“These runs down-stream are rare,” said Carington; “How strong he is!”
For an hour the sky had been overcast, and the river-bed in the nest of hills was fast growing dim.
“Are you tired?” said the bowman. “Shall I take the rod? It might spell you.”
“Oh, no! Thank you! No.”
“Give him a little line—so, slowly; but be careful. Drop the tip a little. It may tempt him to run again. No! How he holds on! Might I suggest, Miss Lyndsay,”—he had quite forgotten his part in the excitement of the contest,—“may I suggest that we drop below him?”
This was tried. The fish came duly down-stream. The canoe was again brought to the bank, and again there was the salmon out in the heavy water. Each motion of his tail revealed itself by a single “click, click” of the reel. It was now dusk.
“It is that limp rod: it has no power,” said Carington, and, reaching over, he caught a few small stones from the bank, and threw them at the point where at the end of a perilously tense line the fish still held his place.
“No much good!”
At last she got in a little line. The salmon was now not over twenty feet from her rod-tip; but she could no longer see, and it was near to eight o’clock, and, by reason of the coming storm, far more dark than usual at that hour.
“I shall be eaten by the sand-flies,” said Rose. “How they bite!” It was now too dark to see line or rod-tip.