Well, she managed it at last; at last she had her mouthful.
This one she swallowed too, but once more she had to spit out something sharp and prickly that hung to her upper lip on the opposite side.
It was a long time before Grim managed to wear away the two triple hooks from the corners of her mouth, and in the meantime she swam about with the rusty things like an extra set of monster eye-teeth sticking out of her mouth. The pieces of line that trailed behind her often caught in things and chained her in an incomprehensible manner to reeds and rushes; but at last she pulled out one, and a little later the other, and a hard, gristly, leather-like skin formed where they had been.
She gained some experience from this incident; henceforward, she regarded solitary, sickly-looking roach with keen suspicion. She would still take with confident voracity large roach and small; but she very reluctantly took a halting, languid fish like those that had pricked her so horribly that morning. Their drooping fins and heavy, wriggling flight had fixed themselves clearly in her mind’s eye.
Her peaceful youth, in which she had only had the heron and the crayfish and her own kind to fight with, had long since passed, and henceforth she was to see more and more of the angler’s implements.
But the old sportsman, whose tackle was wearing out, had to overhaul and renew his stock. It irritated him beyond endurance, and for a long time he felt ashamed of himself. From the resistance it had offered he felt quite convinced that the pike he had lost was at least worth a bronze medal. He would not tell anyone where it lay, but would take it himself when he had the opportunity.
[VII: THE RASPER]
The horde of marauders were chasing through the lake again, and behind them came the pike. These last did not go together, like the perch, in serried ranks at a furious hunting pace, but slunk along one by one from stone to stone, and from weedy clump to weedy clump.
Grim is with them, and like a seal she helps herself to the flying bleak which in their terror rush blindly into her jaws. It is quick work, but nevertheless not quick enough. The gluttony of the perch angers and irritates her; she feels her belly growing larger, and her throat widening. She has room for more fish, mountains of fish!