DAYS WITH BASS 



ing, as, of a sudden, the reel snarled loud and long and the line 

 went flying through the rings. Nikko, who a moment before 

 might have posed as one of his countrymen, the Seven Sleepers, 

 was all alert now. 



" l^chiy Moiissyou," he cried, " Megdlo ! megdlo ! " 

 Yes ; it was a big one, right enough, and I saw dimly its 

 great body rolling away for a further effort without his pointing 

 it out. But Nikko, once roused to what was expected of him, 

 knew his work thoroughly, and he had, as the sequel will show, 

 a dash of the heroic for which, be the circumstance ever so 

 humble, his countrymen have always displayed a curiously 

 uneven capacity. For the moment, all that he had to do was 

 to back water and thus follow the erratic movements of the big 

 bass, which, having pulled nearly all the line off my reel, was, 

 perhaps, nearer to freedom than it knew. Then, without the 

 least warning, and in a fashion that I have elsewhere seen carried 

 to perfection by the mighty tarpon of Florida, the bass doubled 

 on its own tracks and dashed headlong for the boat, a change 

 of tactics to which Nikko responded with uncanny prevision, 

 rowing his hardest away from the fish, while I was reeling in 

 like one possessed. At long last, something very curious 

 happened, for which, just at the moment, not all my familiarity 

 with this desirable fish in many seas and rivers had prepared 

 me. The line suddenly went slack just as I had seen the fish 

 dash under the boat and was preparing to pass my rod in gingerly 

 fashion over the bow and play it on the other quarter. Had 

 there been the least parting wrench, I should naturally have 

 come to the conclusion that the long collar of single gut, which 



231 



