These you accord
laconically, a word at a time, in answer to direct question, between
puffs of smoke.
"At the Narrows. Royal Coachman. Just before I came in. Pretty fair
fight. Just at the edge of the eddy." And so on. But your soul glories.
The tape-line is brought out. Twenty-nine inches it records. Holy
smoke, what a fish! Your air implies that you will probably catch three
more just like him on the morrow. Dick and Billy make tracings of him
on the birch bark. You retain your lofty calm: but inside you are
little quivers of rapture. And when you awake, late in the night, you
are conscious, first of all, that you are happy, happy, happy, all
through; and only when the drowse drains away do you remember why.
XVIII.
MAN WHO WALKS BY MOONLIGHT.
We had been joined on the River by friends. "Doug," who never fished
more than forty rods from camp, and was always inventing water-gauges,
patent indicators, and other things, and who wore in his soft slouch
hat so many brilliant trout flies that he irresistibly reminded you of
flower-decked Ophelia; "Dinnis," who was large and good-natured, and
bubbling and popular; Johnny, whose wide eyes looked for the first time
on the woods-life, and whose awe-struck soul concealed itself behind
assumptions; "Jim," six feet tall and three feet broad, with whom the
season before I had penetrated to Hudson Bay; and finally, "Doc," tall,
granite, experienced, the best fisherman that ever hit the river.
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