The otter had been too swift for the hounds.  A splash down stream, a flash of a brown body that looked like a seal’s cub, a cat, a beaver, and gigantic water-vole in one, was all I saw; and away the hunt—dog, man, otter-hound, terrier, yeoman, gamekeeper, huntsman, and whip—tore down the beck towards the river. (p. 28)

I made for the bridge—the most picturesque, but the worst bridge for its particular purpose between Keswick and Windermere.  Who does not know that bridge?—how many hearts have leapt into how many mouths as to the cry of “Sit hard, gentlemen!” the coachy has dashed at the narrow, crooked, low-parapeted viaduct, and gone with a crack of his whip at a hand gallop up the steep pitch beyond. (pp. 28-29)

Running round I stood on a kind of miniature escarpment beneath a long-tasselled flowery poplar, and saw the hounds dive into the dark pool, struggle up against the stream, then turn, and with their mouths full of water-stifled music, allow themselves to be swept back to the bank. (p. 29)

Then a fleck of silver whiteness rose under the bridge, and a cry of “Forrard on!” came through the archway, and the dogs dashed and swam on forward, and their melody died away.  I stayed on the bridge, with a good view of the river pools either side, and scarce had the hounds owned the drag in the meadow below Bridge-End House, and seemed to be going away beyond the stepping-stones and the tiny-arched upper bridge in the direction of Raven Crag and the Thirlmere thickets, than I noticed bubbles rise—‘beaded bubbles,’ not ‘winking at the brim,’ but breaking in long line across the still backwater of the current.  Another moment, and a shadowy something that seemed almost like a black fish—might have been a seal—shot through the pool, and a brown body, swift as light, hustled along under the overhanging brow of the bank, and with a flop dived into the pool higher up. (pp. 29-30)

I confess I had no heart to halloo for the hounds; my sympathies were with the ‘game.’  It was, as one analysed one’s feelings after, not the chance of being in at the death of an otter that had brought one out into the glories of a May dawn, but the chance of a sight of one of these ancient dwellers from primitive times in the old valley of St. John’s. (p. 30)

(A Rambler’s Notebook at the English Lakes, pp. 13-32)