The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crocker's Hole, by R. D. Blackmore

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Title: Crocker's Hole
       From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore

Author: R. D. Blackmore

Release Date: August 14, 2007 [EBook #22318]
Last Updated: March 6, 2018


Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROCKER'S HOLE ***




Produced by David Widger
 



CROCKER'S HOLE  




By R. D. Blackmore  





From “SLAIN BY THE DOONES” by R. D. Blackmore
 Copyright: Dodd, Mead  And Company, 1895  









Contents  

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.








CHAPTER I.  


The Culm, which rises in Somersetshire, and hastening into a fairer land  (as the border waters wisely do) falls into the Exe near Killerton,  formerly was a lovely trout stream, such as perverts the Devonshire angler  from due respect toward Father Thames and the other canals round London.  In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a  rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a  brook; and before one has time to say, “What are you at?”—before the  first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down  has turned blue, here we have all the airs and graces, demands and  assertions of a full-grown river.  
But what is the test of a river? Who shall say? “The power to drown a  man,” replies the river darkly. But rudeness is not argument. Rather shall  we say that the power to work a good undershot wheel, without being dammed  up all night in a pond, and leaving a tidy back-stream to spare at the  bottom of the orchard, is a fair certificate of riverhood. If so, many  Devonshire streams attain that rank within five miles of their spring;  aye, and rapidly add to it. At every turn they gather aid, from ash-clad  dingle and aldered meadow, mossy rock and ferny wall, hedge-trough roofed  with bramble netting, where the baby water lurks, and lanes that coming  down to ford bring suicidal tribute. Arrogant, all-engrossing river, now  it has claimed a great valley of its own; and whatever falls within the  hill scoop, sooner or later belongs to itself. Even the crystal “shutt”  that crosses the farmyard by the woodrick, and glides down an aqueduct of  last year's bark for Mary to fill the kettle from; and even the tricklets  that have no organs for telling or knowing their business, but only get  into unwary oozings in and among the water-grass, and there make moss and  forget themselves among it—one and all, they come to the same thing  at last, and that is the river.  
The Culm used to be a good river at Culmstock, tormented already by a  factory, but not strangled as yet by a railroad. How it is now the present  writer does not know, and is afraid to ask, having heard of a vile “Culm  Valley Line.” But Culm-stock bridge was a very pretty place to stand and  contemplate the ways of trout; which is easier work than to catch them.  When I was just big enough to peep above the rim, or to lie upon it with  one leg inside for fear of tumbling over, what a mighty river it used to  seem, for it takes a treat there and spreads itself. Above the bridge the  factory stream falls in again, having done its business, and washing its  hands in the innocent half that has strayed down the meadows. Then under  the arches they both rejoice and come to a slide of about two feet, and  make a short, wide pool below, and indulge themselves in perhaps two  islands, through which a little river always magnifies itself, and  maintains a mysterious middle. But after that, all of it used to come  together, and make off in one body for the meadows, intent upon nurturing  trout with rapid stickles, and buttercuppy corners where fat flies may  tumble in. And here you may find in the very first meadow, or at any rate  you might have found, forty years ago, the celebrated “Crocker's Hole.”  
The story of Crocker is unknown to me, and interesting as it doubtless  was, I do not deal with him, but with his Hole. Tradition said that he was  a baker's boy who, during his basket-rounds, fell in love with a maiden  who received the cottage-loaf, or perhaps good “Households,” for her  master's use. No doubt she was charming, as a girl should be, but whether  she encouraged the youthful baker and then betrayed him with false rôle,  or whether she “consisted” throughout,—as our cousins across the  water express it,—is known to their manes only. Enough that  she would not have the floury lad; and that he, after giving in his books  and money, sought an untimely grave among the trout. And this was the  first pool below the bread-walk deep enough to drown a five-foot baker  boy. Sad it was; but such things must be, and bread must still be  delivered daily.  
A truce to such reflections,—as our foremost writers always say,  when they do not see how to go on with them,—but it is a serious  thing to know what Crocker's Hole was like; because at a time when (if he  had only persevered, and married the maid, and succeeded to the oven, and  reared a large family of short-weight bakers) he might have been leaning  on his crutch beside the pool, and teaching his grandson to swim by  precept (that beautiful proxy for practice)—at such a time, I say,  there lived a remarkably fine trout in that hole. Anglers are notoriously  truthful, especially as to what they catch, or even more frequently have  not caught. Though I may have written fiction, among many other sins,—as  a nice old lady told me once,—now I have to deal with facts; and  foul scorn would I count it ever to make believe that I caught that fish.  My length at that time was not more than the butt of a four-jointed rod,  and all I could catch was a minnow with a pin, which our cook Lydia would  not cook, but used to say, “Oh, what a shame, Master Richard! they would  have been trout in the summer, please God! if you would only a' let 'em  grow on.” She is living now, and will bear me out in this.  
But upon every great occasion there arises a great man; or to put it more  accurately, in the present instance, a mighty and distinguished boy. My  father, being the parson of the parish, and getting, need it be said,  small pay, took sundry pupils, very pleasant fellows, about to adorn the  universities. Among them was the original “Bude Light,” as he was  satirically called at Cambridge, for he came from Bude, and there was no  light in him. Among them also was John Pike, a born Zebedee, if ever there  was one.  
John Pike was a thick-set younker, with a large and bushy head, keen blue  eyes that could see through water, and the proper slouch of shoulder into  which great anglers ripen; but greater still are born with it; and of  these was Master John. It mattered little what the weather was, and  scarcely more as to the time of year, John Pike must have his fishing  every day, and on Sundays he read about it, and made flies. All the rest  of the time he was thinking about it.  
My father was coaching him in the fourth book of the Æneid and all those  wonderful speeches of Dido, where passion disdains construction; but the  only line Pike cared for was of horsehair. “I fear, Mr. Pike, that you are  not giving me your entire attention,” my father used to say in his mild  dry way; and once when Pike was more than usually abroad, his tutor begged  to share his meditations. “Well, sir,” said Pike, who was very truthful,  “I can see a green drake by the strawberry tree, the first of the season,  and your derivation of 'barbarous' put me in mind of my barberry dye.” In  those days it was a very nice point to get the right tint for the  mallard's feather.  
No sooner was lesson done than Pike, whose rod was ready upon the lawn,  dashed away always for the river, rushing headlong down the hill, and away  to the left through a private yard, where “no thoroughfare” was put up,  and a big dog stationed to enforce it. But Cerberus himself could not have  stopped John Pike; his conscience backed him up in trespass the most  sinful when his heart was inditing of a trout upon the rise.  
All this, however, is preliminary, as the boy said when he put his  father's coat upon his grandfather's tenterhooks, with felonious intent  upon his grandmother's apples; the main point to be understood is this,  that nothing—neither brazen tower, hundred-eyed Argus, nor Cretan  Minotaur—could stop John Pike from getting at a good stickle. But,  even as the world knows nothing of its greatest men, its greatest men know  nothing of the world beneath their very nose, till fortune sneezes dexter.  For two years John Pike must have been whipping the water as hard as  Xerxes, without having ever once dreamed of the glorious trout that lived  in Crocker's Hole. But why, when he ought to have been at least on bowing  terms with every fish as long as his middle finger, why had he failed to  know this champion? The answer is simple—because of his short cuts.  Flying as he did like an arrow from a bow, Pike used to hit his beloved  river at an elbow, some furlong below Crocker's Hole, where a sweet little  stickle sailed away down stream, whereas for the length of a meadow upward  the water lay smooth, clear, and shallow; therefore the youth, with so  little time to spare, rushed into the downward joy.  
And here it may be noted that the leading maxim of the present period,  that man can discharge his duty only by going counter to the stream, was  scarcely mooted in those days. My grandfather (who was a wonderful man, if  he was accustomed to fill a cart in two days of fly-fishing on the Barle)  regularly fished down stream; and what more than a cartload need anyone  put into his basket?  
And surely it is more genial and pleasant to behold our friend the river  growing and thriving as we go on, strengthening its voice and enlargening  its bosom, and sparkling through each successive meadow with richer  plenitude of silver, than to trace it against its own grain and good-will  toward weakness, and littleness, and immature conceptions.  
However, you will say that if John Pike had fished up stream, he would  have found this trout much sooner. And that is true; but still, as it was,  the trout had more time to grow into such a prize. And the way in which  John found him out was this. For some days he had been tormented with a  very painful tooth, which even poisoned all the joys of fishing. Therefore  he resolved to have it out, and sturdily entered the shop of John  Sweetland, the village blacksmith, and there paid his sixpence. Sweetland  extracted the teeth of the village, whenever they required it, in the  simplest and most effectual way. A piece of fine wire was fastened round  the tooth, and the other end round the anvil's nose, then the sturdy  blacksmith shut the lower half of his shop door, which was about  breast-high, with the patient outside and the anvil within; a strong push  of the foot upset the anvil, and the tooth flew out like a well-thrown  fly. When John Pike had suffered this very bravely, “Ah, Master Pike,”  said the blacksmith, with a grin, “I reckon you won't pull out thic there  big vish,”—the smithy commanded a view of the river,—-“clever  as you be, quite so peart as thiccy.”  
“What big fish?” asked the boy, with deepest interest, though his mouth  was bleeding fearfully.  
“Why that girt mortial of a vish as hath his hover in Crocker's Hole. Zum  on 'em saith as a' must be a zammon.”  
Off went Pike with his handkerchief to his mouth, and after him ran Alec  Bolt, one of his fellow-pupils, who had come to the shop to enjoy the  extraction.  
“Oh, my!” was all that Pike could utter, when by craftily posting himself  he had obtained a good view of this grand fish.  
“I'll lay you a crown you don't catch him!” cried Bolt, an impatient  youth, who scorned angling.  
“How long will you give me?” asked the wary Pike, who never made rash  wagers.  
“Oh! till the holidays if you like; or, if that won't do, till  Michaelmas.”  
Now the midsummer holidays were six weeks off—boys used not to talk  of “vacations” then, still less of “recesses.”  
“I think I'll bet you,” said Pike, in his slow way, bending forward  carefully, with his keen eyes on this monster; “but it would not be fair  to take till Michaelmas. I'll bet you a crown that I catch him before the  holidays—at least, unless some other fellow does.”  






CHAPTER II.  


The day of that most momentous interview must have been the 14th of May.  Of the year I will not be so sure; for children take more note of days  than of years, for which the latter have their full revenge thereafter. It  must have been the 14th, because the morrow was our holiday, given upon  the 15th of May, in honour of a birthday.  
Now, John Pike was beyond his years wary as well as enterprising, calm as  well as ardent, quite as rich in patience as in promptitude and vigour.  But Alec Bolt was a headlong youth, volatile, hot, and hasty, fit only to  fish the Maelstrom, or a torrent of new lava. And the moment he had laid  that wager he expected his crown piece; though time, as the lawyers phrase  it, was “expressly of the essence of the contract.”  
And now he demanded that Pike should spend the holiday in trying to catch  that trout.  
“I shall not go near him,” that lad replied, “until I have got a new  collar.” No piece of personal adornment was it, without which he would not  act, but rather that which now is called the fly-cast, or the gut-cast, or  the trace, or what it may be. “And another thing,” continued Pike; “the  bet is off if you go near him, either now or at any other time, without  asking: my leave first, and then only going as I tell you.”  
“What do I want with the great slimy beggar?” the arrogant Bolt made  answer. “A good rat is worth fifty of him. No fear of my going near him,  Pike. You shan't get out of it that way.”  
Pike showed his remarkable qualities that day, by fishing exactly as he  would have fished without having heard of the great Crockerite. He was up  and away upon the mill-stream before breakfast; and the forenoon he  devoted to his favourite course—first down the Craddock stream, a  very pretty confluent of the Culm, and from its junction, down the  pleasant hams, where the river winds toward Uffculme. It was my privilege  to accompany this hero, as his humble Sancho; while Bolt and the faster  race went up the river ratting. We were back in time to have Pike's trout  (which ranged between two ounces and one-half pound) fried for the early  dinner; and here it may be lawful to remark that the trout of the Culm are  of the very purest excellence, by reason of the flinty bottom, at any rate  in these the upper regions. For the valley is the western outlet of the  Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the north, and Hackpen long  ridge to the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone hill, upon whose  western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit mark the pits. But  flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under good, well-pastured  loam; and here are chalcedonies and agate stones.  
At dinner everybody had a brace of trout—large for the larger folk,  little for the little ones, with coughing and some patting on the back for  bones. What of equal purport could the fierce rat-hunter show? Pike  explained many points in the history of each fish, seeming to know them  none the worse, and love them all the better, for being fried. We  banqueted, neither a whit did soul get stinted of banquet impartial. Then  the wielder of the magic rod very modestly sought leave of absence at the  tea time.  
“Fishing again, Mr. Pike, I suppose,” my father answered pleasantly; “I  used to-be fond of it at your age; but never so entirely wrapped up in it  as you are.”  
“No, sir; I am not going fishing again. I want to walk to Wellington, to  get some things at Cherry's.”  
“Books, Mr. Pike? Ah! I am very glad of that. But I fear it can only be  fly-books.”  
“I want a little Horace for eighteen-pence—the Cambridge one just  published, to carry in my pocket—and a new hank of gut.”  
“Which of the two is more important? Put that into Latin, and answer it.”  
“Utrum pluris facio? Flaccum flocci. Viscera magni.” With this vast effort  Pike turned as red as any trout spot.  
“After that who could refuse you?” said my father. “You always tell the  truth, my boy, in Latin or in English.”  
Although it was a long walk, some fourteen miles to Wellington and back, I  got permission to go with Pike; and as we crossed the bridge and saw the  tree that overhung Crocker's Hole, I begged him to show me that mighty  fish.  
“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “It would bring the blackguards. If the  blackguards once find him out, it is all over with him.”  
“The blackguards are all in factory now, and I am sure they cannot see us  from the windows. They won't be out till five o'clock.”  
With the true liberality of young England, which abides even now as large  and glorious as ever, we always called the free and enlightened operatives  of the period by the courteous name above set down, and it must be  acknowledged that some of them deserved it, although perhaps they poached  with less of science than their sons. But the cowardly murder of fish by  liming the water was already prevalent.  
Yielding to my request and perhaps his own desire—manfully kept in  check that morning—Pike very carefully approached that pool,  commanding me to sit down while he reconnoitred from the meadow upon the  right bank of the stream. And the place which had so sadly quenched the  fire of the poor baker's love filled my childish heart with dread and deep  wonder at the cruelty of women. But as for John Pike, all he thought of  was the fish and the best way to get at him.  
Very likely that hole is “holed out” now, as the Yankees well express it,  or at any rate changed out of knowledge. Even in my time a very heavy  flood entirely altered its character; but to the eager eye of Pike it  seemed pretty much as follows, and possibly it may have come to such a  form again:  
The river, after passing though a hurdle fence at the head of the meadow,  takes a little turn or two of bright and shallow indifference, then  gathers itself into a good strong slide, as if going down a slope instead  of steps. The right bank is high and beetles over with yellow loam and  grassy fringe; but the other side is of flinty shingle, low and bare and  washed by floods. At the end of this rapid, the stream turns sharply under  an ancient alder tree into a large, deep, calm repose, cool, unruffled,  and sheltered from the sun by branch and leaf—and that is the hole  of poor Crocker.  
At the head of the pool (where the hasty current rushes in so eagerly,  with noisy excitement and much ado) the quieter waters from below, having  rested and enlarged themselves, come lapping up round either curve, with  some recollection of their past career, the hoary experience of foam. And  sidling toward the new arrival of the impulsive column, where they meet  it, things go on, which no man can describe without his mouth being full  of water. A “V” is formed, a fancy letter V, beyond any designer's  tracery, and even beyond his imagination, a perpetually fluctuating limpid  wedge, perpetually crenelled and rippled into by little ups and downs that  try to make an impress, but can only glide away upon either side or sink  in dimples under it. And here a gray bough of the ancient alder stretches  across, like a thirsty giant's arm, and makes it a very ticklish place to  throw a fly. Yet this was the very spot our John Pike must put his fly  into, or lose his crown.  
Because the great tenant of Crocker's Hole, who allowed no other fish to  wag a fin there, and from strict monopoly had grown so fat, kept his  victualing yard—if so low an expression can be used concerning him—within  about a square yard of this spot. He had a sweet hover, both for rest and  recreation, under the bank, in a placid antre, where the water made no  noise, but tickled his belly in digestive ease. The loftier the character  is of any being, the slower and more dignified his movements are. No true  psychologist could have believed—as Sweet-land the blacksmith did,  and Mr. Pook the tinman—that this trout could ever be the embodiment  of Crocker. For this was the last trout in the universal world to drown  himself for love; if truly any trout has done so.  
“You may come now, and try to look along my back,” John Pike, with a  reverential whisper, said to me. “Now don't be in a hurry, young stupid;  kneel down. He is not to be disturbed at his dinner, mind. You keep behind  me, and look along my back; I never clapped eyes on such a whopper.”  
I had to kneel down in a tender reminiscence of pasture land, and gaze  carefully; and not having eyes like those of our Zebedee (who offered his  spine for a camera, as he crawled on all fours in front of me), it took me  a long time to descry an object most distinct to all who have that special  gift of piercing with their eyes the water. See what is said upon this  subject in that delicious book, “The Gamekeeper at Home.”  
“You are no better than a muff,” said Pike, and it was not in my power to  deny it.  
“If the sun would only leave off,” I said. But the sun, who was having a  very pleasant play with the sparkle of the water and the twinkle of the  leaves, had no inclination to leave off yet, but kept the rippling crystal  in a dance of flashing facets, and the quivering verdure in a steady flush  of gold.  
But suddenly a May-fly, a luscious gray-drake, richer and more delicate  than canvas-back or woodcock, with a dart and a leap and a merry zigzag,  began to enjoy a little game above the stream. Rising and falling like a  gnat, thrilling her gauzy wings, and arching her elegant pellucid frame,  every now and then she almost dipped her three long tapering whisks into  the dimples of the water.  
“He sees her! He'll have her as sure as a gun!” cried Pike, with a gulp,  as if he himself were “rising.” “Now, can you see him, stupid?”  
“Crikey, crokums!” I exclaimed, with classic elegance; “I have seen that  long thing for five minutes; but I took it for a tree.”  
“You little”—animal quite early in the alphabet—“now don't you  stir a peg, or I'll dig my elbow into you.”  
The great trout was stationary almost as a stone, in the middle of the “V”  above described. He was gently fanning with his large clear fins, but  holding his own against the current mainly by the wagging of his  broad-fluked tail. As soon as my slow eyes had once defined him, he grew  upon them mightily, moulding himself in the matrix of the water, as a  thing put into jelly does. And I doubt whether even John Pike saw him more  accurately than I did. His size was such, or seemed to be such, that I  fear to say a word about it; not because language does not contain the  word, but from dread of exaggeration. But his shape and colour may be  reasonably told without wounding the feeling of an age whose incredulity  springs from self-knowledge.  
His head was truly small, his shoulders vast; the spring of his back was  like a rainbow when the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his deep  elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what the power  of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time, with the  vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. His latter end was consistent  also. An elegant taper run of counter, coming almost to a cylinder, as a  mackered does, boldly developed with a hugeous spread to a glorious  amplitude of swallow-tail. His colour was all that can well be desired,  but ill-described by any poor word-palette. Enough that he seemed to tone  away from olive and umber, with carmine stars, to glowing gold and soft  pure silver, mantled with a subtle flush of rose and fawn and opal.  
Swoop came a swallow, as we gazed, and was gone with a flick, having  missed the May-fly. But the wind of his passage, or the stir of wing,  struck the merry dancer down, so that he fluttered for one instant on the  wave, and that instant was enough. Swift as the swallow, and more true of  aim, the great trout made one dart, and a sound, deeper than a tinkle, but  as silvery as a bell, rang the poor ephemerid's knell. The rapid water  scarcely showed a break; but a bubble sailed down the pool, and the dark  hollow echoed with the music of a rise.  
“He knows how to take a fly,” said Pike; “he has had too many to be  tricked with mine. Have him I must; but how ever shall I do it?”  
All the way to Wellington he uttered not a word, but shambled along with a  mind full of care. When I ventured to look up now and then, to surmise  what was going on beneath his hat, deeply-set eyes and a wrinkled  forehead, relieved at long intervals by a solid shake, proved that there  are meditations deeper than those of philosopher or statesman.  






CHAPTER III.  


Surely no trout could have been misled by the artificial May-fly of that  time, unless he were either a very young fish, quite new to entomology, or  else one afflicted with a combination of myopy and bulimy. Even now there  is room for plenty of improvement in our counterfeit presentment; but in  those days the body was made with yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and  gold twist, and as thick as a fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that  to offer such a thing to Crocker's trout would probably consign him—even  if his great stamina should over-get the horror—to an uneatable  death, through just and natural indignation. On the other hand, while the  May-fly lasted, a trout so cultured, so highly refined, so full of light  and sweetness, would never demean himself to low bait, or any coarse son  of a maggot.  
Meanwhile Alec Bolt allowed poor Pike no peaceful thought, no calm  absorption of high mind into the world of flies, no placid period of  cobblers' wax, floss-silk, turned hackles, and dubbing. For in making of  flies John Pike had his special moments of inspiration, times of clearer  insight into the everlasting verities, times of brighter conception and  more subtle execution, tails of more elastic grace and heads of a neater  and nattier expression. As a poet labours at one immortal line,  compressing worlds of wisdom into the music of ten syllables, so toiled  the patient Pike about the fabric of a fly comprising all the excellence  that ever sprang from maggot. Yet Bolt rejoiced to jerk his elbow at the  moment of sublimest art. And a swarm of flies was blighted thus.  
Peaceful, therefore, and long-suffering, and full of resignation as he  was, John Pike came slowly to the sad perception that arts avail not  without arms. The elbow, so often jerked, at last took a voluntary jerk  from the shoulder, and Alec Bolt lay prostrate, with his right eye full of  cobbler's wax. This put a desirable check upon his energies for a week or  more, and by that time Pike had flown his fly.  
When the honeymoon of spring and summer (which they are now too  fashionable to celebrate in this country), the hey-day of the whole year  marked by the budding of the wild rose, the start of the wheatear from its  sheath, the feathering of the lesser plantain, and flowering of the  meadowsweet, and, foremost for the angler's joy, the caracole of May-flies—when  these things are to be seen and felt (which has not happened at all this  year), then rivers should be mild and bright, skies blue and white with  fleecy cloud, the west wind blowing softly, and the trout in charming  appetite.  
On such a day came Pike to the bank of Culm, with a loudly beating heart.  A fly there is, not ignominious, or of cowdab origin, neither gross and  heavy-bodied, from cradlehood of slimy stones, nor yet of menacing aspect  and suggesting deeds of poison, but elegant, bland, and of sunny nature,  and obviously good to eat. Him or her—why quest we which?—the  shepherd of the dale, contemptuous of gender, except in his own species,  has called, and as long as they two coexist will call, the “Yellow Sally.”  A fly that does not waste the day in giddy dances and the fervid waltz,  but undergoes family incidents with decorum and discretion. He or she, as  the case may be,—for the natural history of the river bank is a book  to come hereafter, and of fifty men who make flies not one knows the name  of the fly he is making,—in the early morning of June, or else in  the second quarter of the afternoon, this Yellow Sally fares abroad, with  a nice well-ordered flutter.  
Despairing of the May-fly, as it still may be despaired of, Pike came down  to the river with his master-piece of portraiture. The artificial Yellow  Sally is generally always—as they say in Cheshire—a mile or  more too yellow. On the other hand, the “Yellow Dun” conveys no idea of  any Sally. But Pike had made a very decent Sally, not perfect (for he was  young as well as wise), but far above any counterfeit to be had in  fishing-tackle shops. How he made it, he told nobody. But if he lives now,  as I hope he does, any of my readers may ask him through the G.P.O., and  hope to get an answer.  
It fluttered beautifully on the breeze, and in such living form, that a  brother or sister Sally came up to see it, and went away sadder and wiser.  Then Pike said: “Get away, you young wretch,” to your humble servant who  tells this tale; yet being better than his words, allowed that pious  follower to lie down upon his digestive organs and with deep attention  watch, There must have been great things to see, but to see them so was  difficult. And if I huddle up what happened, excitement also shares the  blame.  
Pike had fashioned well the time and manner of this overture. He knew that  the giant Crockerite was satiate now with May-flies, or began to find  their flavour failing, as happens to us with asparagus, marrow-fat peas,  or strawberries, when we have had a month of them. And he thought that the  first Yellow Sally of the season, inferior though it were, might have the  special charm of novelty. With the skill of a Zulu, he stole up through  the branches over the lower pool till he came to a spot where a yard-wide  opening gave just space for spring of rod. Then he saw his desirable  friend at dinner, wagging his tail, as a hungry gentleman dining with the  Lord Mayor agitates his coat. With one dexterous whirl, untaught by any of  the many-books upon the subject, John Pike laid his Yellow Sally (for he  cast with one fly only) as lightly as gossamer upon the rapid, about a  yard in front of the big trout's head.  
A moment's pause, and then, too quick for words, was the things that  happened.  
A heavy plunge was followed by a fearful rush. Forgetful of current the  river was ridged, as if with a plough driven under it; the strong line,  though given out as fast as might be, twanged like a harp-string as it cut  the wave, and then Pike stood up, like a ship dismasted, with the butt of  his rod snapped below the ferrule. He had one of those foolish things,  just invented, a hollow butt of hickory; and the finial ring of his spare  top looked out, to ask what had happened to the rest of it. “Bad luck!”  cried the fisherman; “but never mind, I shall have him next time, to a  certainty.”  
When this great issue came to be considered, the cause of it was sadly  obvious. The fish, being hooked, had made off with the rush of a shark for  the bottom of the pool. A thicket of saplings below the alder tree had  stopped the judicious hooker from all possibility of following; and when  he strove to turn him by elastic pliance, his rod broke at the breach of  pliability. “I have learned a sad lesson,” said John Pike, looking sadly.  
How many fellows would have given up this matter, and glorified themselves  for having hooked so grand a fish, while explaining that they must have  caught him, if they could have done it! But Pike only told me not to say a  word about it, and began to make ready for another tug of war. He made  himself a splice-rod, short and handy, of well-seasoned ash, with a stout  top of bamboo, tapered so discreetly, and so balanced in its spring, that  verily it formed an arc, with any pressure on it, as perfect as a leafy  poplar in a stormy summer. “Now break it if you can,” he said, “by any  amount of rushes; I'll hook you by your jacket collar; you cut away now,  and I'll land you.”  
This was highly skilful, and he did it many times; and whenever I was  landed well, I got a lollypop, so that I was careful not to break his  tackle. Moreover he made him a landing net, with a kidney-bean stick, a  ring of wire, and his own best nightcap of strong cotton net. Then he got  the farmer's leave, and lopped obnoxious bushes; and now the chiefest  question was: what bait, and when to offer it? In spite of his sad rebuff,  the spirit of John Pike had been equable. The genuine angling mind is  steadfast, large, and self-supported, and to the vapid, ignominious chaff,  tossed by swine upon the idle wind, it pays as much heed as a big trout  does to a dance of midges. People put their fingers to their noses and  said: “Master Pike, have you caught him yet?” and Pike only answered:  “Wait a bit.” If ever this fortitude and perseverance is to be recovered  as the English Brand (the one thing that has made us what we are, and may  yet redeem us from niddering shame), a degenerate age should encourage the  habit of fishing and never despairing. And the brightest sign yet for our  future is the increasing demand for hooks and gut.  
Pike fished in a manlier age, when nobody would dream of cowering from a  savage because he was clever at skulking; and when, if a big fish broke  the rod, a stronger rod was made for him, according to the usage of Great  Britain. And though the young angler had been defeated, he did not sit  down and have a good cry over it.  
About the second week in June, when the May-fly had danced its day, and  died,—for the season was an early one,—and Crocker's trout had  recovered from the wound to his feelings and philanthropy, there came a  night of gentle rain, of pleasant tinkling upon window ledges, and a  soothing patter among young leaves, and the Culm was yellow in the  morning, “I mean to do it this afternoon,” Pike whispered to me, as he  came back panting. “When the water clears there will be a splendid time.”  
The lover of the rose knows well a gay voluptuous beetle, whose pleasure  is to lie embedded in a fount of beauty. Deep among the incurving petals  of the blushing-fragrance, he loses himself in his joys sometimes, till a  breezy waft reveals him. And when the sunlight breaks upon his luscious  dissipation, few would have the heart to oust him, such a gem from such a  setting. All his back is emerald sparkles all his front red Indian gold,  and here and there he grows white spots to save the eye from aching. Pike  put his finger in and fetched him out, and offered him a little change of  joys, by putting a Limerick hook-through his thorax, and bringing it out  between his elytra. Cetonia aurata liked it not, but pawed the air  very naturally, and fluttered with his wings attractively.  
“I meant to have tried with a fern-web,” said the angler; “until I saw one  of these beggars this morning. If he works like that upon the water, he  will do. It was hopeless to try artificials again. What a lovely colour  the water is! Only three days now to the holidays. I have run it very  close. You be ready, younker.”  
With these words he stepped upon a branch of the alder, for the tone of  the waters allowed approach, being soft and sublustrous, without any mud.  Also Master Pike's own tone was such as becomes the fisherman, calm,  deliberate, free from nerve, but full of eye and muscle. He stepped upon  the alder bough to get as near as might be to the fish, for he could not  cast this beetle like a fly; it must be dropped gently and allowed to  play. “You may come and look,” he said to me; “when the water is so, they  have no eyes in their tails.”  
The rose-beetle trod upon the water prettily, under a lively vibration,  and he looked quite as happy, and considerably more active, than when he  had been cradled in the anthers of the rose. To the eye of a fish he was a  strong individual, fighting courageously with the current, but sure to be  beaten through lack of fins; and mercy suggested, as well as appetite,  that the proper solution was to gulp him.  
“Hooked him in the gullet. He can't get off!” cried John Pike, labouring  to keep his nerves under; “every inch of tackle is as strong as a  bell-pull. Now, if I don't land him, I will never fish again!”  
Providence, which had constructed Pike foremost of all things, for lofty  angling-disdainful of worm and even minnow—Providence, I say, at  this adjuration, pronounced that Pike must catch that trout. Not many  anglers are heaven-born; and for one to drop off the hook halfway through  his teens would be infinitely worse than to slay the champion trout. Pike  felt the force of this, and rushing through the rushes, shouted: “I am  sure to have him, Dick! Be ready with my nightcap.”  
Rod in a bow, like a springle-riser; line on the hum, like the string of  Paganini winch on the gallop, like a harpoon wheel, Pike, the head-centre  of everything, dashing through thick and thin, and once taken overhead—for  he jumped into the hole, when he must have lost him else, but the fish too  impetuously towed him out, and made off in passion for another pool, when,  if he had only retired to his hover, the angler might have shared the  baker's fate—all these things (I tell you, for they all come up  again, as if the day were yesterday) so scared me of my never very  steadfast wits, that I could only holloa! But one thing I did, I kept the  nightcap ready.  
“He is pretty nearly spent, I do believe,” said Pike; and his voice was  like balm of Gilead, as we came to Farmer Anning's meadow, a quarter of a  mile below Crocker's Hole. “Take it coolly, my dear boy, and we shall be  safe to have him.”  
Never have I felt, through forty years, such tremendous responsibility. I  had not the faintest notion now to use a landing net; but a mighty general  directed me. “Don't let him see it; don't let him see it! Don't clap it  over him; go under him, you stupid! If he makes another rush, he will get  off, after all. Bring it up his tail. Well done! You have him!”  
The mighty trout lay in the nightcap of Pike, which was half a fathom  long, with a tassel at the end, for his mother had made it in the winter  evenings. “Come and hold the rod, if you can't lift him,” my master  shouted, and so I did. Then, with both arms straining, and his mouth wide  open, John Pike made a mighty sweep, and we both fell upon the grass and  rolled, with the giant of the deep flapping heavily between us, and no  power left to us, except to cry, “Hurrah!”  
 








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