354 1 co A- FISHING. 



But when he saw what hurt him — that is, when he saw 

 the humanity on the raft — he did just as a hundred fish 

 in every hundred do, rushed for the only dark place in 

 sight, and that was under the raft. Now remember, you 

 who do not understand fly-fishing, that there were three 

 flies on the casting-line, each four feet from the other, and 

 the trout hooked on the middle one. What would be the 

 natural effect of such a rush among the overhanging pine 

 boughs ? Of course two hooks would make themselves 

 fast somewhere, for a hook always finds solid attachment 

 where it is not intended to catch. So Dupont watched 

 his fish, and when, with a sharp rush, he tore off the first 

 bobber (which, my uneducated friend, means the upper 

 fly, nearest the rod), succeeded in swinging him off so 

 that his next rush loosened the tail fly, and then, con- 

 vinced that the dark spot under the raft was full of ene- 

 mies, the trout went away into deep water. Here it was 

 easy work to bring him to the landing-net, and I lay on 

 my pine-bough island and saw him come out, shining in 

 gold and silver and jewels, and said, " A fine fish ! Now 

 do it again." And he did it again and again, and the day 

 went down almost into darkness, and we had forgotten 

 the difficulties and dangers of the untrodden mountain- 

 sides which we must cross on our way homeward. 



The twilight lingered long up there, but we pushed our 

 rafts to the shore in haste, and plunged into the forest. 

 I think I have before alluded to our misadventure on this 

 evening. We had traveled this route often enough to 

 know it ; but this evening we missed the proper line at 

 starting, and the effect of that little error well-nigh proved 

 a very serious matter. For a divergence of a few rods at 

 the commencement widened to a fourth of a mile by the 

 time we reached the mountain-top, and instead of our 



