The lake had changed since the old angler’s death; its former peace and poetry were gone. The big swimming-birds had multiplied tremendously, and dashed about restlessly every day, swallowing the fish by means of constantly improving implements.
One of the latest of these was a ten-horsepower motor-boat, manned by a little, sinewy man, thin and elastic, and with a superabundance of energy. He was a journalist by profession, and editor of a paper; the hurry and unrest of a new age burned in him; whether he wrote or refreshed himself with sport, he did it with the same strength and enthusiasm.
Grim’s first captor had been an old-style votary of the rod and line; he loved to cast anchor in some quiet spot, light his pipe, and sit watching his lines. The journalist from town was of the very opposite temperament, constantly rushing about and hauling in and making fresh casts elsewhere.
He had taken a house for the summer by the lake, and among the red-currant bushes in the garden he had set up his little aquarium, which contained a couple of crayfish, a few perch, and a young pike.
Every morning he dug up worms for his aquarium-fish, and fed them carefully.
If neither pike nor perch touched the worms, and the crayfish did not take them either when they sank to the bottom, he tranquilly devoted himself to his work all day; but if the reverse happened, then the leading article would be short; the editor was occupied elsewhere.
One day, when he was sitting in his office in town, the telephone rang. His wife was at the other end of the wire, and told him that the pike was feeding like mad.
He thrills at the news. His paper has long had news about Grim, the mysterious monster. The expedition is all prepared, his tackle is in order; he has only been waiting for the signal from the aquarium.
A few hours later the enthusiastic little man, after a forced bicycle-ride under the scorching sun of a suffocating July day, finds himself among fragrant iris and bog-myrtle. Accompanied by a local peat-digger, who, from fear of the monster, has armed himself with a gun, he turns off by one of the paths.
The wind is blowing through the local jungle, and rustling its myriads of leaves with a sound that to the editor’s ears resembles the continual crumpling of a huge newspaper. The stiff, bluish-green rushes, with their black joints, bend caressingly about him, and the strong, spicy scent of wild mint, mingled with the sharp, acrid vapour from the bog, ascends to his nostrils.