“Ha, my friend!” cried Hilary; “so you are up for your supper, are you? I myself will awake right early. Still I behold the ring you made. If my right hand forget not his cunning, you shall form your next ring in the frying-pan.”
He gave that fish a little time to think of the beauty of that mouthful, and get ready for another; the while he was putting a white moth on, in lieu of his blue-upright. He kept the grizzled palmer still for tail-fly, and he tried his knots, for he knew that this trout was a Triton.
Then, with a delicate sidling and stooping, known only to them that fish for trout in very bright water of the summer-time—compared with which art, the coarse work of the salmon-fisher is as that of a scene-painter to Mr. Holman Hunt’s—with, or in, and by a careful manner, not to be described to those who have never studied it, Hilary won access of the water, without any doubt in the mind of the fish concerning the prudence of appetite. Then he flipped his short collar in, not with a cast, but a spring of the rod, and let his flies go quietly down a sharpish run into that good trout’s hover. The worthy trout looked at them both, and thought; for he had his own favourite spot for watching the world go by, as the rest of us have. So he let the grizzled palmer pass, within an inch of his upper lip; for it struck him that the tail turned up in a manner not wholly natural, or at any rate unwholesome. He looked at the white moth also, and thought that he had never seen one at all like it. So he drew back under his root again, hugging himself upon his wisdom, never moving a fin, but oaring and helming his plump spotted sides with his tail.
“Upon my word, it is too bad!” said Hilary, after three beautiful throws, and exquisite management down stream; “everything Kentish beats me hollow. Now, if that had been one of our trout, I would have laid my life upon catching him. One more throw, however. How would it be if I sunk my flies? That fellow is worth some patience.”
While he was speaking, his flies alit on the glassy ripple, like gnats in their love-dance; and then by a turn of the wrist he played them just below the surface, and let them go gliding down the stickle, into the shelfy nook of shadow, where the big trout hovered. Under the surface, floating thus, with the check of ductile influence, the two flies spread their wings, and quivered, like a centiplume moth in a spider’s web. Still the old trout, calmly oaring, looked at them both suspiciously. Why should the same flies come so often, and why should they have such crooked tails, and could he be sure that he did not spy the shadow of a human hat about twelve yards up the water? Revolving these things he might have lived to a venerable age—but for that noble ambition to teach, which is fatal to even the wisest. A young fish, an insolent whipper-snapper jumped in his babyish way at the palmer, and missed it through over-eagerness. “I’ll show you the way to catch a fly,” said the big trout to him: “open your mouth like this, my son.”
With that he bolted the palmer, and threw up his tail, and turned to go home again. Alas! his sweet home now shall know him no more. For suddenly he was surprised by a most disagreeable sense of grittiness, and then a keen stab in the roof of his mouth. He jumped in his wrath a foot out of the water, and then heavily plunged to the depths of his hole.
“You’ve got it, my friend.” cried Hilary, in a tingle of fine emotions; “I hope the sailor’s knots are tied with professional skill and care. You are a big one, and a clever one too. It is much if I ever land you. No net, or gaff, or anything. I only hope there are no stakes here. Ah, there you go! Now comes the tug.”
Away went the big trout down the stream, at a pace very hard to exaggerate, and after him rushed Hilary, knowing that his line was rather short, and if it ran out, all was over. Keeping his eyes on the water only, and the headlong speed of the fugitive, headlong over a stake he fell, and took a deep wound from another stake. Scarcely feeling it, up he jumped, lifting his rod, which had fallen flat, and fearing to find no strain on it. “Aha! he is not gone yet!” he cried as the rod bowed like a springle-bow.
He was now a good hundred yards down the brook, from the corner where the fight began. Through his swiftness of foot, and good management, the fish had never been able to tighten the line beyond yield of endurance. The bank had been free from bushes, or haply no skill could have saved him; but now they were come to a corner where a nutbush quite overhung the stream.
“I am done for now,” said the fisherman; “the villain knows too well what he is about. Here ends this adventure.”