TRIMMERING. 63 



incomprehensible, and the nature of which I would 

 gladly learn. I have known a dead bait, though 

 firmly fastened, driven upwards from the hook at 

 least eighteen inches along the line. The pike 

 will, as I have said, swallow a dead fish, but I 

 think nothing else dead. When Scott's affrighted 

 Sacristan listened to the ominous song of the 

 water-kelpie, 



" A blue swollen corpse is a dainty meal, 

 And I '11 have my share with the pike and the eel," 



he might have taken comfort from a knowledge of 

 this fact ; as Cuvier may when he told the devil, 

 who threatened to eat him, that " it was all bosh, his 

 horns and hoofs showing him to be graminivorous" 

 Marryat, too, libelled the fish in " Jacob Faithful." 

 " I shouldn't wonder," said old Jacob, when he 

 heard a splash in the water, " if that wasn't Bill." 

 Sure enough it was Bill ; and when recovered a week 

 afterwards, he was so disfigured " by the pike and 

 the eels, that he was ' no good to nobody/ " This, 

 I say, is a libel on the pike ; the ravenous brute 

 will eat almost anything, but it must have at least 

 a semblance of life. 



To return to our trimmer. This engine is too 

 well known to need description. I would merely 

 suggest, that in extensive waters it is necessary to 

 lay them well to windward, and advisable to stick 



