PLEASURES OF ANGLING. 133 



erate click, click, which succeeds the strike, is the 

 measured prelude to the grand chorus which fol- 

 lows when the astonished fish enters upon his mad 

 career. These sounds alternate through the pro- 

 tracted struggle ; now a single click, as the fish 

 shakes his head in his sulking moments, and now 

 a whiz and whir-r-r, as he rushes and leaps in his 

 desperate efforts to free himself from the stinging 

 barb which holds him. When a determined fish 

 is thus hooked, the same stirring music is repeated 

 a hundred times, until, finally, the poor fellow is 

 only able to give spasmodic tugs, moving the line 

 but the length of a single cog, the reel responding 

 by slow and measured clicks like the tap of a 

 muffled drum beating 



" Funeral marches to the grave." 



But these death-tugs are full of peril. More 

 fish " tear out " then than at any other moment 

 of the struggle. To prevent such a catastrophe 

 requires the most watchful and delicate manipula- 

 tion. Safety lies in a cautious easing off of the 

 pressure on the line with every movement of the 

 fish, being careful, however, that no slack is allow- 

 ed to render his vicious wrench effective and fatal. 

 To see an angler at the moment when a mammoth 

 salmon thus escapes his rod at the perpendicu- 

 lar, his line dangling loosely in the breeze, his 

 mouth wide open, and his muscles limp as a sea- 



