270 AN OPEN CREEL 



protect the low-lying country behind. Many different 

 corners under lee of the rushes which seemed to be 

 relatively calm had proved delusive on being tried. 

 The two long poles used as rypecks had met with mis- 

 fortune early in the morning, having been pushed too 

 far down into the bottomless mud. Both refused to 

 come out again, and one snapped through too vigorous 

 persuasion, while the other remained as a warning to 

 mariners. After this loss the boat had to be moored 

 by the primitive fashion of tying string to rushes. 

 Sometimes it was the string that broke, sometimes the 

 rushes. The result was always the same a clumsy 

 boat careering madly over the baited pitch, and two 

 irate anglers abusing each other for what was the fault 

 of neither. There was another trouble, too, which 

 followed on the first as night follows on day the mud- 

 banks. We spent solid hours in wrestling with them, 

 because we were, of course, blown on to them when- 

 ever the moorings gave way. 



The wonder was that anything had been caught at 

 all, but the boat did contain one fish, a golden-scaled 

 rudd of about one and a half pounds, which had been 

 snatched hurriedly from a corner with the aid of a lob- 

 worm during a brief lull of the gale. There had been 

 another bite also, but at the same moment the wind 

 rose again, and seemed to tear the hook out of the 

 fish's mouth as it flung itself on the boat. As for 

 bream, there had not been a sign of them, and, indeed, 

 this was scarcely a matter for surprise. One has to 

 wait for bream to begin to feed, often quite a long 

 time, and for the angler to wait his boat must wait too. 



At last, about four o'clock, we came to the con- 



