A great trough between high banks was our next halting-place. Looking carefully through a screen of bushes, we saw dim figures moving about the lower end of the level water.
‘Some poachers from the town, I reckon,’ whispered our spearman. ‘They’re fools to try netting here, where there’s hundreds of rocks on the bottom to tear their net to ribbons.’ Half an hour or more we stood there watching with all our eyes. But little did we gather, save that the poachers were not averse to plunging into the ice-cold stream to release their net whenever fouled by a boulder or a piece of sunken brushwood. Then, ‘Lie down, quick,’ whispered frantically the poacher; and though we were standing on a bed of soaking, half-rotten leaves, down we went. On the moment, up into the sky from a point just beyond the far end of the pool, soared a rocket. My eyes watched its flight anxiously, watched it burst into a shower of stars which, slowly floating down, illuminated wood and water and rock clearly. The keepers evidently had knowledge of some trespassers. Was it of us or of the netmen, who at the first roar of the rocket dispersed into the woods, abandoning their net in the river? The poacher’s sharp eyes had seen the first spark struck by the keepers, and he had warned us as far as possible.
We were clearly in a predicament. Run for it! No; long ago every avenue from the woods would be guarded. With the wet soaking through our clothes, we lay in the thicket. One of the netmen rushed past, crashing through the dead branches within a yard of us. Half a minute later there was a shout and the sounds of a scuffle from the direction he had taken. Another minute, and, horridly suggestive of personal probabilities, two keepers walked their prisoner past us in the darkness. Not twenty yards away one set up a shout, inquiring the success of the carefully-laid trap.
‘We’ve got the lot!’ sounded from across the water—a reply which relieved us in so far as we now thought no especial watch was being kept for us. It was a long, weary time before the poacher signified that it was safe to proceed.
Down the slimy rocks we descended as silently as possible, drawing towards the head of the long trough. You may be sure that we kept a very sharp lookout as we moved into the half-light of the river-bed, but neither sight nor sound of lurking danger was there. At a sign I turned my shaft of light on the clear waters; the poacher, selecting his salmon, struck unerringly, and the fish was bagged. Again I showed the light, but, though the leister poised, the stroke was never made, for up to the gloomy sky another signal tore. This was for us in very deed.
‘Into t’ water,’ cried the poacher, ‘or we’re caught!’
There was no time for contemplating the darkling stream, or for shivering on the brink—the terror of the police-court is mightily great. In the three of us stepped; knee-deep the cold was horrible, wrist-deep the feeling was worse, but before bottom was touched the water was neck-high, and the chill seemed to freeze our very marrow. The poacher we still had confidence in, for he had been in scores of similar tight corners; with arms outstretched he pressed us close to the rocky bank, which for six feet almost overhung. When the rocket stars had faded away, I noticed a light travelling along the water and the further bank upstream; the keepers apparently knew we had not resorted to the woods, and were examining the rocky brink. I heard them moving high above our heads, and saw the gleam of lanterns light up the running waters almost within arm’s length, then pass on without a pause. The chill of the water was forgotten in that breathless five minutes, but it was again racking us when the poacher said:
‘Now we’re safe for a bit. Sink that salmon bag with a couple of stones, and we’ll make downstream.’
The three of us were fair swimmers, so made little of the distance to the foot of the trough, where, emerging, we crawled cautiously up the bank, and by devious ways passed through the wood. Though chilled through and through, we still had escaped capture, for which we were thankful.
The fish! Oh, our poacher must have found his way again to the pool ere daybreak and rescued the sunken bag, for our landlady came to us at breakfast—a fine piece of salmon was on the table—bustling with information.