On Saturday evening, from beyond the boundary hedge, came a run of loud unexplained noises. The boundary hedge marks where the world this gazette covers stops and the world it does not begin, and the far side of it goes, as a rule, unacknowledged here. The noises began shortly after sundown and carried, with irregular breaks, into the late part of the night. This reporter will not describe their character in any precise terms. No description, however careful, can reliably tell one loud unexplained noise from another. They were loud enough to reach every station of the pond, and they gave no warning. That is the whole of what can be said about the noises themselves.
The long-resident frog of the southern waters submerged on the first noise. He had been at his usual station, in the company of the smaller frog of no particular acquaintance whose presence in the southern waters this paper first recorded on the twenty-second of last month. The smaller frog has not yet picked up the habit of submerging at sudden sounds. He took refuge as the southern waters allowed a party of his standing: under one of the three provisional candidate pads, the easternmost, by the look of it, where he stayed for the duration. The long-resident frog, on the evidence this reporter could gather Sunday morning, did not resurface while the noises lasted.
The dabchicks of the west pier composed a statement on the second noise. They did not issue it. Applied to on Sunday morning, the eldest of the dabchicks said the family had decided, on reflection, that the statement was not needed in the form composed, and that none was in prospect. She described the composition itself as “ready, but on reflection not required,” and there the matter was left. The fish were not visible, through the noises and on later inspection alike.
The older drakes of the south bank, applied to in the usual way on Sunday morning, were unbothered. One of them, who has opened a remark before now with “we have heard worse,” opened his Sunday remark with it. The other three took it on with the look of long agreement. A second drake added, at a volume this reporter could catch for once, that the present noises were “less than those of the storm of three winters past, in the considered view of the parties present.” The third said nothing. The fourth was seeing to his preening.
Drake Halford was at the east shore all evening and filed nothing Sunday morning to say the noises had caused any alarm. Approached on Sunday afternoon, he said the household had stayed within the usual distance of the bank, that its effects were intact, and that the noises were not, in his view, the kind that warrant a fresh filing. The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice was at the sluice gate during a quieter stretch. She was not, when observed, writing in her notebook. The Warden was not observed.
The matter is lodged at the reeds. The Clerk took the notification Sunday morning and said it would be considered at the next Wednesday session, subject to the usual arrangements. As for the boundary hedge, the gazette notes for the record that this is the one matter on which it holds no position. The noises have stopped. The pond kept its own counsel through all of it and was, by Sunday, simply the pond again, in good light, asking nothing.