This, to me, tells the story of a very pleasant week spent in the Adirondacks. I remember, as I hold the ragged, faded fly in my hand and see that it still retains something of the dark blue of its mohair body and the sheen of its cock-feather wings, that it was one of six flies that I had in my fly-book that June day that stands out from other June days, in my memory, like a Titan amongst pygmies. The fly had no name, but the trout liked it for all that, and rose to it with as much avidity as though they had been properly introduced to some real bug of which this was an excellent counterfeit.
That glorious two hours’ time—with its excitement of catching and landing without a net some of the most beautiful and gamy fish that ever moved fin—comes back to me as vividly as though at this moment the four walls of my room were the forest-circled shores of that far-away pond, and I stand in that leaky boat, almost ankle deep in the water that Frank, the guide, has no time to bail, occupied as he is in watching my casts and admiring my whip-like rod during the play of a fish, or fishes, and in turning the boat’s gunwale to the water’s edge to let my trout in when they are exhausted. It is sharp, quick work, and the blue-bodied fly is always first of all the flies composing the cast to get a rise, until I take off all but the one kind, and then one after another I see them torn, mutilated and destroyed. Later they will be put away as warriors gone to rest and the epitaph written on their wrappings:
“Thy work was well done; thy rest well earned.”
Now there is no time to mantle the fallen or sing paeans to the victors; the action is at its height. I put my last blue fly on my leader and cast it again and again with success, before those dark open jaws, that come out of the water every time it falls on the surface, have destroyed its beauty forever. Frank says the time is up and we must go.
The boat, propelled with broken oars, is headed for the landing-place, and I sit back in the stern admiring those sleek beauties that lie in the bottom, and that have fought so well and so vainly. My rod is inclined over my shoulder and the blue fly is trailing on the water astern. Suddenly I feel a twitch and hear a splash, and turning around find I am fast to a fish, the noblest Roman of that, day’s struggle. Once, twice, thrice he shows himself in all his fair proportions.
“Two pounds and a half, if an ounce,” says Frank.
I get down on my knees in the water of the cranky boat, as the reel sings the merriest tune that ever delighted the ear of an angler. Two or three mad dashes, and I think the trout is tiring. I reel him slowly in, but the sight of the boat gives him new life and he darts under it in spite of my efforts to swing him around the stern. The rod tip is passed clear of the boat and the fight continues.
Exhausted? The fight is only begun.
The unwieldy boat is far too slow to follow the fish, and I see my line growing rapidly less on my reel with no sign of weakness on the part of the fish. I am compelled to advance the butt of the rod and the tip droops nearer and, hesitatingly, still nearer to it, as though the tip would whisperingly confess that the strain is greater than it can bear, while the stout nature of the wood rebels at the confession. Involuntarily I raise myself by a muscular action as though the cords and sinews of my body could relieve the pressure on the lancewood and save the rod.
“You’ll smash your pole!” is the warning Frank utters.