The large m’sieur, ignorant of what to expect, did not presume, did not relax, and was not taken off his guard. The boy glanced at the set face many times with benignant approval, as the man, silent, intent, fought the flagging fight as earnestly, as watchfully, as at its beginning.
“Them’s um,” Jack indorsed proceedings, as the big fish flopped listlessly at the surface, and the fisherman yet held his line delicately taut, yet led the live weight at its end this way and that. “Them’s um. Don’t take your eye off him or he’ll fool you yet,” and finished with a manner of squeal: “Holy mackerel, but he’s a he-one—I’ll bet he’s close on five.”
At which premature gloating the trout rose for one last fling and shook his mighty head and slashed with his tail and threw his strong, flexible body in a hundred directions at once, whipping the brown water into foam. The boy, crouching with the landing-net at the water’s edge, followed the infinitely quick scintillations with his eyes; the man, lifting, lowering his rod, keeping the line not too tight, not too loose, followed them, as mere human muscles might, with his playing wrist; with that the long, shining body, brown and gold and silver and pink and scarlet and spotted, stopped struggling, floated limply half out of water, and the large m’sieur, flushed, anxious, drew him slowly inshore. Jack, with the net deep in the pool four feet to the right of the defeated king of it, waited till he was close—yet not too close—till a clock in his brain sounded the psychological second, and then—swoop; the net rushed through the brown water, deep under the trout and up with a sure curve. There was a mad flopping and struggling, but the big fellow was in the meshes and Jack lifted him up, both fists gripping the handle of the heavy-weighted net, and held him so at arm’s length high in air.
“Gosh!” said Jack.
The large m’sieur did not say anything, but he lowered the butt of his rod with hands that shook, and brought out a sigh that appeared to wander up in stages from his boots. His face radiated a solemn happiness several flights farther down than words; his eyes were glued to the landing-net with its freight of glory. He sat down on the rocks with his boots casually trailing in the water and sighed profoundly again.
“I caught him,” he stated.
“Sure,” agreed Jack. “You took him, that’s as certain as the Pyramids. What’s more, you did it in style. The way you played that fish, sir, was good enough for anybody. You may not have experience,” Jack allowed candidly, “but I’ll be hanged if you haven’t got promise. You’re a wonder, sir—a plain wonder.”
By now Jack was squatting before the net, laid on a flat stone; his hunting-knife was out of the leather-fringed caribou-skin sheath on his hip, and he had it in his right hand, the dull side of the blade down, while with his left he gathered the net tighter around the still flopping great trout. The wet, dull nose, the staring eyes were uppermost. Jack gave a sharp rap on the back of the neck two or three times repeated, and the king of Profanity Pool, with a long shiver, was still. Then with big-handed dexterity he drew back the meshes and pulled him out, a splendid, shining creature twenty-two inches long.
The large m’sieur, watching the boy’s expert work, made a sudden movement. “What fly is he on?” he threw at Jack.
Jack, carefully withdrawing the net from its twists and double twists around the tail, around the leader and the flies, bent swiftly, examining. There was the Parmachene Belle, tied in a yard or two of wet net-meshes; there was the Silver Doctor, having run in a half-second a complicated course through a system of the same and caught itself in the snell of the Parmachene. That was all. The lad gave a whoop that set echoes ringing in the dark hills about Profanity Pool and the gully of the little river.