Aug. 26, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
867 
IMSHis# 
^Xgppii® 
HUNTER 
— TRIGGER 
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THE HUNTER ARMS CO., 90 Hubbard St., Fulton, N. Y. 
ashore, with vertebra; severed just behind the 
neck. There on the island the otter made his 
meal; he was no voracious feeder, frequently 
contenting himself, indeed, with that portion 
behind the fish’s head known to sportsmen as 
the “otter’s bite.” 
As he crouched upon the island with his vic¬ 
tim the otter’s short, powerful legs were visible, 
his webbed toes, brown fur and bushy, rudder¬ 
like tail. Sometimes in the midst of the feast 
he would raise his head, his lips would curl 
back, his teeth lie bared; thus, motionless, he 
would listen for minutes together, dreading the 
footfall of the enemy, man. 
The meal was hardly finished before pale 
dawn began to break above the hills. Breeze 
trembled over the high oaks, the sedge warbler 
sang and then was still again; later a shimmer 
seemed to cross the sky, as gray mist moved 
over darkness and then was lost again. Silver 
gray light soon grew and broadened; gray 
passed to yellow; trees near at hand loomed 
through cloudy mist; at last a red ball of fire 
out-topped the hills and slashes of crimson 
spread westward, though the river lay sombre 
still. But before that dawn of redness in the 
sky the otter had crept back to his hover under 
the bank; spectrelike he vanished at the coming 
of day.—London Globe. 
THE MAHSEER OF GAND. 
Gand ! What memories the name awakes! 
What vistas of possibilities but half explored! 
Gand, in short, is a fisherman’s paradise which 
a friend and I were privileged to work for just 
three-quarters of an hour. Think of it! 
I will explain and begin at the beginning. 
“Gentleman” wrote the amanuensis of a fron¬ 
tier chief to me in a vile babuese fist: “I have 
illicited the information that ther are many fishes 
in the Nili nullah, particularly at the place called 
Gand.” 
“That’s reassuring,” I said accordingly to G., 
my traveling companion, handing him the letter. 
It was a part of the country I had not yet ex¬ 
plored. We had, as it happened, a camp at 
Gand, so we were filled with pleasurable antici¬ 
pation. But man, unfortunately, proposes only, 
while the Almighty disposes. G.’s time with me 
was too short to permit of our doing anything 
but forced marches. We had allowed ourselves 
very few halts of a day or more, and Gand was 
not one of them. Also, if God made the country 
and man the town, it is perfectly certain that 
the devil made the hills. 
Our twenty miles into Gand were twenty of 
the very worst. Road there was none, rather a 
barely defined track along the bed of many a 
stony nullah, and it was seldom that we could 
go for any distance at a pace exceeding a walk. 
The scenery was gloomy and forbidding to a 
degree, and would have furnished illustrations 
anywhere for Dante’s “Inferno.” And, last of 
all, old Jawansal, our guide “sowar,” had rheu¬ 
matism and a pain in his stomach, and was 
thinking of eternity. A gale boomed and tore 
all the morning among the hilltops. 
“It is Israfil, the fourth angel of God,” said 
Jawansal, dismally, “who with his trumpet sends 
forth the wind that blows upon the wicked 
world.” 
1 asked if it was a quotation. Jawansal said 
it was. He had picked it up from an old “Dam” 
(hereditary minstrel) with a religious turn. 
There were apparently four other angels, viz.: 
Wahi (Gabriel), Arzail (the Angel of Death), 
Khwaja Khizr (Elijah) and Shaitan, “who re¬ 
belled on account of the creation of mankind.” 
I wanted to hear about Khwaja Khizr and Israfil, 
but Jawansal’s thoughts were fixed on Arzail, the 
Angel of Death. 
“Arzail,” he said, quoting his poet, “takes the 
order from God, when God has added up a man’s 
reckoning. Children he snatches away from 
their father and mother. He takes neither 
money, nor sheep, nor goats with them ; he car¬ 
ries away men by the hair of their heads. There 
is no pity in his heart, nor does he fear any 
man.” 
“Cheery old bird!” said G., as I translated. 
“Is he often taken like that? I don’t think 
much of him as an entertainer for a bad road.” 
How long the strain of Jawansal’s poetic com¬ 
monplace might have held out it is hard to say, 
but the white tops of our tents appeared at last 
and put an end to everything but the thought 
of breakfast. 
That welcome meal dispatched, the day’s work 
had to be got through. First, there was a visit 
from the chief’s son—a pleasant, tall youth, with 
long ringlets, liberally oiled; and then came a 
heavy crop of petitions, for the people of this 
side of the country have a most unfortunate 
penchant for litigation. It was, alas! (how I 
regret it now!) quite half-past five before the 
munshis were sent away and the tent cleared 
“Now to test that ‘illicit’ information,” I said. 
“If you don’t know how to fish, G., it’s time 
you learned.” 
Then the boots and the “shorts,” to say noth¬ 
ing of the rods, reels, casts, spoons and the mul¬ 
tifarious paraphernalia of the fisherman were 
got out, and we made a start. 
“There are really only two pools, your honor” 
(God keep you pleasant!), said the man who 
knew, “but there are lots of fish in them. Rich¬ 
ards Sahib had great sport when he was 
here.” 
Two big pools there were, all set about with 
rocks, with a nice stream coming in at the head 
of the first. It looked a good place. We waded 
quietly through the edge of the second pool and 
got out on the rock shelf that commanded the 
first. Very cautiously I peered over at the spot 
where the stream entered the pool. My! What 
a sight greeted my astonished eyes! Some forty 
to fifty fish, mahseer, ranging between half a 
pound and four or five pounds, were slowly per¬ 
ambulating up and down in about four feet of 
water just below me. 
I motioned to G. to look, and was rewarded 
by the expression of wonder on his face. Fever¬ 
ishly we started to put up the rods and fix the 
landing net. Not till 6:15 were we ready, though, 
and it would be dark at 7. How I cursed the 
long march of the morning and my litigants of 
the afternoon. G. had to learn the gentle art of 
throwing a spoon from me. 
“If we can’t show you anything, it’s not the 
fault of the place,” I whispered. “We ought to 
do all right.” 
Then my spoon swung out, and dropping gent¬ 
ly into the water near the rocky shelf, started to 
spin steadily down the stream. 
Whiz ! Bang! Slap ! A two-pound fish seized 
it after it had barely gone a yard, and was off 
like a shot. But that was not all. Every other 
fish in the neighborhood went with him, jostling 
and thronging round him like the players in a 
Rugby football scrimmage. Such a strange 
strain and play upon the rod I have never seen, 
and then—the spoon came back to me, after 
barely half a minute’s play, the stiff Killin wire 
cast strangely kinked and bent. 1 simply mar¬ 
veled 
Then, after waiting a bit, I again essayed the 
same place. There was almost the same result. 
A fish slightly bigger than the last triumphantly 
carried off my spoon from a host of competitors, 
and this time I did not lose my quarry, but had 
the satisfaction of puiling him up eventually on 
a shelving beach in a quiet corner lower down. 
“It’s the chance of your lifetime,” I whispered 
to G. “Go ahead; just like I did,” adding, with 
unconscious irony, "they’ll take anything, I be¬ 
lieve.” 
I moved away to the second pool, and watched 
G.’s first efforts. He had a heavy, stiff rod of 
mine, which an enterprising tradesman had in 
the distant past persuaded me to buy as “just 
the thing for light mahseer,” but which I now 
know to be better fitted for a hundred-pound 
goonch. G. hooked out his line, anyhow, and 
dropped it with a heavy splash, once, twice and 
again, and then (the proverbial luck of the be¬ 
ginner) a game three-pounder was unwise 
enough to take his clumsily presented line. 
“Give him line,” I roared, and G. was just in 
time to save the first rush. 
I gave up my own fishing and came to advise. 
The tackle was stout, and G. has a cool head. 
Between us, after a bonny battle, we brought 
the fish to the rocks, where I netted him. 
G. was radiant. The flush of victory was on 
him, and I could see that the Ars Piscatoria had 
claimed him as a victim for all time. 
I resumed my sport. The light was fast fail¬ 
ing, but there was still enough to see by. Out 
traveled my spoon, searching along the ledges, 
and then there came just once again the wel¬ 
come whirr of the reel, and I was into a nice 
sizeable fish. He was not as big as G.’s, but I 
pouched him with satisfaction. And then—why, 
then, before G. had had half a chance to fol¬ 
low up his first brilliant achievement, and I to 
wheedle out a tithe of the denizens of the calm 
waters, the light fell. 
Bitter were my reflections as we waded 
through the tail of the pool and stumbled back 
over the boulder-strewn road to the tents. 
“My hat!” I said to G. “To think we shall 
