148 Sporting Sketches 



you feared the risk of one or two doubtful chances, 

 the shooting of the 'lunge is a feat seldom per- 

 formed. 



Spearing during the same season is well-nigh as 

 uncertain. Some old hands at the game take very 

 long-hafted spears and go sit at some handy spot 

 from about dawn till as long as they can stand it. 

 Others take chances with the short throwing spear, 

 and, needless to say, seldom take much more than 

 the chances. 



The spearing through the ice inside a dark shanty 

 is another method of the market fisher. He sits 

 there smoking and playing the decoy and praying 

 for " Night or Blucher," and Blucher may be afar 

 off and hotly engaged in some unknown corner of 

 what is doomed to be a sure enough Waterloo. 

 Meantime the watcher peers steadily down into a 

 mystery of green vagueness, through which extend 

 ghostly growths like the wraiths of tropic forests. 

 Flashes of silver light wink like aquatic fireflies 

 and tell where burnished fry are playing, and pos- 

 sibly a yellow perch lances across the view and 

 instructs the young idea that rod, pole, and perch 

 are measures of deadly accuracy when used in 

 finny schools. And after the fisher has grown to 

 feel like the brown man of old, upon whose original 

 invention his method is a glaring infringement, 

 there comes a change. 



The small fry disappear in some mysterious man- 

 ner best known to themselves. There is a sort of 

 glow in the water and from under the ice slowly 

 slides a peculiar something. If -the man with the 

 spear be wise and ironed instead of nerved, he will 



