“Well—then, at least when we got back, we should have known whether we ought to have been hungry or not. Now we shall never know.”
“Never! Oh! Look there, Jonathan! We’re going to catch it!” A sense of growing shadow in the air had made me look up, and there, back of the steep-rising woods, hung a blue-black cloud, with ragged edges crawling out into the brightness of the sky.
“Sure enough! The bass’ll bite now, if it really comes. Wait till the first drops, and see what you see.”
We had not long to wait. There came that sudden expectancy in the air and the trees, [pg 150] the strange pallor in the light, the chill sweep of wind gusts with warm pauses between. Then a few big drops splashed on the dusty, sun-baked stones about us.
“Now! Wade right out there, to the edge of that ledge—don’t slip over, it’s deep. I’ll go down a little way.”
I waded out carefully, and cast, in the smooth, dark water already beginning to be rain-pocked. It was surprisingly shivery, that storm wind! I glanced toward shore to look for shelter—I remembered an overhanging ledge of rock—then my line went taut! I forgot about shelter, forgot about being chilly; I knew it was a good bass.
I got him in—too big to go through the hole in my creel—cast for another—and another—and yet another. The rain began to fall in sheets, and the wind nearly blew me over, but who could run away from such fishing? The surface of the river, deep blue-gray, seemed rising everywhere in little jets to meet the rain. Rapids, eddies, still waters, weedy edges, all looked alike; there were neither waves nor swirls nor glassy slicks, but all were roughly furry under the multitudinous [pg 151] assaults of the fierce rain-drops. The sky was mottled lead-color, the wind blew less strongly, but cold—cold. And under that water the bass were biting, my rod was bending double, my reel softly screaming as I gave line, and one after another I drew the fish alongside and dipped them out with my landing net.
Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped biting. I waited long minutes; nothing happened, and all at once I realized that I was very wet and very cold. Wading ashore, I saw Jonathan shivering along up the narrow beach toward me, his shoulders drawn in to half their natural spread, neck tucked in between his collar-bones, knees slightly bent.
“You can’t be cold?” I questioned as soon as he was near enough to hear me through the slash of the rain and wind.
“No, of course not; are you?”