"Pooh! stuff!" ejaculated P——, starting off in his see-saw ambulation again. "I saw the fish;—'twas fifteen pound weight at least."
"Oh! if you saw him, that's another thing," said R——; and taking his pipe out of his pocket, began to soothe his nerves by blowing off his disappointment in the substantial form of pure Oronoco tobacco-smoke.
Half an hour afterwards, P—— was hard at work as ever, perfectly regardless of the solemn attestation he had volunteered to Jupiter.
The four sailors who had rowed the gig from Larvig, had, with the ingenuity of their class, constructed a tent, lighted a fire, and were preparing breakfast, both for us and themselves. This was the first time I had breakfasted in the open air, and it is not so unpleasant as might be imagined, particularly should the morning be so calm, and clear, and warm as this one was. Shaded by a high mountain, fresh with the foliage of fir, birch, and filbert trees, the morning sun reached not our encampment. The balmy air, the dew and early vapour upon the grass, the humming sound of the bee, the low of cattle, the lusty salutation of peasants as they met each other, proceeding to their labour, and, above all, the murmuring river, were sounds and things as pleasant to hear and see as always to remember.
R—— and P—— were unwearied; nor did they yield to fatigue until the sun had risen so high, that its heat sent the fish to respire at the bottom of the river, and the animals under shelter of the trees. After we had breakfasted, R—— and P—— exchanged a few remarks on the art of angling, felt the fatigue of rising at two in the morning, and fell fast asleep. I possessed the wakefulness of a second Cerberus, and allowed not Morpheus to approach my eyelids; but loitering, up and down, under the shady boughs of the trees, listened to the sweet silvery rippling of the river, as it crept between the rocks, or bubbled over its shingly bed. Overpowered at last by the fury of the vertical sun, I entered the tent that had been formed by raising the gig's sail on the four oars.
R—— and P—— were still slumbering, and I was lying under the tent, on the ground, reading the Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The sailors who had formed the boat's crew were sauntering about along the banks of the river; and the cockswain, who generally on such excursions as the present performed the part of cook, was seated on a piece of rock which projected into the bubbling stream, busily occupied in the preparation of dinner. Whistling, and humming, by fits, one of the sea-songs of his country, he wore the time away while peeling some potatoes, which, one by one, as his large knife, slung from his belt by a piece of yarn, deprived of their jackets, he threw into an iron pot, having rinsed them previously in the flowing river. Within his sight, lay, on a white towel, a leg of lamb, bewitchingly sprinkled with salt, all prepared to be cooked, but only waiting for the potatoes to bear it company to the fire. Absorbed in my book, I paid little attention to what was passing around me, except by an occasional glance, until I heard a loud, shrill scream, and then a louder rustling of feathers, as if this was the noon of the last day, and Gabriel having blown his trumpet without my hearing it, had actually reached the earth. I jumped up, and running out of the tent, saw the cockswain standing like a nautical statue, motionless, gazing upwards, and with a stick grasped firmly in his hand. Following his example, I turned my eyes reverentially to the skies, and distinguished, from the blaze of day, a most lusty eagle, making the best of his way towards the residence of Jove with the leg of lamb in his beak; and, as if conscious of the superiority his position had given him over us, waving the white towel, grasped with his talons, hither and thither in the air, like a flag moved exultingly by conquerors after victory.
"It's gone, sir," said the sailor, lowering the uplifted club, "and, blow me, if I ever heerd him coming."
I shall not forget the utter disgust of R—— and P——, when, like a couple of Samsons they awoke, and found that their hair was certainly untouched, but that the most positive support of their strength had been cut off irretrievably, and their dinner of lamb gone where all innocence should go. Some bread and cheese, together with a few eggs which the boatmen purchased for us at a neighbouring cottage, supplied the loss of our lamb. The coolness of the afternoon gave R—— and P——, an opportunity to renew their ardour, and at six o'clock they both might have been found encouraging the habit of patience in the art of angling.
The rattling of their reels, gave, at almost every half hour, the announcement of a bite, and hurrying in their prams to the shore, my friends, after the torture of another half hour, would, with the assistance of a gaff, place the unhappy salmon among the long grass growing on the river's brink.
The Norwegians, and I believe, all persons who have the sense of taste developed to a most extraordinary nicety, say that the fish which are caught with the hook, are not to be compared in flavour to those taken in the net. Though I cannot account for the exquisiteness of taste, that can distinguish between one and the other plan of catching the salmon, I can very easily suppose that the pain, more or less, given in the destruction of an animal, may increase or decrease the flavour of the flesh, when used as food. A fish drawn backwards and forwards through the water with a hook piercing its gills, or the more tender fibres of the stomach, till it is almost jaded to death, and then lacerated with such an instrument as the gaff, must endure such an accumulation of the most intense pain, that the sweeter juices of the flesh escape during the throes of a protracted death, and render its taste more stale and flat. But the fish, taken in the net, suffers no injury; and free from pain is instantaneously deprived of life, while the muscular parts retain all the rigour and nutriment requisite for human food.