28 An Anglers Paradise. 
some giant hand had been doing a little weeding, and after 
pulling them up had left them to wither and to die. 
Fortunately the night was clear and bright moonlight, not a 
cloud being visible, and we soon found the relics of the exhibition ; 
the wind had carried them until they stuck in some trees and 
dropped into a brook, which, being full carried them off, but 
fortunately they stranded or stuck fast.in bushes before travelling 
very far. We could do little towards getting them out then, so 
allowed them to remain till morning, when they were duly 
recovered. I felt rather uneasy about the spouting that conveyed 
the water to the hatchery, and we went round to the back of 
the building to inspect it. 
The spouts had been firmly nailed to stout oak tressles fixed 
in the ground. The tressles were immovable, but the spouts had 
parted company, and were simply “to seek,” to use a common 
Yorkshire expression. It seemed to come in very appropriately 
here, for we literally had ‘to seek,” and finally found the spouts, 
sticking in some trees near, well to leeward of course. We soon 
had them out and commenced to carry them back, but a gust of 
wind took them out of our hands and overhead back again from 
where we had brought them. After procuring a hammer and 
some stout nails, we again commenced carrying the spouts one at 
a time, and by dodging the wind, got one of them on to its 
tressles and got in four nails. While we were carrying the next 
length of spouting, however, we saw the first, which we thought we 
had firmly fixed, flung off its seat by the wind, and the second 
was no sooner fixed than it was served in the same manner. 
Just at this moment came a terrific gust which lifted me off 
my feet, and but for my taking a regular dive into the wind as if 
it had been so much water, I should have been carried into the 
stream close by, or possibly into the trees. At the same time the 
crashing of timber in the wood above us was terrific, as upwards 
of two hundred splendid larches fell flat as the walls of Jericho, 
knocking each other down like ninepins. The air was filled with 
flying branches, sticks, and other missiles, and suddenly a cloud 
rose from the earth a short way off, and obscured the sky for 
some distance, finally losing itself in a plantation of young 
Scotch firs. 
