72 AN ANGLER'S REMINISCENCES. 



and purpose inasmuch as the devious tactics of the earlier struggle were not re- 

 newed. Neither did he essay any new expedients. 



For the next half hour it was alternately give and take a succession of short 

 circuits, an obstinate boring against the current, with occasional spasmodic runs and 

 broad display of tail, until at last it became difficult to see the shore or even the 

 position of the fish. However, there was plenty of elbow room, and the canoe had 

 only to follow its caprices and erratic courses, the two canoemen plying their paddles 

 vigorously whenever he unexpectedly quickened his pace. Thus the struggle was 

 narrowed down to a mere question of the survival of the toughest, subject all the 

 time to mischances and errors of judgment. 



At length, it may be stated, the party aboard the scow became anxious as well 

 as hungry, for the royal angler made no sign, and in despair of a finish the marquis 

 and his secretary took skiff for the opposite shore, where a group of dusky figures 

 could be barely discerned, arriving just in time to see an uplifted rod swing heavily 

 back toward the wooded bank, and to catch a glimpse of a pallid gleam beside the 

 river's bank and the boil of an upward surge. Then almost instantly followed a 

 sharp dip and a splash and a simultaneous sigh of relief. There was a flip-flap on 

 the grass, and the noblest quarry that was ever landed by royal skill lay gasping 

 and quivering in their midst. 



"Bravely done !" they murmured all, with suppressed enthusiasm. 



Then the considerate marquis attended his exhausted and supperless wife to 

 her apartments on the scow, and in due time that mighty salmon was laid out in 

 state, with the hook and leader still hanging to its jaw, and so was sent home to 

 England as a present to her majesty the queen, and an enviable trophy from her 

 loving daughter and royal highness, the Princess Louise. 



