96 SALMON AND TROUT. 
While I am on the subject of my poaching experiences let 
me make a clean breast of it and relate how, when a young 
man, reading at a tutor’s on the banks of the Thames, my finer 
perceptions were on one occasion blunted, and my better 
feelings done violence to, by the sight of a splendid specimen 
of Zsox lucius in one of the stew ponds of Mr. Williams, of 
Temple, the then member for Great Marlow. That morning I 
had seen him (the pike) lying basking, and in the afternoon (I 
can hardly tell to this day how it could have happened) I found 
myself, for some unexplained reason, standing by the side of the 
aforesaid stew pond, and wondering whether anyone would see 
through the surrounding withy beds, topped by a notice board 
threatening legal pains and penalties against trespassers P. What 
is still more inexplicable, I carried in my hand an extra long sort 
of walking stick—or, shall I say it at once? Aop pole—and in my 
pocket a coil of what certainly bore an external resemblance to 
copper wire. A couple of feet of this wire had somehow got 
on to the end of the hop pole, whence it dangled in such a 
manner as almost to deceive the eye into the notion that it 
was not altogether unlike the abomination commonly known 
amongst certain persons of impaired moral perception as a 
noose or ‘sniggle.’. . . Hop pole in hand, I bent carefully over 
the water and reconnoitred the position of my friend Zsox— 
merely in order, of course, the better to admire his majestic pro- 
portions, as he supported his huge body on his ventral pizza, 
and ‘feathered’ the water with his pectoral and caudal fins. 
‘A delicate monster, truly,’ I observed, ‘quite an ichthyo- 
logical study.’ And simultaneously an uninitiated spectator 
might have imagined that the appearance of the noose afore- 
said passed gently but quickly over his head and shoulders... . 
There was a curious sudden commotion in the water ; and at 
the same moment a rustling in the withies behind—and then 
a well-known voice (being, in fact, that of Mr. Williams’ head 
water bailiff and fisherman) was heard, in accents the sarcastic 
tones of which I shall never forget, observing: ‘Well, Mr. 
Pennell, this ’ere de a pretty go!’ 
