the tapes vanished like a worm into its hole, and nothing in his armoury
was at once long enough and pointed enough to hook it out again. Finally
he decided that at such an early hour of the morning it would not matter
if he went out exposing his vest, and soon he was wandering in that
enchanted shrubbery of rhododendrons, alternating between imagining it
to be the cave of Aladdin or the beach where Sinbad found all the
pebbles to be precious stones. He wandered down hill through the
thicket, listening with a sense of satisfaction to the increasing
squelchiness of the peaty soil and feeling when the blackbirds fled at
his approach with shrill quack and flapping wings much more like a
hunter than he ever felt in the nursery at Lima Street. He resolved to
bring his gun with him next time. This was just the place to find a
hippopotamus, or even a crocodile. Mark had reached the bottom of the
slope and discovered a dark sluggish stream full of decayed vegetable
matter which was slowly oozing on its course. Or even a crocodile, he
thought again; and he looked carefully at a half-submerged log. Or even
a crocodile . . . yes, but people had often thought before that logs
were not crocodiles and had not discovered their mistake until they were
half way down the crocodile's throat. It had been amusing to fancy the
existence of crocodiles when he was still close to the Vicarage, but
suppose after all that there really were crocodiles living down here?
Feeling a little ashamed of his cowardice, but glossing it over with an
assumption of filial piety, Mark turned to go back through the
rhododendrons so as not to be late for breakfast. He would find out if
any crocodiles had been seen about here lately, and if they had not, he
would bring out his gun and . . . suddenly Mark was turned inside out by
terror, for not twenty yards away there was without any possibility of
self-deception a wild beast something between an ant-eater and a
laughing hyena that with nose to the ground was evidently pursuing him,
and what was worse was between him and home. There flashed through