“That’s too blamed bad—I didn’t mean to take anything,” he murmured regretfully, but he played it all the same, and in three or four minutes Josef had landed it and held it up wordlessly—a Salmo fontinalis of a pound and a half, with scarlet fins and gold-and-silver-spotted stomach. The stranger was tingling with excitement.
“That’s something like!” he brought out, and then meekly, anxiously, “May I fish now?”
And Jack, smiling his old-young smile, put the rod into the man’s hand and held the hand carefully for a few trial casts. Then “Let her go,” he commanded, and the large m’sieur, trembling with eagerness, was fishing. Jack, standing by with his hands in his trousers pockets, his whole soul on the performance, criticised with frankness. “Now, that’s rotten, sir. Don’t recover that nervous way; that’s what tangles ’em. Just—sort of—rhythmic; back slow—pause—cast; lift the tip a scrap as you touch; just a shiver of the wrist does it. Now—tip up—don’t sag the line; draw the flies along, and wiggle ’em alluringly as they come; don’t let ’em go under—bad, bad! You can’t fool fish if you drown your flies. Oh, well—the tail-fly may sink a bit if you’re after big ones”—and so the illustrated lecture went on, Jack thoroughly enjoying himself in the rôle of instructor. “Ginger!” he brought out suddenly in an interval, “my brother would throw a fit if he saw me teaching fishing. He’s a shark at it, you know. He’s forgotten more than I ever knew. Josef”—turning on the guide—“M’sieur va s’amuser de moi en professeur de la pêche, n’est-ce pas?” And Josef, showing his teeth in a short grin, answered promptly, “Oui, M’sieur,” and attended to business.
The large m’sieur was learning fast. One saw that he had not missed a word of the boy’s lesson or the reason for any point of piscatorial finesse. He made mistakes certainly, and was awkward, as is any beginner at the wonderful world-old game, which has to get into the nerves and the blood before one plays it well ever. Yet he took hold as a trained mind takes hold of whatever problem, with a certain ability and sureness.
“I rather think you must do some things very well, sir,” Jack remarked encouragingly, after a bout of unflinching reprimand as to vicious tendencies of the scholar. “You caught that idea about not getting the line too close, at once. You must be used to doing things well.”
The stranger lifted his keen, clear blue eyes a second and shot a glance at the boy. “Possibly one thing,” he answered briefly, and cast again.
Half a dozen small trout lay on the rocks, strung on a forked willow branch, the vivid, pointed leaves crisp on one side of it, cut by the resentful Adelard, now charmed by the turn of events and eager to be included in them. But the big fish did not rise.
“Bad time of day,” Jack explained. “Hole’s fussed up, too. Have to let it get quiet before the sockdologers will take notice.” He turned to the older man with a certain brotherly manner of his, a manner which lacked in no point of respect, but was yet simply unconscious of any difference of age—a manner which made older men like the lad and like themselves better, too. “If I were you,” advised Jack, “I’d stop now and come back early to-morrow morning, by gray light, and have a try at them. Maybe you’d get an old he-one then.”
A short lecture followed on the taking down of rods, and the etiquette of winding a leader about one’s hat, so that the pull is always from the last fly.
“Where are you going now?” asked the large m’sieur as he and Adelard stood, their butin packed, ready to move on.