m to a little rocky cove for service in case
I should have the fortune to bring in a fish, as fruit meet to his
repentance. My custom is to fish a pool very patiently and thoroughly.
It is true that not more than half a dozen times in my life have I ever
hooked a salmon other than when the line was straight down the stream,
but by keeping the boat in the right course, and handling the rod to
suit it, there are several possibilities of presenting the fly on an
even keel.

The swish, swish of the casting becomes decidedly monotonous as the
boat drops downward inch by inch. You lose yourself in dreamy
reveries, casting at length quite mechanically. The fly goes out to
its appointed place, sweeps round with the stream, and with a kind of
involuntary sigh the line is recovered, and the cast repeated. It
becomes machine action at last. On this evening I had impressed upon
Knut the desirability of being very slow indeed, and he was working
well. The stream was strong without rage, there was a dull curtain of
slate-grey overhead, and a light breeze was blowing in your teeth, but
not enough to make casting twenty-five yards of line a hardship. For a
time your thoughts centre upon the working of the fly. You wonder
whether a salmon has noticed it and is following it craftily round; if
so, will he take it? Or is it possible that after all you are not in
the exact lie of the salmon?

The water, you see, has not yet become, as it will (and does) in a few
days, clear enough for you to know that the entire bed of the river
consists of huge boulders, with manifold guts and hollows, all lovely
abiding places for any well-disposed fish. You speculate on what you
shall do if you do hook a salmon at this or that particular point. You
scan the shore, mark the likeliest spot for landing, and mentally go
through the whole programme to its happy ending. You think what a
splendid thing it would be if you could get four, five, six, a dozen
salmon in as many casts, and how much better the bottom of the boat
would look if, instead of two or three comely grilse, it showed the
biggest salmon ever known in these parts. But no, nothing disturbs the
monotony. Swish, swish, swish! Gradually you forget all about salmon
and sport, and are thinking, maybe, of kith and kin across the North
Sea, or of sins of omission and commission. All at once you are
startled by that inspiring cry of the winch which some faddy people
pretend to think a n