78 AN OPEN CREEL 



4. THE IMMORTALS 



Where the Itchen takes its revenges and spreads 

 abroad, after too long confinement between the straight 

 borders of high banks and a railway cutting, there lie 

 they by one, by two, by three, the immortals of the water. 

 They lie there always, and are three pounds apiece. One 

 supposes they have always lain there and have always 

 been three pounds apiece, notwithstanding the tongues 

 of the irreverent, who have been known to hint that 

 they are no more unapproachable than other fish, and 

 that, given the right quality of breeze (something of an 

 easterly tendency, with mildness), and given a decent 

 hatch of fly, and given that exact shade of red quill 

 which one once saw in another man's box and has 

 never been able to match since, they themselves but 

 their sayings are mere speculation, and nothing to the 

 point. There is, indeed, legend of a master who came 

 to the water in company with one of the irreverent, 

 worked upstream without much success, and finally 

 came to a place whence the immortals could be seen 

 feeding, by one, by two, by three. The master knew 

 nothing of the genius loci, and remarked in a matter-of- 

 fact tone that one of them at least ought to be amen- 

 able to persuasion. So he knelt upon one knee, and 

 despatched his own very particular brand of olive with 

 his own very particular cut into the wind. From this 

 point, in proper course, the story should lead up to 

 a pretty moral about Homer nodding, pride preceding 

 calamity, or something of that kind. But, as a matter 

 of legend, it does nothing of the sort. 



The irreverent maintain that the master slew those 



