Portly woke up with a joyous squeak, and wriggled with pleasure at the sight of his father's friends, who had played with him so often in past days. In a moment, however, his face grew blank, and he fell to hunting round in a circle with pleading whine. As a child that has fallen happily asleep in its nurse's arms, and wakes to find itself alone and laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cupboards, and runs from room to room, despair growing silently in its heart, even so Portly searched the island and searched, dogged and unwearying, till at last the black moment came for giving it up, and sitting down and crying bitterly.
The Mole ran quickly to comfort the little animal; but Rat, lingering, looked long and doubtfully at certain hoof-marks deep in the sward.
`Some--great--animal--has been here,' he murmured slowly and thoughtfully; and stood musing, musing; his mind strangely stirred.
`Come along, Rat!' called the Mole. `Think of poor Otter, waiting up there by the ford!'
Portly had soon been comforted by the promise of a treat--a jaunt on the river in Mr. Rat's real boat; and the two animals conducted him to the water's side, placed him securely between them in the bottom of the boat, and paddled off down the backwater. The sun was fully up by now, and hot on them, birds sang lustily and without restraint, and flowers smiled and nodded from either bank, but somehow--so thought the animals--with less of richness and blaze of colour than they seemed to remember seeing quite recently somewhere--they wondered where.
The main river reached again, they turned the boat's head upstream, towards the point where they knew their friend was keeping his lonely vigil. As they drew near the familiar ford, the Mole took the boat in to the bank, and they lifted Portly out and set him on his legs on the tow-path, gave him his marching orders and a friendly farewell pat on the back, and shoved out into mid-stream. They watched the little animal as he waddled along the path contentedly and with importance; watched him till they saw his muzzle suddenly lift and his waddle break into a clumsy amble as he quickened his pace with shrill whines and wriggles of recognition. Looking up the river, they could see Otter start up, tense and rigid, fromout of the shallows where he crouched in dumb patience, and could hear his amazed and joyous bark as he bounded up through the osiers on to the path. Then the Mole, with a strong pull on one oar, swung the boat round and let the full stream bear them down again whither it would, their quest now happily ended.
`I feel strangely tired, Rat,' said the Mole, leaning wearily over his oars as the boat drifted. `It's being up all night, you'll say, perhaps; but that's nothing. We do as much half the nights of the week, at this time of the year. No; I feel as if I had been through something very exciting and rather terrible, and it was just over; and yet nothing particular has happened.'
`Or something very surprising and splendid and beautiful,' murmured the Rat, leaning back and closing his eyes. `I feel just as you do, Mole; simply dead tired, though not body tired. It's lucky we've got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn't it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one's bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!'
`It's like music--far away music,' said the Mole nodding drowsily.
`So I was thinking,' murmured the Rat, dreamful and languid. `Dance- music--the lilting sort that runs on without a stop--but with words in it, too--it passes into words and out of them again--I catch them at intervals-- then it is dance-music once more, and then nothing but the reeds' soft thin whispering.'
`You hear better than I,' said the Mole sadly. `I cannot catch the words.'
`Let me try and give you them,' said the Rat softly, his eyes still closed.
`Now it is turning into words again--faint but clear-- Lest the awe should dwell--And turn your frolic to fret--You shall look on my power at the helping hour--But then you shall forget! Now the reeds take it up--forget, forget, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle and a whisper. Then the voice returns--`Lest limbs be reddened and rent--I spring the trap that is set--As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there--For surely you shall forget! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter.
`Helper and healer, I cheer--Small waifs in the woodland wet-- Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it--Bidding them all forget! Nearer, Mole,nearer! No, it is no good; the song has died away into reed-talk.'
`But what do the words mean?' asked the wondering Mole.
`That I do not know,' said the Rat simply. `I passed them on to you as they reached me. Ah! now they return again, and this time full and clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, ******--passionate--perfect----'
`Well, let's have it, then,' said the Mole, after he had waited patiently for a few minutes, half-dozing in the hot sun.
But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.
