132 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



to straighten the slack as it fell. John understood 

 the motion ; the boat flew round as on a pivot, and 

 glided backward under the reversed stroke. It 

 was well done, as only John could do it ; nor was 

 it a second too soon ; for as the tuft of gay plumes 

 alighted amid the ripples, the huge head of the 

 trout came out of water, his mouth opened, and, 

 as the feathers disappeared between his teeth, I 

 struck with all my might. Not one rod in twenty 

 would have stood that blow. The fish was too 

 heavy even to be turned an inch. The line 

 sung, and water flew out of the compressed 

 braids, as though I had sunk the hook into an 

 oak beam. 



Eeader, did you ever land a trout ? I do not 

 ask if you ever jerked some poor little fellow out 

 of a brook three feet across, with a pole six inches 

 around at the butt, and so heavy as to require both 

 hands and feet well braced to hold it out. No, 

 that 's not landing a trout. But did you ever sit in 

 a boat, with nine ounces of lance-wood for a rod, 

 and two hundred feet of braided silk in your 

 double-acting reel, and hook a trout whose strain 

 brought tip and butt together as you checked him 

 in some wild flight, and tested your quivering line 

 from gut to reel-knot ? No one knows what game 

 there is in a trout, unless he has fought it out, 

 matching such a rod against a three-pound fish, 

 with forty feet of water underneath, and a clear, 



