31 4f THE RIVER. 



the Captain, the current rippling round his 

 legs, his line straining, and his rod Dent into 

 the form of the letter C. He had waded 

 out some ten or twelve yards into the stream, 

 fully as far as he could go with safety, or 

 perhaps a little farther, and, standing on a 

 flat white stone, which marks the very out- 

 side point on which a man can under any 

 circumstances keep his legs, had hooked a 

 fish at the full length of his longest line. It 

 had made its rush up stream, as fish at the 

 Grass Guard invariably do, till their strength 

 is exhausted ; and whether it was from in- 

 advertence, or that he was cramped in his 

 dangerous position, standing as he did at 

 the very break of the rapid, or whether he 

 was not quite so well skilled in the Bally- 

 shannon waters as he was in those of Bel- 

 leek, so it was that the fish had taken ad- 

 vantage of the only danger of the Grass 

 Guard Throw, a sunken rock that stands 

 in the very middle of the river, some thirty 

 yards above the fall, had run him across 

 it, and, sinking down sulky and motionless 

 with his nose against the farther side of it, 

 had defied every attempt to move or dis- 

 lodge him. 



