No longer did Neewa feel a horror of the river.
The instinct of his kind told him that he wanted water, and wanted it badly.

As straight as Challoner might have set his course by a compass he headed for the stream, but he had proceeded only a few hundred feet when they came upon a tiny creek across which either of them could have jumped.

Neewa jumped into the water, which was four or five inches deep, and for the first time in his life Miki voluntarily took a plunge.

For a long time they lay in the cooling rill.
The light of day was dim and hazy before Miki's eyes, and he was beginning to swell from the tip of his nose to the end of his bony tail.

Neewa, being so much fat, suffered less.