5.10: The stream is diverted

Alcock decides that, even if no action should be taken against the bulb spiders, they should at least be watched. But after his previous encounter, he is unwilling to send anyone else to do this dangerous task and so goes himself. This time, however, he keeps his distance and looks at their camp through field glasses from afar.

The sight is disturbing. It seems that the spiders have camped by the stream for a reason other than to draw water. 

They seem to have destroyed a small Victorian dam and thus to have moved the stream back to a track it took many years ago before it was diverted in order to build the gardens of the big old house. But this threatens to flood his home and their allotments. Already the water is cascading downhill on a course it has not taken for one hundred years and towards the Potting Shed.