At that very instant a big salmon-trout—a six-pounder at the very least—leaped for the fly, and with a splash of its tail sent a shower of spray shoreward. The line flew with a hum from the reel, and Tharald braced himself to “play” the fish, until he should tire him sufficiently to land him.
But the trout was evidently of a different mind. He sprang out of the water, and his beautiful spotted sides gleamed in the sun.
That was a sight for Mons! Before his master could prevent him, he plunged from his shoulder into the lake, and shot through the clear tide like a black arrow. The trout saw him coming, and made a desperate leap!
The line snapped; the trout was free!
Free! It was delightful to see Mons’s supple body as it glided through the water, bending upward, downward, sideward, with amazing swiftness and ease. His two big eyes (which were conveniently situated so near the tip of his nose that he could see in every direction with scarcely a turn of the head) peered watchfully through the transparent tide, keeping ever in the wake of the fleeing fish. If the latter had had the sense to keep straight ahead, he might have made good his escape. But he relied upon strategy, and in this he was no match for Mons. He leaped out of the water, darted to the right and to the left, and made all sorts of foolish and flurried manœuvres. But with the calmness of a Von Moltke, Mons outgeneralled him. He headed him off whenever he turned, and finally by a brisk turn plunged his teeth into the trout’s neck, and brought him to land.
I need not tell you that Tharald made a hero of him. He hugged him and patted him and called him pet names, until Mons grew quite bashful. But this exploit of Mons’s gave Tharald an idea. He determined to train him as a salmon-fisher.
It was in the spring of 1880, when Mons was two years old and fully grown, that he landed his first salmon. And when he had landed the first, it cost him little trouble to secure the second and the third. Tharald felt like a rich man that day, as he carried home in his basket three silvery beauties, worth, at the very least, a dollar and a half apiece. He made haste to dispose of them to an English yachtsman at that figure, and went home in a radiant humor, dreaming of “gold and forests green,” as the Norwegians say.
“Now, Mons,” he said to his friend, whom he was leading after him by a chain, “if we do as well every day as we have done to-day, we shall soon be rich enough to go to school. What do you think of that, Mons?”
One day a big fish-tail splashed out of an eddy, and a black furry head and back rose for an instant and were whirled out of sight.