"Poor wretch!" said R——, as he strove to unfasten the hook from the ligaments of the jaw, "I am keeping him in his pain a long time; but I can't help it."
"I must put him on the ground," I observed, when the fish by its struggles nearly twisted the gaff from my hand.
"No; for heaven's sake, don't!" exclaimed R——. "He'll knock both of us into the water if you do. There," continued R——, holding the hook, at last, in his hand, and cleansing it from slime and gore on the cuff of his coat, "put him down;" and opening a clasp-knife, he ran the blade into the crown of the salmon's head. The creaking sound of the bone as it yielded to the passage of the sharp knife, like the cutting of a cork, made my teeth ache. The fish stirred not; but the blood trickled from his mouth in small bubbles, and stretching out all his fins, as a bird would stretch its wings to fly, a spasmodic shudder succeeded, and then the fins gradually relaxed and adhered close to his sides, while the blood still oozed from the mouth and gills, and striking his tail once or twice on the ground, the salmon seemed to fix his round, staring, glassy eye on me, as if in accusation of the torture I had caused, and gaping, died.
"If I ever gaff another fish, may I be gaffed myself," I said.
"Fish do not feel so acutely as you imagine," replied R——, wiping the penknife on his handkerchief with the coolness of an anatomical operator; "all the quivering you observe is not from actual pain, but merely from muscular action."
"Well, I am not surgeon enough to know that," I answered; "but if you talk for three years, you will never persuade me that a fish does not feel, as well as every other creature, in proportion to its size, the anguish of bodily torture as sensibly as you, or I."
"Never mind arguments," cried R——, "here, let's see what he weighs."
And R—— drew from his coat-pocket, a small balance that he always carried about with him, and hooking the defunct salmon on it, held it up.
"Twenty-two pounds to a fraction," he said; and took a little book from his other pocket, and noted down the weight. Casting up the figures to himself in a sort of whisper common to all calculators, R—— observed aloud, when he had concluded his addition,
"I have killed forty-five pounds myself. That's not so bad, eh? Come on;" and hurrying into his pram, was rowed away.