"You're too particular, you are! _You_ know bread meant fish with Dagger Bill--and cake meant things like winkles and frogs, and watermice, and--Water Babies, of course! "Well, you know, it was no joke hunting the Water Babies, for the old muskrats could fight, and would, and did! And after Dagger Bill and his family had breakfasted on two or three Water Babies, there was great excitement in all the muskrat homes.
"Dagger Bill was a new enemy, and they were not quite sure how to manage him.

The mink they knew, the fox they knew, and the noiseless, terrible eagle owl, and the swooping hawk.

All these they had their tricks for evading.

And the savage pike they would sometimes fight in his own element.
"But Dagger Bill, swimming under water like a fish, and spearing them from beneath with the deadly javelin of his beak, this was a new and dreadfully upsetting danger.

Furry heads got close together, and there was a terrible lot of squeaking and squealing before anyone could make up his mind what to do.