104 THE PIKE. 



the cruel snow. Rabbits and partridges were 

 stumbled upon, stiff and hard under the leaves and 

 tussocks of dead grass. Birds in great numbers 

 dropped dead from their roosting places in the 

 trees, while living creatures were so utterly worn 

 out and starved from the effects of relentless cold 

 and want of food, that I positively caught starlings 

 with my hands, too weak to fly away from bushes 

 by the roadside ; and almost set my clutch upon 

 live rabbits, who only just managed to scuttle away 

 from dry nooks under sheltered thorn bushes across 

 the depths of frost-crisped snow-drifts, too deep to 

 follow them without plunging in up to one's middle. 

 The very men who rowed our boats each day (and 

 we had each morning to break it out from thick 

 ice, the result of a single night's frost) fairly 

 shirked their job ; and yet they were hardy shore- 

 fishermen and deep-sea dredgers, accustomed to 

 bear the brunt of the very worst wintry weather 

 howling round the neighbouring coast. Said one of 

 them to me as he was loosing the ice round the 

 boat one bitterly cold morning, ' I wonders how 

 you soft-'andcd Lunnon folks stands it.' I won- 

 dered too ; and yet we did, day after day, in the 

 teeth of such iron-like frosts and blinding snow- 

 storms as I would not again face, no not for a 

 whole boat-load of twenty-pounders. Jardine put 

 me up to a little dodge, and a very good one it is 

 in frosty weather, of wrapping thick pledgets of 

 cotton-wool, thoroughly saturated with castor-oil, 

 round the inner and outer sides of the rings of the 

 rod, fastening them in their places with whippings 

 of fine thread. This certainly held the frost in 

 check, and enabled us to fish fairly comfortably, 

 although every now and then the line got abso- 



