MEMOIRS OF MONSTERS. 
79 ' 
reversing my attack and using a short line, almost at 
the first cast, a monster salmon lunged along the 
surface and seized the small Jock Scott in the 
strongest stream-head. I had hardly commenced cast¬ 
ing below ere a syren-signal, startling the echoes, 
summoned me back to Samkomme. This fish, while 
evidently convinced that safety lay in the strongest 
stream (whence he had first emerged), made continuous 
runs, short and sharp, down or across the pool, taking 
off twenty to thirty yards of line with a screech, but 
always returning to the heavier water close at hand. 
Again and again during these excursions he “ flowsed 
or plunged along the surface, sending the water flying 
and exposing his formidable proportions—full four feet 
long by estimate, with massive shoulders, and a depth 
that seemed disproportionate. But he never tried to 
leave the pool, which was about sixty yards in length. 
At the end of half an hours fight, he hung more in the 
slack water, and once seemed disposed to go down the 
rapids below, the main stream of which ran far away 
under the opposite shore. But if ever that desperate 
intent was in his mind, an equally desperate counter¬ 
effort dissuaded him, and for twenty minutes longer the 
struggle continued without respite or breathing time, 
but within its original limits ; yet after fifty minutes of 
this, there were few, if any, signs of submission—indeed 
it appeared an open question whether angler or quarry 
were in the more parlous state. Distress there certainly 
existed, and Erik now crept forward beneath the willows. 
Twice the gaff moved out in readiness, but the fish again 
sought the middle depths. Fifty-five minutes, and 
he once more came sailing round below the bushes— 
