streak of blue shot up it between the banks, and a shrill pipe came back
as the kingfisher hastened away. By the huge boulder of sarsen, whose
shoulder projected but a few inches--in stormy times a dangerous rock to
mariners--and then into the unknown narrow seas between the endless
osier-beds and withy-covered isles.

There the chart failed; and the known landmarks across the open
waters--the firs and elms, the green knoll with the cattle--were shut
out by thick branches on either hand. In and out and round the islets,
sounding the depth before advancing, winding now this way, now that,
till all idea of the course was lost, and it became a mere struggle to
get forward. Drooping boughs swept along the gunwales, thick-matted
weeds cumbered the way; 'snags,' jagged stumps of trees, threatened to
thrust their tops through the bottom; and, finally, panting and weary of
poling through the maze, we emerged in a narrow creek all walled in and
enclosed with vegetation.

Running her ashore on the soft oozy ground, we rested under a great
hawthorn bush that grew at the very edge, and, looking upwards, could
see in the canopy above the black interlaced twigs of a dove's nest.
Tall willow poles rose up all around, and above them was the deep blue
of the sky. On the willow stems that were sometimes under water the bark
had peeled in scales; beneath the surface bunches of red fibrous roots
stretched out their slender filaments tipped with white, as if feeling
like a living thing for prey.

A dreamy, slumberous place, where the sedges slept, and the green flags
bowed their pointed heads. Under the bushes in the distant nook the
moorhen, reassured by the silence, came out from the grey-green grass
and the rushes. Surely Calypso's cave could not be far distant, where