islands of green, for there the treacherous shadows--her best friends--fell clearly through the water; absorbed her, as it were, and made capture easy for her. If she found herself discovered, she would retreat with as little haste as possible; for that sort of thing aroused too much attention, and created widespread disturbance in the fishy world.
If she lay on the surface, for instance, and suspected that she was being watched from above, she became, as it were, more and more indistinct and one with the dark water, letting herself sink imperceptibly, at the same time beginning to work all her fins. In ample folds they softly crept round the long stick that her body now resembled, fringed and veiled it and bore it away.
And just as she knew how to place herself, so did she know how to move--cautiously and discreetly.
Formerly she had measured only a finger’s length, and now she was already about a foot long; her voraciousness had increased in a corresponding degree. She could eat every hour of the day. She would fill herself right up to the neck, and even have half a fish sticking out beyond. It was quite a common sight to see a little flapping fish-tail for which her digestive organs had not room as yet, sticking out of her mouth like a lively tongue. She would swim about delightedly, sucking it as a boy would suck a stick of candy.
One day she was gliding slowly through a clump of rushes, as lifeless and dead as any stick. Her eyes seemed to be on stalks and spied eagerly round, but her body exhibited the least possible movement and eagerness.
She turned, but even then holding herself stiff, and playing her new part of a drifting stick in a masterly manner. As she did so she discovered her brother, as promising a specimen of a young pike as herself, with all the distinguishing marks of the race.
Although cold-blooded, she was of a fiery temperament, and as she was also hungry, she stared greedily and with cannibal feelings at the apparition. Her appetite grew in immeasurable units of time. The food was at hand, it stared her in the face; she forgot relationship and resemblance, and bending in the middle so that head and tail met, she seized her brother with a lightning movement.