68 THE BILLIARD TABLE POOL. 



After trying the other small runs without 

 avail I got from stone to stone on to the 

 island. It was only a few yards long and was 

 covered with coarse tufted grass eight feet high. 

 Shelving stones on one side, banked up by the 

 last flood, gave an insecure foot hold into 

 deepish water : on the other, slab rock formed 

 the higher level of a shallow. It is difficult 

 to refrain from drawing a plan of it with 

 bearings and soundings like the one in Billy 

 Bones* sea chest. 



To the right was the stone wall, studded with 

 ferns in the crevices, and under this wall over 

 mossy stones the water ran smoothly and 

 swiftly, perhaps three feet deep, with some 

 eddying holes. Two more fish were taken out 

 of it, but neither was above the eight or nine 

 ounce average. I pushed quietly through the 

 tall wet grass and peered out. Never since I 

 have fished that Devon stream can I recall such 

 a small-world paradise. The whole sky in 

 front was golden sunset and of course the 

 water too, the various runs and channels being 

 merely marked by flecks of lilac. To the right 

 the wall had ended in a fringe of rushes, and 

 the current lapped and murmured down over a 

 slimy green slab of rock covered with weed, to 

 be sucked into creeks and bays below. 



Above this was a pool the shape and smooth- 

 ness of a billiard table; and before looking at 

 it for more than a few minutes, three fish rose 

 repeatedly one exactly above the other. The 

 difficulty was not to show oneself and yet to 



