THE WELSH DEE 



But there are quiet and less breathless interludes 

 even from a coracle. In the still reaches where the 

 fretting river rests betimes, it is delightful to take your 

 time and drift leisurely down over water that the 

 wader must feign pass by with longing eyes, and shoot 

 your flies beneath the trailing boughs. Here, if an 

 over-venturesome cast fixes your fly in a twig, dis- 

 engagement is easy. In the rapid water a similar 

 mischance, as may be imagined, lands one in infinite 

 difficulties and delays. Despatch is everything in a 

 coracle if fish are rising, quickness in casting, in secur- 

 ing the fish (for the skipper cannot help you), dis- 

 engaging the hook, or unravelling a tangle and getting 

 the cast on to the water again. A tangle is distracting, 

 so is a lost fly, for you cannot sit down on the bank for 

 repairs and go on where you left off, but may be 

 passing in enforced idleness over water that has been 

 fondly looked forward to. In high water, too, there 

 is an element of excitement in running some of the 

 rapids, if you look at it that way. But when Evan, 

 after surveying the angry surge and crowding rocks 

 both above and below, all of which he knew by heart, 

 used to say, ' I '11 try it whatefer,' one gripped the side 

 of the coracle, gave a passing thought to the Radical 

 M.P., and held tight. It was astonishing how he 

 would lift the little tub-shaped craft this way and that 

 as it rocked, rolled, and heaved along its apparently 

 perilous course among the boulders. 



A good many men who have seen it or tried it don't 

 like coracling. For a large heavy man it is beyond a 

 doubt a tight fit. Nor has it always much attraction 

 for an individual who is not quite sure that he can swim 



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