Responsibility--vast, vague, formless--is yours. Only the fact that you
are wholly occupied with the exigence of the moment prevents your
understanding of what it is, but it hovers dark and depressing behind
your possible failure. You must win. This is no fish; it is opportunity
itself, and once gone it will never return. The mysticism of lower dusk
in the forest, of upper afterglow on the hills, of the chill of evening
waters and winds, of the glint of strange phantoms under the darkness
of cliffs, of the whisperings and shoutings of Things you are too busy
to identify out in the gray of North Country awe--all these menace you
with indeterminate dread. Knee-deep, waist-deep, swift water, slack
water, downstream, upstream, with red eyes straining into the dimness,
with every muscle taut and every nerve quivering, you follow the
ripping of your line. You have consecrated yourself to the uttermost.
The minutes stalk by you gigantic. You are a stable pin-point in
whirling phantasms. And you are very little, very small, very
inadequate among these Titans of circumstance.
Thrice he breaks water, a white and ghostly apparition from the deep.
Your heart stops with your reel, and only resumes its office when again
the line sings safely. The darkness falls, and with it, like the
mysterious strength of Sir Gareth's opponent, falls the power of your
adversary. His rushes shorten. The blown world of your uncertainty
shrinks to the normal.
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