It was being steadily driven to the lower end of the stopped rapid, where the water was scarcely a foot deep.

The animal reappeared, plunging in and out among the shallows but forging up stream, and the men who meant to turn it back closed up.
There was one at every yard across the belt of sparkling foam.

They had spiked poles to beat the water and it seemed impossible that their victim could get past.
Yet the otter vanished, and for a minute or two there was silence, until the dogs rushed up the bank.

Then somebody shouted, the huntsman blew his horn, and a small, wedge-shaped ripple trailed, very slowly across the next pool.

The otter had somehow stolen past the watchers' legs and reached deep water, but its slowness told that its strength had gone.