58 THE BOATMAN'S STOKY. 



* on a rocky island to cook dinner. I made such a meal as a 

 hnngry man makes when he's out all alone fishin' and hunt- 

 in' about these waters, and started off across the lake, with 

 my trollin' line to the length of a hundred feet or more, 

 draggin' tliMpjh the water behind me. The breeze had 

 freshened a little, and my boat drifted about fast enough 

 for trollin', and feelin' a little drowsy, I tied the end of the 

 line to the cleets across the knees of the boat, and lay down 

 in the bottom with my hand out over the side holdin' the 

 line. I hadn't laid there long, when I felt a twitch as if 

 something mighty big was medlin' with the other end of the 

 string. I started up and undertook to pull in, but you 

 might as well undertake to drag an elephant with a thread. 

 I couldn't move him a hair. Pretty soon the boat began to 

 move up the lake in a way 1 didn't at all like. At first it 

 went may be three miles an hour, then five, ten, twenty, 

 forty, sixty miles the hour, round and round the lake, as if 

 hurled along by a million of locomotives. We went skiving 

 around among the islands, into the bays, along the shore, 

 away out across the lake, crossing and re-crossing in every 

 direction ; and if there's a place about this lake we didn't 

 visit, I should like to have somebody tell me where it is. 

 You may think it made my hair stand out some, to find my- 

 self flyin' about like a strealc of chain lightnin', and to see 

 the trees and rocks flyin' like mad the other way. I tried 

 to untie the line, but it was drawn into a knot so hard, that 

 the old Nick himself couldn't move it. I looked for my knife 

 to cut it, but it had, somehow, got overboard ia our flight, 



