He circled round and round in the water like a wheel,craning his neck up into the air after them
Then he uttered a shriek so piercing and so strange that he was quite frightened by it himself
Oh, he could not forget those beautiful birds,those happy birds
And as soon as they were out of sight he ducked right down to the bottom,and when he came up again he was quite beside himself
He did not know what the brids were,or whither they flew,but all the same he was more drawn towards them than he had ever been by any creatures before
He did not envy them in the least
How could it occur to him even to wish to be such a marvel of beauty
He would have been thankful if only the ducks would have tolerated him among them
the poor ugly creature
The winter was so bitterly cold that the duckling was obliged to swim about in the water to keep it from freezing over,but every night the hole in which he swam got smaller and smaller
Then it froze so hard that the surface ice cracked,and the duckling had to use his legs all the time so that the ice should not freeze around him
At last he was so weary that he could move no more,and he was frozen fast into the ice