"In fact," he continues, a little abstractedly, after one of these surveys, "they's reg'lar reptiles, they jack, and you can't never quite get rid of 'em. You has to keep 'em down. I'm allus looking for 'em. Now, maybe, you won't believe me, sir, when I tell you that, that there little bit of backwater alongside Nun's Waark gives me moore trouble than all this here put together. I'll just take a cast round there, and see what they chaps there is about. Don't you leave none of your things lying about wheere they Herefords can get at 'em," he warns us, as he prepares to move off, indicating some white-faced cattle grazing in the neighbourhood. "They's moore destructive than our beasts about here. They'll chew up a mackintosh, or a basket—anything. Now, maybe, you won't believe what I'm going to say, sir, but they eat up my coat once—moleskin it war—and my dinner was in the pockets. Walking pikes I calls they Herefords."
Beyond St. Catherine's Hill heavy rain clouds, fringed with long "drifting locks," are passing slowly across the scene, and a few drops of the shower reach us. But in a little while the magnificent skyscape of mountainous cumuli, mellowing in the afternoon light, regains its brilliancy, and my energetic companion marches off by himself, convinced that he had put up "the fly" at last. As for me I remain smoking on a rail, lazy and unambitious no doubt, but supremely contented. Perhaps my appreciation of the moment's ease is not a little enhanced by watching another laboriously drying his fly, and crouching low as he creeps along the bank. And so I sit, and let my glance go wandering across the meads to the big elms, over against Nun's Walk and Abbots Barton Farm, where crowded cities of rooks may be seen, the movements of whose black inhabitants are clearly distinguishable in the half-naked boughs; and on and on to scalloped ranks of trees in the farther distance, that, in the scanty foliage of the season, stand out against the horizon like fret-work fans; till, finally, by many a hedge, and field, and ditch, I come back to the river-side again.
The silvery whisper of this spring's young rushes mingles with the harsher rustling of last year's dead blades, and the softened sleepy wash of water at a hatch-hole hard by. Locke says he took a five-pound trout out of that little hatch-hole some years ago, and though of course I believe him, I cannot help casually wondering whether—as an old hunter in Alaska once cautiously added to a choice yarn that he had been telling me about a three-headed fish—"he was the only man who saw it"? With its swelling spaces of glassy smoothness, mantling with opalescent gleams of colour, with its glittering arabesque and tracery of swirl and ripple, its tiny, short-lived surface whirlpools, the full-bosomed river glides by, bearing its now rapidly accumulating cargo of fly. And in serried hosts the swifts and swallows have congregated above its course, and are busy skirmishing to and fro there. Now mingling and now scattering, crossing and recrossing one another, they clamber up against little currents of wind, and poise themselves, then dive, and skim the surface of the water, daintily picking therefrom fly after fly, and rarely making that slight fault which breaks the deep tones in the distance of the river's reach, with a small fan-shaped flash of silver spray! The fly is up! By twos and threes they came at first, but hundreds inadequately number the unbroken swarms that now cover the water, and Olives of every shade dance past from ripple to ripple in alluring pageantry.
In the whole range of Nature there is probably nothing more exquisitely, coquettishly graceful, than are these water insects. With the stamp of refinement that marks the typically aristocratic maiden, they somehow combine the traditional piquancy of the French actress in opera bouffe. Nothing can possibly appear more appetising. But these epicurean fish are spoiled. The splendid condition they show at this early season of the year proves that they are overfed; and even under the temptation of such a banquet as the present, they indulge with more or less deliberation.
We are fishing a plain canal-looking piece of water—a kind of upper-school, only frequented by fish of good size, and under a dishevelled tuft of brown rushes on the opposite bank a trout is feeding, taking with the regularity of clock-work about three flies a minute. The little gleam of transparent wings can be seen approaching the fatal spot, undulating with the motion of the tide. There is a slight disturbance on the surface, a subdued rich "gulp" is heard, and a few expanding rings are drifting from the scene of the disaster, whilst the course of the hapless fly is pursued by a short-lived bubble. Again and again the tragedy is repeated, and, at length, opportunely substituted for the genuine delicacy, a Light-Olive of silk, feathers, and steel floats over the swirl that marks the masked lair. There is a sudden commotion, a tremendous splashing, and a second later a good fish is making a determined rush for a neighbouring sanctuary of heavy weed. It is a question of pull devil, pull baker. If he reach the weed, he will inevitably escape with the fly and half the collar, and in the absolute necessity of stopping him the butt is forcibly applied and a breakage risked at once. Fortunately the fine tackle stands the strain, and, foiled in his purpose, the trout turns suddenly and shoots down stream at a pace that makes the reel sing merrily. For a little while now he sulks in deep water, but, brought to the surface, catches sight of us and darts across the river, following this effort up by a succession of short and savage dashes. Some nice steering and manipulation coax him safely through a dangerous archipelago of weed, and then, though with lowered head, he still endeavours to plough on down stream, the constant strain of tackle begins to tire him. From time to time he yields temporarily to the power that turns him open-jawed against the current, and at length, almost a hundred yards below where he first was hooked, a two-pound-and-a-half fish, in the perfection of beauty and condition, glides into the net. He had fought so gallantly that he deserved to escape.
Before the rise ceases another fish, of within an ounce of two pounds, completes our brace. Then a long period of tranquillity ensues, and it becomes evident that if the trout move again to-day it will be in the evening, and for the evening fishing we do not intend to wait. Pausing to make an occasional cast over a likely spot, therefore, we work back towards Winchester.
In a mood of exquisite serenity the last phase of afternoon is closing. There is no wind. The sky is filled with soft gold and silver clouds, dimmed by transparent veils of pearliest gray. Black rooks plodding lazily homewards are relieved against its pure tones, and an occasional couple of duck cross its broad fields with strenuous haste that jars oddly with the ineffable calm up there. Upreared in virtual isolation, Winchester Cathedral stretches its great length on the town like a stranded whale—possessed, though, of a majestic dignity and repose that I am afraid the simile does not convey. A curious contrast exists between its massive tower and the sharp, pretentious little spires of the modern churches near it, which seem to be tiptoeing enviously to attract unmerited attention. By his works shall a man be known. Does the difference in the style of these buildings indicate any parallel change in the character of the race that raised them?