The measured splash, splash, splash--was not so far ahead.

It might be a bear snatching fish, or--no, that was too unpleasant--a man baling out a canoe.

Still the slow splash, splash, went on at intervals, not quite regular.
Now it seemed but thirty yards ahead and in the creek.
With the utmost care they crawled to the edge of the clay and opposite they saw a sight but rarely glimpsed by man.

Here were six otters; two evidently full-grown, and four seeming young of the pair, engaged in a most hilarious and human game of tobogganing down a steep clay hill to plump into a deep part at its foot.
Plump went the largest, presumably the father; down he went, to reappear at the edge, scramble out and up an easy slope to the top of the twenty-foot bank.

Splash, splash, splash, came three of the young ones; splash, splash, the mother and one of the cubs almost together.
"Scoot" went the big male again, and the wet furslopping and rubbing on the long clay chute made it greasier and slipperier every time.
Splash, plump, splash--splash, plump, splash, went the otter family gleefully, running up the bank again, eager each to be first, it seemed, and to do the chute the oftenest.
The gambolling grace, the obvious good humour, the animal hilarity of it all, was absorbingly amusing.