Right where the Green Velvet Brook comes in I met them; we call it that because there are yards of flat rocks each side of solid emerald-colored moss. Zoëtique was prostrate on his lungs with his face in the drink; Blanc was dipping it up in his hat; the others were lighting pipes; my eyes lit on the four-foot handle of the net, and with that I lit on it. I grabbed it without breaking the stride, and was loping back down the trail, and not a word said. Those men were surprised—the tail of my eye saw that. I took the portage at a hand gallop, and slowed down twenty feet behind the pool, and crawled out over the rocks to Walter.
“The net is here,” I gasped at him, and Walter didn’t throw me a syllable, but I knew he heard and would be civil when he got time. The brute was sulking. Down in the rocks—blamed dangerous trick. It was all uneven on the bottom, and the rocks were big, and there were deepish holes, and if he could get the leader across a rough edge and yank, or if Walter pulled a bit too hard, he could cut the leader and be off in a second. He knew it too—he was an educated person, that trout. Wherefore it behooved Walter to fish like an archangel.
He didn’t look the part, being screwed into a wuzzle behind his gleaming glasses, but if pretty is as pretty does, he was a beauty. He held Mr. Sockdologer on a short line, just feeling him, and giving him a tiny lift now and then to keep the game going. Exactly the right amount, that’s why fishing is hard; you have to do it right to a hair’s breadth, which is instinct. You acquire it by patient years of losing fish. So the candidate for governor, huddled in a brown lump, sat on an inconvenient-shaped rock and held himself there by one boot planted in the water, and didn’t give a hang for the governorship or the discomfort—those qualifications also go with a fisherman.
I lay along a chosen log six feet back, and watched the battle. And pretty soon I was aware of shapes that melted out of the trees, and it was the guides. They slid together back of me like a group of fauns or other woods creatures only half human, in the shadows, and there wasn’t a sound from them, but a wreath of blue air floated forward in a minute, and I got the dim odor of Canadian tobacco. That odor always seems to me just one remove from leaf-mould and growing ferns and spruce-needles and other forest-speaking smells. So there we all watched, while Walter fought the fight.
And around the corner of the pool, out of mischief, Mr. Spafford, mad with excitement, fished his first fish with squeals of rapture and of agony. I couldn’t see him, but I could follow the plot by the noises he made, and I had to chuckle, in spite of the real job on hand. First there’d be an “Oh!” high and sharp, of excitement and hope—a trout was on; then an “O—O—Oh!” deep and mournful—he’d lost him. Then he’d adjure them.
“Come, little fishy,” said he; “nice fly—jump for fly, little fishy,” as unconscious as a kitten, and as lost in the game. And pretty soon I heard the men behind me giggling softly, and as I squinted up they were shaking en masse, and trying to see the débutant Izaak Walton around the trees.
About then, out of the hidden deeps the whale suddenly rose right at the rod, coming with a smooth velocity that was terrific. The tip went up, and the reel ate line; the line kept taut. But it was a miracle that did it, and if the beast had got an inch of slack he’d have shaken loose; he knew his job, the trout. And the next second the reel screamed, and off he went like a cannon-ball, out and out and out, tearing down the stream, and Walter had the rod straight forward, lowered almost to the water, giving him line by the yard. It was a tremendous rush, and I tell you I was proud of Walter. That minute and the next two or three were the most superb fishing-show I ever had the luck to be in at. For no sooner had the beast run like mad for sixty feet straight from us, than he whirled as chain lightning, and scooted for us, licketty-split. I thought that settled it; no human could manage a line at that angle, I thought. I heard Zoëtique gasp softly back of me:
“Mais, bon Dieu, c’est fini!”
But it wasn’t “fini.” Up flew the tip of the rod; Walter was turning the reel rapidly, and the line was ripping in without a sag, without a jerk—I never saw the equal of it. That, if you please, sir, is fishing. Also it was lightning. Quick! Heavings! It discouraged old man whale. Down he went into the rocks again, sulking, and I knew Walter would rather have him do rushes than that, for there’s nothing so anxious in all fishery. You can’t ever tell what minute’s going to be an earthquake, and you don’t know what jagged edges he’s got down there to jerk himself across, and you don’t dare pull him, and you don’t dare hold him easy. It’s all guesswork, and mighty dangerous. Moreover, for a hole, the hole was shallow, and you had less leeway with the line, and a mistake in gauging the depths would be fatal quicker than in deep water. So Walter had a handful and a brainful.
Into that breathless situation reverberated a roar. “Oh, Mr. Morgan! Oh, Judge! Oh, Mr. Morgan—come and get ME. I—want—to—go! It’s five o’clock! Come, and get ME! It’s five o’—”