-from
butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less,"
the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses
materialised! A fish--fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore
to be woo'd--she is a salmon, therefore to be won"--but shy, timid,
capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any
other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in
spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last; and then
with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead, or worse than dead,
fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the lustre of her beauty,
insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable
things in a world of perishing!--But the salmon has grown sulky, and
must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct
with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver
bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very
head of the waterfall! Give her the butt--give her the butt--or she is
gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep!--Now comes the
trial of your tackle--and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge
of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards--right up the middle of
the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very
course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and
deep--and the line goes steady, boys, steady--stiff and steady as a Tory
in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal
fin--danger in the flap of her tail--and yet may her silver shoulder
shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate,
and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now
level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or
obstruction--the coast is clear--no tree-roots here--no floating
branches--for during the night they have all been swept down to the
salt loch. _In medio tutissimas ibis_--ay, now you feel she begins to
fail--the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What!
another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to
have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual
Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook!--you in the
tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the
devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?--Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is
that you? God bless your