66 
WILD NORWAY. 
lunch ; but, under a passing cloud, I had the luck 
to take a twenty-pounder out of Broen-pool on our 
homeward way. 
The afternoon brought a blazing sun and cloudless 
sky. Nothing could be done but shelter under the birches 
and wild-cherry trees, nor were operations possible till 
past nine o’clock. An hour later we were still “ unfished,” 
and darkness coming on. Then, leaving W. with Lars 
at Busketieg, I hurried on alone to Broen, where, almost 
at the first cast, the Black Doctor again lured a fast¬ 
running fish. Willingly would I have been easy on 
him and fought gently, awaiting the arrival of the gaff, 
but not so my gallant foe, who from the first insisted 
on forcing the game, racing hither and thither, running 
and jumping alternately, buzzing off line till the reel 
hummed again, and soon obliged me, with nigh a 
hundred yards out, to follow him down the flat. Down 
the delta we raced in mad career, recovering some line 
meanwhile, till the open waters of the fjord glistened 
in the moonlight within two hundred yards. Here the 
river, I now observed, divided into three channels, down 
the largest and farthest of which my lively friend had 
evidently elected to run the rapids. Not knowing the 
water nor whether the two intervening streams were 
wadable, it became imperative to assume the offensive, 
and I put on full steam to check his fatal intent. 
Anxious moments followed, while by the dim mystery of 
the moonlight, I could just see by the distant swirl on 
the shallows and at times by the roll of a rounded back 
and dorsal fin, that the fish was dropping ever nearer 
and nearer to the lip of the broken water. To gain 
that lip to him meant safety; to me a catastrophe. 
