“You’ll smash everything!” cried Fred. Mr Sudberry was constrained to follow, step by step. The head of the rapid was gained, and he had to increase the pace to a quick walk; still farther down, and the walk became a smart run. The ground here was more rugged, and the fisher’s actions became quite acrobatic. George and Fred kept higher up the bank, and ran along, gazing in unspeakable amazement at the bounds and leaps which their fat little sire made with the agility of a roe deer.
“Hold on! the bushes! let it break off!”
Mr Sudberry scorned the advice. The part of the bank before him was impassable; not so the river, which rushed past him like a mill-race. He tried once more to stop the fish; failed, of course, and deliberately walked into the water. It was waist-deep, so he was carried down like a cork with his toes touching the ground so lightly, that, for the first time in his life, he rejoiced in those sensations, which he had hitherto believed belonged exclusively to harlequins and columbines; namely, swift motion without effort! Fifty yards at the rate of ten miles an hour brought him to an eddy, into which the salmon had dashed just before him. Mr Sudberry gave vent to another roar as he beheld the fish almost under his nose. The startled creature at once flashed out of his sight, and swept up, down, and across the stream several times, besides throwing one or two somersaults in the air, before it recovered its equanimity. After this it bolted into a deep, dark pool, and remained there quite motionless.
Mr Sudberry was much puzzled at this point. To let out line when the fish ran up or across stream, to wind in when the fish stopped, and to follow when the fish went down stream—these principles he had been taught by experience in trout-fishing; but how to act when a fish would not move, and could not be made to move, was a lesson which he had yet to learn.
“What’s to be done?” said he, with a look of exasperation, (and no wonder; he had experienced an hour and a quarter of very rough treatment, and was getting fagged).
“Pull him out of that hole,” suggested George.
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
Mr Sudberry tried and failed. Having failed he sat down on a stone, still holding the rod very tight, and wiped his heated brow. Then, starting up, he tried for the next ten minutes to pull the fish out of the hole by main force, of course never venturing to pull so hard as to break the line. He went up the stream and pulled, down the stream and pulled, he even waded across the stream at a shallow part and pulled, but all in vain. The fish was in that condition which fishers term “the sulks.”
At last Fred recollected to have heard Hector Macdonald say that in such cases a stone thrown into the pool sometimes had the effect of starting the sulky one. Accordingly a stone was thrown in, and the result was that the fish came out at full speed in a horrible fright, and went down stream, not tail but head foremost. Now, when a salmon does this, he knows by instinct that if he does not go down faster than the stream the water will force itself into his gills and drown him; therefore when he goes down head first, (which he seldom does, except when on his way to the sea), he goes at full speed, and the fisher’s only chance of saving his fish is to run after him as fast as he can, in the hope that he may pause of his own accord in some opportune eddy.