[Illustration: THEN IN THE TWILIGHT THEY BATHE.]
Like a crazy man you shorten your line. Six seconds later your flies
fall skilfully just upstream from where last you saw that wonderful
tail.
But six seconds may be a long, long period of time. You have feared and
hoped and speculated and realized; feared that the leviathan has
pricked himself, and so will not rise again; hoped that his appearance
merely indicated curiosity which he will desire further to satisfy;
speculated on whether your skill can drop the fly exactly on that spot,
as it must be dropped; and realized that, whatever be the truth as to
all those fears and hopes and speculations, this is irrevocably your
last chance.
For an instant you allow the flies to drift downstream, to be floated
here and there by idle little eddies, to be sucked down and spat out of
tiny suction-holes. Then cautiously you draw them across the surface of
the waters. _Thump--thump--thump_--your heart slows up with
disappointment. Then mysteriously, like the stirring of the waters by
some invisible hand, the molten silver is broken in its smoothness. The
Royal Coachman quietly disappears. With all the brakes shrieking on
your desire to shut your eyes and heave a mighty heave, you depress
your butt and strike.
Then in the twilight the battle. No leisure is here, only quivering,
intense, agonized anxiety. The affair transcends the moment. Purposes
and necessities of untold ages have concentrated, so that somehow back
of your consciousness rest hosts of disembodied hopes, tendencies,
evolutionary progressions, all breathless lest you prove unequal to the
struggle for which they have been so long preparing.
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