72 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



the barbed hooks. No shout from John was need- 

 ed to make me strike. I struck so quick and 

 strong that the leader twanged like a snapped 

 bow-string, and the tip of the light rod flew down 

 nearly to the reel. All three were hooked. Three 

 trout, weighing in the aggregate seven pounds, held 

 by a single hair on a nine-ounce rod, in a pool 

 fringed with lily-pads, forty by thirty feet across ! 



Then followed what to enjoy again I would ride 

 thrice two hundred miles. The contest, requiring 

 nerve and skill on the fisher's part, was to keep the 

 plunging fish out of the lily-pads, in which, should 

 they oncp become entangled, the gut would part 

 like a thread of corn-silk or the spider's gossamer 

 line. Up and down, to and fro, they glanced. The 

 lithe rod bent like a coachman's whip to the un- 

 usual strain, and the leader sung as it cut through 

 the water with the whir of a pointed bullet. 



At last, when at the farthest corner of the pool, 

 they doubled short upon the line, and as one fish 

 rushed straight for the boat. Fishermen know what 

 that movement means. " Give 'em the butt ! give 

 'em the butt ! " shouted John. " Smash your rod 

 or stop 'em ! " Never before had I feared to thrust 

 the butt of that rod out toward an advancing fish : 

 but here were three, each large enough to task a 

 common rod, untired and frenzied with pain, rush- 

 ing directly toward me. If I hesitated, it was but 

 an instant, for the cry of John to " Smash her ! 



