THE PRINCESS AND THE SALMON. 71 



Now, an hour at the butt of a two-handed rod is a pretty severe test of physical 

 endurance, which few considerate salmon ever impose upon the brawny sex, and 

 much less upon feeble womanhood, though exceptional occurrences enable English 

 ladies to "show the mettle of their breeding," and sometimes American ladies, too, 

 I am proud to say. 



HOW IT WAS DONE. 



The fact is, the princess had hooked that salmon in a pool a half-mile above the 

 moorage, where Joe had pointed it out to her on a sunken ledge which the canoe 

 passed over. Joe was handling the canoe alone, sitting in the stern, sometimes hold- 

 ing her with the paddle and anon letting her drop down with the current, checking 

 her as occasion required. With another paddler in the bow the fish would have been 

 observed sooner. The favoring chance for the angler was on the forward down- 

 stream cast, but the instant the course overran the fish, perceiving that the oppor- 

 tunity had passed she caught on to the only alternative and gave her rod a dextrous 

 backward cast whereupon the fly had no sooner touched the surface of the water 

 than the fish rose. He was evidently hungry for he came up with a bulge and 

 threw his whole weight on the line, fastening the hook firmly in the tough gristle 

 of the jaw, then settled heavily to the bottom, like a log, where he could be plainly 

 seen lying motionless. Like Bad Dickey in the burlesque, it took him some minutes 

 to discover that he had been stabbed, but as soon as he did wake up to a realizing 

 sense of the crisis the circus began. Up and down and across the pool, in the water 

 and out of the water, into the bank and under the boat, he led that indefatigable 

 lady a chase and a race until he finally floundered down the main rapids through a 

 quarter of a mile of rough water into the thirty-acre pool, the canoe following like 

 an arrow. Here he would seem to have finally exhausted himself in a series of runs, 

 whirls, gyrations and splashes, and a truce naturally followed. During the wait the 

 princess was glad to accept a glass of cordial, which she needed much. 



Meanwhile the brave lady had been many times out of the canoe and on shore, 

 and sometimes knee deep in the water, according as better advantage of her captive 

 could be obtained, and throughout the long ordeal holding her end up heroically and 

 wielding the supple wand as her august mother wields the scepter, leading her sub- 

 jects or constraining them by the mild potency of deft handling and gracious finesse. 

 Only when the salmon made his desperate leaps she would drop the tip deferentially, 

 preferring a temporary concession to irretrievable loss. 



THE FINALE. 



And so we came eventually to the concluding act of the drama in the thick of 

 the gloaming, with the shadows of eventide settling upon the pool, by which time 

 the great fish was beginning to shake his head omniously and the princess could feel 

 the tremor of the line. Joe noticed the vibration, too. 



"Suppose urn take canoe now?" he suggested. Then without awaiting formal 

 assent he brought the light craft conveniently to her feet and she slipped down 

 adroitly off the scow, motioning one of the other gillies to follow. 



Every one suspected that there would be another tussle after so long a wait, 

 and so the event proved, for the lady had hardly stepped aboard the canoe before 

 the salmon made a big break for up stream and reeled off a hundred yards of line 

 so swiftly that the winch fairly shrieked with the friction. But the mechanical drag 

 and sag of the line soon checked the spurt, and the lost line was gradually retrieved, 

 the fish coming in doggedly and disputing every inch. This brilliant run seemed to 

 be a despairing effort of the captive to get away a concentrated energy of strength 



