October Lake
赫伯特·厄内斯特·贝茨 / Herbert Ernest Bates
The October leaves have fallen on the lake. On bright, calm days they lie in thousands on the now darkening water, mostly yellow f?lotillas of poplar, f?loating continuously down from great trees that themselves shake in the windless air with the sound of falling water, but on rainy days or after rain they seem to swim or be driven away, and nothing remains to break the surface except the last of the olive-yellow lily pads that in high summer covered every inch of water like plates of emerald porcelain. The lilies have gone too, the yellow small-headed kind that in bud are like swimming snakes, and the great reeds are going, woven by wind and frost into untidy basket islands under which coot and moorhen skid for cover at the sound of strangers.
All summer, in this world of water-lilies, the coot and moorhen lived a bewildered life. There was no place where they could swim, and all day they could be seen walking daintily, heads slightly aside and slightly down, cross the lily-hidden water, as bemused by the world of leaves as they had been in winter by the world of ice. In unbroken expect for two small islands. This birds, as the f?it takes them, dash madly up and down it, taking off and touching down like small fussy black sea-planes. Beside them the arrival of the wild duck, at much higher speed, is almost majestic. They plane down, the necks of the drakes shining like royal green satin, with the air of squadrons coming in after long f?lights from home.
It was not until late summer f?ishing was possible. The water was so low and clear after drought that the f?ish could be seen in great dark shoals, sunning themselves, shy, impossible to catch. Only in the evenings, as the air cooled and the water darkened, and the surface was broken with the silver dances of the rising shoals, would you perhaps get a bite or two, a baby perch sucking at the worm, a roach no bigger than a sardine. All the time, on bright hot mornings especially, great pike would lie out in the middle of the lake in shoals of ten or even twenty, like black torpedoes, transf?ixed, never moving except in sudden immense rises that rocked the water-surface with rings.
