The Waterbabies: Chapter 5.
Tom was quite amphibious, which means he was both animal and a fish and what is better still he was clean. He did not remember having ever been dirty, indeed, he did not remember any of his troubles, being tired, or hungry, or beaten, or sent up dark chimneys.
Tom was very happy in the water. He had been overworked in the land world; and now, to make up for that he had nothing but holidays in the water world for a long time to come. So he traveled down stream along smooth gravel waterways then sometimes he came to a deep still reach where he saw water forests.
They would have looked to you just like little weeds: but Tom you must remember was so little that everything looked a hundred times as big to him as it does to you. But one day Tom had a new adventure. He heard the strangest noise up the stream; cooing and grunting and whining and squeaking.
He looked up the water and there he saw a sight as strange as the noise a great ball rolling over and over down the stream, seeming one moment to be soft brown fur, and the next of shining glass: and yet it was not a ball; for sometimes it broke up and streamed away in pieces, and then it joined again; and all the while the noise came out of it louder and louder and when it came near the ball turned out to be four or five beautiful creatures, many times larger than Tom, who were swimming about, and rolling, and diving, and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and kissing, and biting, and scratching, in the most charming fashion that ever was seen. " The Otters".
