But the loon family were not the only ardent fishermen on those waters. The new-comers, the man family, they too liked fish, and had no mean skill in catching them. In fact, their methods were stupidly and slaughterously destructive, well calculated to quite draw out the lake in two or three seasons. They set a big purse-seine right across the channel, and, worst of all, they dragged the deep dark pools, wherein, now that the waters were growing warmer under the mid-June sun, the biggest trout and “togue” were wont to gather for coolness. Their own thought was to get their larder well stocked with salted fish against the coming winter. Future winters might look out for themselves.
For some time the great loon, though more enterprising and wide-ranging than his prudent mate, had kept careful distance from the nets and net-stakes, as from all the other visible manifestations of man. But at last he grew accustomed to the tall immovable stakes in the channel which supported the purse-seine. He concluded that they were harmless, or even impotent, and decided to investigate them.
As he approached, the dim meshes of the net, shimmering vaguely in the bright water, excited his suspicions. He sheered off warily and swam around the seine at a prudent distance. At last he found the opening. There seemed to be no danger anywhere in sight, so, after some hesitation, he sailed in. The ordered curving rows of the stakes, the top line of the net, beaded with a few floats, here and there rising above the water—it was all very curious, but it did not seem in any way hostile. He eyed it scornfully. For what was neither dangerous nor useful he had a highly practical contempt. Having satisfied his curiosity, and allayed a certain uneasiness with which he had always regarded the great set-net, he turned to swim out again. But at this moment he chanced to look down.
The sight that met his eyes was one to stir the blood of any fisherman. He was just over the “purse”—that fatal chamber whence so few who enter it ever find the exit. The narrow space was crowded with every kind of fish that frequented the lake, except for the slim eels and the small fry who could swim through the meshes. It was the chance of a loon’s lifetime. Flashing downward, he darted this way and that ecstatically among the frantic prisoners, transfixing half a dozen in succession, to make sure of them, before he seized a big trout for his immediate meal. Gripping the victim savagely in his bill, he slanted toward the surface, and plunged into a slack bight of the net.
Luckily for him, he was within a foot of the air before he struck the deceitful meshes. Carried on by the impetus of his rush, he bore the net upward with him, and emerged into the full sun. In the shock of his surprise he dropped the fish, and at the same time gulped his lungs full of fresh air. For perhaps half a minute, he thrust and flapped and tore furiously, expecting to break through the elusive obstacle, which yielded so freely that he could get no hold upon it, yet always thrust him back with a suave but inexorable persistence. At length, realizing himself foiled in this direction, he sank downward like a stone, thinking to back out of the struggle and rise somewhere else. But, to his horror, the bight of the net came down with him, refusing to be left. In his struggles he had completely enmeshed himself.
And now, probably for the very first time in a not uneventful life, the great loon lost his head. He began to fight blindly, overwhelmed by panic terror. Plunging, kicking, beating with half-fettered wings, striking with his beak in a semi-paralyzed fashion because he had not room to stretch his neck to its full length, he was soon utterly exhausted. Moreover, he was more than half drowned. At last, a dimness coming over the golden amber light, he gave up in despair. With a feeble despairing stroke of his webbed feet, he strove to get back to the surface. Happily for him, the net in this direction was not relentless. It yielded without too much resistance, and the hopelessly entangled prisoner came to the top. Lying there in the meshes, he could at least draw breath.
When, a little later in the day, he saw a boat approaching up the lake with two of the dreaded man creatures in it, he gave one final mighty struggle, which lashed the water into foam and sent the imprisoned fish into fresh paroxysms; and then, with the stoicism which some of the wild creatures can display in the moment of supreme and hopeless peril, he lay quite still, eying the foe defiantly.
One of the beings in the boat was that lanky youth whose attempt to shoot the loon had been such a conspicuous failure. The other was the lanky youth’s father, the pioneer himself. At the sight of the trussed-up captive, the youth shouted exultantly—
“It’s that durn loon what’s eatin’ all the fish in the lake! I’ll fix his fishin’!” and, lifting his oar from the thole-pins, he raised it to strike the helpless bird.
“Don’t be sich a durn fool, Zeb!” interrupted the father. “Ye’ll get more money for that bird alive, down to Fredericton, than all the fish in the net’s worth. A loon like that ain’t common. He’s a beauty!”