Delightful indeed was it to come into a bit of England that Sunday morning at Lappin-Haru; delightful to hear English voices and to see English ladies and English children so far away from the madding crowd. And so Sunday passed very delightfully; and now Monday, our last day, has come round. I think it is at lunch this Monday afternoon that C. G. has an inspiration.
"I am going," he says, "to drive to Imatra and telephone over to Harraka for leave to fish there to-night." At this I laugh the laugh of the scornful, for it is well known that Harraka is the Paradise Lost of the English fishers, and that the present proprietors stand, figuratively, at the gate armed with the flaming sword of jealousy in order to keep out, with the utmost strictness, every would-be angler in their unique and incomparable waters.
Nevertheless, C. G. insists that he will try. "Who knows?" he says. "A kind and indulgent spirit may be animating for this day only the heart of Count Arnoff!" (which is not the proprietor's real name); "and, after all, he can but refuse."
This last proposition is so evidently true that I scoff no more, but allow my sanguine C. G. to proceed upon his way, though secretly remaining of the opinion that Count Arnoff would sooner perish than allow us upon his sacred waters.
Now, C. G. is undoubtedly personally fascinating, but how he contrived to exercise his fascination through the telephone I really cannot imagine; yet it is certain that he returned home in a very short time, and that, as I could see by the sunshine of his countenance long before the boat bore him to the landing stage on the island, where I awaited him, he had been successful. The Count himself was away, but his steward had taken upon himself to grant C. G.'s request for an evening's fishing, and this very night was to see us afloat in the magic basin of Harraka. Paradise was to be regained, for one night only!
Oh! the care with which we dried and attended to our lines and reels; the loving discrimination with which we looked over phantom and totnes and whisky-bobbie, and selected the most fascinating that our tin reservoirs could supply. Oh! the anxiety with which we watched the weather during the afternoon, and the deep satisfaction with which we noted that all things tended towards the development of a fine fishing evening.
Then we took boat, at about eight o'clock, and rowed across to a spot where a trap awaited us—and such a trap!—and drove away through the drooping day towards the Count's wonderful water. The trap was a square iron cage on wheels, and the road—when it left the main track and branched off into the pine forest which jealously guards the upper reaches of the Voksa—was not a road at all, but a series of terrible abysses with no bottom excepting the native rock, which is granite in those parts, and painful to jolt against. Had the Count so arranged matters in order to keep intruders from his sacred precincts? We, at all events, were not deterred from pressing forward, and oh! the sight that rewarded us—a sight I shall never forget, and such as I had never thought to see. Try to picture it. When we reached Harraka and the basin or ante-room between Saima Lake and Voksa opened out before us, the entire surface of that basin of a third of a mile diameter was boiling and seething, and positively alive with leaping, gambolling monsters, so that it looked for all the world as though a shower of gigantic, long-shaped hailstones were falling over the entire surface of the water. There was not a square yard of the whole within which, if you watched it for a second or two, you would not see a mighty trout jump. Had it been possible to suddenly intercept a huge net between air and water you would have caught a million.
Even C. G., who has fished this marvellous basin in olden days, before Paradise was lost, has never seen anything like this. Our fingers, as we put up our rods, tremble with the mere excitement of seeing such a sight; we can hardly frame words of wonder and admiration. The feeling is almost awe——
But the two Finnish fishermen appointed to row us about shake their heads discouragingly. When the fish are playing in this way, they give us to understand, they will not take the bait. They are, it appears, not feeding at all, but merely enjoying life, and endeavouring to rid themselves of certain parasites which cling to them at this season. Probably in an hour or two they will feed. This is discouraging, but we intend to try all the same.
And for an hour we slowly float up and down and across the little lagoon, and the monster fish leap and play all round us, so that we might, if we pleased, touch them with our hands; they almost jump into the very boat at our feet, but neither minnow, nor fly, nor whisky-bobbie will tempt them.