A PLEA FOR THE WASTES. 23 



expert, became quite nervous at sight of the monster, and 

 bungled his work sadly. I gave him a push out of my 

 way, and in so doing knocked off his tattered hat into the 

 water at the bottom of the cobble. He only smiled, with- 

 out a vestige of anger. I saw his thin grey hair, and am 

 happy to recollect that at that exciting moment, ashamed 

 of my impatience, I picked up his hat with my left hand, 

 and placed it on his head, poor Sandy all the time begging 

 me " never to heed it." Sandy^s whole heart was in the 

 capture of the fish. His rod was by this time wound up, 

 he was again at the oar, and I had fair play. The ferox 

 bored like a harpooned whale ; sometimes he would change 

 his course, and go down to the bottom, taking forty yards 

 of line, which he made swirl through the water with a 

 humming noise, like a low sound of the telegraph wires. 

 When I shook him up, he would fight away for the middle 

 of the loch. At length he grew weaker, and I got him 

 under command of a short line. It was a beautiful sight 

 that noble fish, sometimes showing his glancing scales 

 for a moment, and then trying to bore under the boat, and 

 always foiled by the boatmen, who promptly obeyed my 

 slightest signal. He now began really to fail, and I felt 

 I could lead him ; so, directing Sandy to a shingly part of 

 the shore, where there were no rocks, I determined to land 

 him there. The beach was very shallow ; and, in spite of 

 my remonstrances, Sandy walked up to his knees in water, 

 and drew the cobble ashore. I was now on terra firma, but 

 my fish was by no means done up yet. Every time that I 

 brought him to the shallow, he dashed away with as much 



