GAFFING. 95 
seat of Lord Normanton, to whose courtesy I have been 
indebted for many a charming day’s pike fishing, that the in 
cident in question occurred. My trusty friend and a/¢er ego, Mr. 
Darvall, and myself, with Lord Normanton’s fisherman, Tizard, 
were paddling our way slowly down stream in one of the small 
Avon punts, when we suddenly caught sight of this TarL, 
‘broad as the baldrick of an earl,’ gently undulating in an 
opening in the water lilies. The fish was evidently a huge 
one ; the chance of tempting him to be caught secundum artem 
was wil; Tizard earnestly assured me his master was most 
anxious to have a large pike for the table—and so—I yielded 
to the tempter. . . . The boat glides noiselessly down to the un- 
conscious esox, and now the gaff is steadily but surely stretched 
over the spot where leviathan’s shoulder is likely to be, giving 
him an imaginary length of about four feet... . Wahish/ 
There was a rapid ‘stroke,’ a plunge, and with a rush sufficient 
to have upset a whale boat the stricken monster dashed for the 
bottom of the river, at that point at least twenty feet deep. 
It was an exciting moment. I found myself being pulled 
incontinently over the boat’s side, which was taking in water 
freely, and clutched at the nearest available support, which 
happened to be the seat of the keeper’s corduroy nether gar- 
ments. It came bodily away in my grasp... . Atthis juncture 
nothing, as I believe, could have saved the boat from capsizing, 
if the gaff, yielding to the excessive strain, had not first twisted 
in the socket and then straightened ouf—thus, of course, 
releasing the enemy, who, though deep struck, may, I would 
fain hope, have yet survived the indefensible attack made upon 
him, contra bonos mores, and lived on to attain a still greater 
age and a yet vaster breadth of tail. 
Tizard, the keeper, was the only one who did not laugh 
heartily ; but on a hint that we should contribute to his next 
tailor’s bill his countenance resumed its wonted serenity. 
Some of us on the occasion had certainly, however, a narrow 
escape of being drowned . . . and the verdict of all good pike 
fishers would doubtless have been—‘ and serve them right.’ 
