An electric shock has darted through the sportsman, and for a moment he stands as if petrified, in keen suspense.
He has felt a bite, and with lowered rod he slowly and carefully lets out plenty of line.
The pike has taken the bait, or so he firmly believes; but he waits minute after minute, and the line never moves.
Alas! the hook is caught in something! His best and strongest hook, selected from among hundreds for this very expedition! In vain he employs every artifice; he cannot free it. He will have to give up his fishing and abandon the line.
What an embarrassing story to have to tell! People have such nasty tongues. And the peat-digger over there! No, that would be too much! Besides, this suffocating heat has long tempted him to have a bath out here, so he promptly strips and goes in. He is swimming along the edge of the reeds where there is a little open water, when all at once he feels his left leg seized. It is as though a pair of garden shears had suddenly cut into it!
Involuntarily he begins to shout and kick, but the next moment he is dragged out and down towards deep water. He feels the teeth of the monster sinking deeper and deeper into his leg, and is on the point of losing his senses as he cries aloud for help.
The peat-cutter hurries up with all possible speed, just in time to catch the outline of a long, black shadow, working under water. At haphazard he fires off both charges. At the same time the editor shrieks still more horribly, and raises himself in the water. A cold, sharp edge, as of a knife, is drawn along his body, as Grim, frightened by the shots, disappears beneath him.
Other peat-cutters come up, and together they pull the unfortunate editor ashore. The blood is spouting from his leg in several places, but one of the men ties his trouser-strap round it. Some one telephones for a doctor, a carriage is fetched, and the editor is then driven to his home.
The wound was a serious one. The doctor had to wash and bandage it. On the outer side of the calf, the deep marks of Grim’s upper teeth were visible, in two rows at a distance of more than a hand’s breadth from one another, wound after wound, going deep into the flesh. It was clearly the bite from the jaws of some great animal.
The oracle’s prophecy that the editor would get a bite had in truth been fulfilled!