ent air-supply to last his purpose,
and emerging at the proper moment. A silver bubble, the waste product of
his life, marked his downgoings and uprisings.

What made him quit the water altogether? For days he had lain
half-submerged on a mass of starwort, his limbs idly anchored off his
body, his quaint, puckered face and goggle eyes fixed immovably on
infinity. He was, to all appearance, carved in stone when the impulse took
him; and then--it was as if the swimming instinct had left him--he
commenced to _crawl_ across the natural bridge of pond-weed to the bank.
Nor can I tell you where he went. Sometimes you may meet his kind in dark,
damp corners, wedged between stones, or in the crannies of fallen tree
trunks. Sometimes it is the gardener that brings word of him. "A' dug the
spade a fut deep and turned he up, the poisonous effet, a' soon stamped on
he!" Sometimes it is the housemaid. "Please m'm there's lizards in the
cellar, I dursn't go near." Sometimes a halfpenny head-line. "Can Life be
Indefinitely Prolonged? Startling Discovery in a Lump of Coal." But,
wherever he may have got to, I can assure you of this, that for three
whole years he stayed there and never willingly saw the light of day.
Nature looked after him in his seclusion, Nature brought him such food as
he required, and Nature never forgot him, but guided him back in due
course to the brook in which he first saw light.

* * * * *

He was a dingy object from above. His eyes, it is true, had kept their
tadpole lustre, but his coat had darkened to a dusky olive, and the only
vivid colour about him, his orange waistcoat, was invisible as he crawled.

Even if it had been visible it would not have been to his disadvantage. Of
all the colours in Nature there are none more warning than contrasted
black and orange. Show me a creature of this colour combination, and you
will show me something that is dangerous or nauseous or poisonous. It was
this, perhaps, that was his salvation as he crawled from his land retreat
back to the water he had left three years before. Perhaps it was simply
his insignificance, for the journey was made by night, and he was crawling
in and out of thickly twisted grass stems. Perhaps, though, it was his
appearance, which, I will freely admit, was at this time, repulsive. A low
set ridge along the centre of his back, and a faint violet tinge upon his
sides were all that told of the glory that was to be.