betrayed a desire to sheer into the heart of the rapid. Kept
out of this by a firm hand, he sped across to the other side, then made
another attempt to get down to the narrows. For just about a minute it
was neck or nothing between us, but I had made up my mind that, whether
he broke me or not, go a yard farther towards danger he should not. He
might have known what was my fell purpose, for, after doggedly holding
his own while I might count ten, he came up, literally inch by inch, in
response to the cautious turn of the winch handle. It is the acme of
sport to have a fine fish on your winch, as it were, trying his best to
increase distance, fighting right and left incessantly, and yet
compelled to advance against his will in the teeth of a powerful
glacier-fed stream. There was a prolongation of this exquisite
excitement. Sometimes the fish would be winched up to within thirty
yards of line, and then in a twinkling there would be fifty or sixty
yards quivering at the stretch, and the old tactics had to be repeated.
The fear all the while was that the fish, however well hooked at first,
might eventually break away the hold; but I had not now to learn that
in such a dilemma it is always well to be as hard with the fish as the
tackle will bear, and the time arrived when the line became short and
the fish subdued, and A., seeing his opportunity with the gaff, waded
in amongst the boulders at the very point of the island. Nothing,
however, could induce the fish to come into the moderately slack water
where gaffing would have been an easy matter. He floundered about on
the very verge of the branch stream, and before long, rather than give
more line, I was forced to walk back amongst the undergrowth.

It was time the fish was out of these mutual difficulties, and if he
would not take the steel where he ought to have been, we must strike
him where and how we could. Back amongst the bushes I could just see
A.'s head and bent body with the outstretched gaff. As the poor fellow
had missed a fish once or twice that day (being as I have before said
much indisposed with a severe cold and a splitting headache), I was, at
this delay, fearful of the sequel, and observed with horror his wild,
scythe-like sweep with the gaff. I could feel also, but too surely,
that the fish had received a violent blow; but the sound of its
continued splashing in the water and the steady strain upon the line
allowed me to breathe again, and to