A lasting impression of Tarka the Otter is of the playfulness of these and other creatures. Tarka plays with anything to hand or paw: a water spout, a pebble, a dung-ball, a cocoa can. Here he is intrigued by a water-smoothed glass pebble, and Williamson uses a liquid image to convey its colour and opacity.

‘Tarka played with his pebble …. Tarka tapped his pebble of glass, green and dim as the light seen through the hollow waves rearing for their fall on the sand.’

Source: Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter: His joyful water-life and death in the two rivers, illus. C.F. Tunnicliffe (Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, 1976 (1927)), p. 100

Photo credit: Jeremy Bishop at unsplash.com