THE SALMON OF CLOOTIE'S HOLE. 355 



reluctance lie suffered himself once more to look at 

 the salmon ; but he was a little cheered a little of 

 his fear blew away as he did so, for it was evident 

 that the hard work had begun to tell the fish was 

 getting "sick." And now a dreadful thing happened 

 an event took place calculated to make the boldest 

 and the most red-faced man turn pale. The fish, in a 

 bit of quieter water, rested a minute, and then bolted 

 in to the bank, leaving, in spite of our efforts, a long 

 bit of line slack. But he had so often tried on the 

 same manoeuvre without success that it had ceased to 

 cause us much alarm. We reeled up very rapidly, 

 and sure enough he was still on. Away he went 

 again, and then the line 7r/>7r>(/, one of those 

 extraordinary and inexplicable knots appeared which 

 all fishermen know ; and between sixty and seventy 

 yards of line were locked up on the reel as useless 

 as if they had been at Inverness. The salmon was 

 struggling madly, and almost making the top ring 

 of the rod touch the butt at the end of the forty 

 others. A loud comprehensive wail from us, express- 

 ing at once grief, anger, disgust, surprise, horror, and 

 apprehension of evil, and a dismal howl from Johnnie, 

 combining all these attributes, with the additional one 

 of fear, announced the taking place of this catastrophe. 

 Things were now all in favour of the salmon, and 

 very much against us, and it was with almost hope- 

 less hearts that we followed him down the rocks. 

 We got over them, somehow or other we got past, 



