n
three-parts of the line before the next rush, which was equally
formidable, but not so long. I think I never had a salmon fight as
this one did. He, at any rate, was not one of the sulky kind, and it
was quite on the cards that I had one of the twenty or thirty pounders
for which the angler is always longing. By and by we landed on a
rock--or rather two rocks--Knut on a flat bit of crag and I on the
round head of a small boulder. The fish had so tired himself in his
shoots and fights out in the stream that he gave little trouble in the
slack water, but refused for a long time to be brought up anywhere near
the surface. When he did yield he came in the most lamb-like way, and
Knut had the pleasure of using the gaff for the first time. He hit the
fish fair and well, and, marvel of marvels, it was to an ounce the
weight of the fish killed in the same pool in the previous evening,
viz. 13 lb.

Having now a good salmon, for this water, in the boat, and a grilse or
two, and it being nine o'clock, overcast, and with a dark bit of the
forest to walk through to the road, I signified my intention of going
home; but Knut's blue eyes opened wide in surprise and pleading, and he
besought me to have one more trial. As the young fellow had been
working hard for three hours, and this was uncommonly good of him, I
consented, and, keeping on the same fly, we began half-way up the pool,
my intention being only to fish the tail end. At the fifth cast, and
on a portion of the stream which I had fished over without disturbance
twice the same evening, up came another salmon, which fastened and went
off at the same fierce pace as the other. He stripped off the line
several times, gave me a splendid quarter of an hour's sport, and there
we were, the dangers of the stream left behind, the fish quietly
circling in easy courses in the slack water, Knut ready with his gaff
on his little platform, and I, cocksure of the fish, standing on the
round rock. To the left was water that in the dusk seemed to be deep
and black, and as all along this side the water was deep close in, I
concluded that all was safe. The fish was coming quietly in, and was
not two yards from the gaff, when it made a sudden dart to the left
into this dark water close to the rocks, and in a very short time I
realised that he had hung himself up.

Getting as quickly as possible into the boat again, we moved slowly out
to the impediment, in the hope of its being noth