ROUSES POINT. 



323 



jaws of a gigantic pickerel, an eighteen-pounder at the 

 least. Just one quick jerk, a pause, and the great jaws 

 closed on the spoon. I struck hard, and had him, or 

 rather he had me ; for what was I to do with him ? Two 

 hundred feet from land, on a pile bridge, twenty feet above 

 the water, with such a fish to manage, and a hundred 

 piles standing out of water in every direction — this was a 

 situation to puzzle an angler. As long as he headed 

 southward for Lake Champlain, and swung about in that 

 direction, I was confident; but after ten minutes of that 

 he came north for the St. Lawrence — down the river — 

 passed under me with a swift rush, and then I knew it was 

 all up with my tackle. I snubbed him with all the force 

 of the rod, but that only served to turn him once after he 

 had gone well under the bridge, so that he took a turn 

 around a pile, and of course that was the end of the con- 

 test. After a reasonable delay, I broke my line by a hard 

 pull, and left spoon and pickerel in the depths of the un- 

 known. That all came from the folly of allowing a fish 

 to get the hook when I was in no position to land him or 

 save my tackle. But then my excuse was that I had 

 never dreamed of stirring up such a monster. 



We drove homeward. It was an evening in May; the 

 air soft and balmy — a breath of the coming June. The 

 flush of sunset sanctified the vast expanse of Long Island 

 Sound, and the sails of a hundred vessels were rosy wings. 

 So on tropic seas I have sometimes seen here and there 

 white pelicans and the snowy spoonbills changed at sun- 

 set into birds of paradise. 



There can be no scene more beautiful than was that 

 evening view from the balcony at the Ferns. Under the 

 branches of the trees, through the masses of the vines that 

 overhung the piazza, we looked away off to the south and 



