He was hungry now, quite suddenly and unpleasantly hungry. He collected dried grass and twigs: the thin blue smoke of his fire rose straight up high into the air. He fanned it until it had a red heart, and he gutted two fish. He washed them in the stream and cut a green withy: coming back to the fire’s black circle, he spitted them and lapped them with a piece of string to keep their bellies in. He twirled the ends and cooked his trout until their skins were wrinkled and golden and their pink flesh showed through the cracks in it. He had a broad leaf for a plate and bread and butter and a screw of salt from his bag. Being rather greedy by nature, he buttered and salted the fish with great care and ate them and the crusty bread in alternate bites, so that the taste came fresh and fresh: and at the end he slit out the little oval pieces from the cheeks of the trout and toasted them on the last piece of crust, so that the morsels spattered for a moment in the heat. After he had wiped his fingers and his mouth, he lay on his back in the soft, cushioning grass with his head under the shade of a bush, and all around him there was a murmur and a drowsy hum, and he slept.
When he woke up the sun had gone down three parts of the way to the horizon. Long shadows stood across the stream, and in the broad motes that came through the trees the spinners still danced in their hosts.
The fisherman raised his head and ran his fingers through his hair: he had not meant to lose his time in sleep, but here he did not mind the loss so much as he might have done on another stream; for he was here on a pilgrimage.
He walked back along the stream so as to fish up the same stretch again, and at the end of the pool by the bridge he saw a big rise – no splash, but the big, swirling ring that it is such a pleasure to see. The trout was on the farther side, well out in the open water, so it was necessary to creep up to an alder and, kneeling precariously on the edge, to cast left-handed from a long way off. Tentatively he worked a long line out, feeling his way across. A capricious little breeze, with no fixed direction, had arisen while he slept: the bushes behind him were a continual anxiety, and his knee kept slipping on the rounded edge of the bank. With his mouth closed tightly, he breathed heavily through his nose and concentrated on the flying line: his fly weaved back and yon, like a detached speck over which he had some occult control. The fly sped out and out, and still further; it was a very long cast. He shot the line, checked its run and bowed his rod; its forward motion stopped and as naturally as a dropping ephemerid the fly touched the surface, precisely where he had wanted it. The trout came straight at it, took it hard and vanished in a series of rings that spread out well across the pool before the fisherman raised his rod in a gentle tightening of the straight line. At once there was a great jar on the line as the trout jerked against the pull and sent the hook right home. The reel screamed, the rod curved, the line raced out. The trout leapt, not once but six times, showing clear a foot above the water at each leap. The man scrambled away from the insecure bank and stood in the water: his rod was thrilling with life under his hands. Three-pounder at least, he said it was, perhaps four, and Aah, would you? he said as the trout turned and dashed for the willow roots. His rod curved almost to a half-circle, checking sideways. The trout leapt again, slapping the water; it changed direction and shot up past him to the other end of the pool, into the deep stones beneath the rill. He could not reel in fast enough, and the line was still slack when the trout reached the stones.
Deep down in the calm water at the side of the rill the fish lay, beneath weeds and a tangle of drifted wood. Anxiously he twitched on the line; it was as dead as if it were tied to a rock. He was almost sure that it must be round the wood if not round the deep weed as well, but with his rod far out on the one side and then on the other he tried to stir the trout. There was no result, no feeling of life. With his rod pointing at the fish, he thrummed on the line, pulled and eased, did everything he knew, but it was entirely of its own foolish will that the trout moved in the end. Moved by some fancy, it turned round from its hole in the rocks and headed downstream with fresh strength. The cast strained shockingly: a green streamer carried away from the weed-bed, the line snaked free through the floating debris, and he was still on to his fish. For a dangerous minute the weed dashed through the water after the trout, but its stems parted before the cast.
Again the reel sang and the line fleeted away in spite of his checking finger and the straining rod: it was a heavy fish and a strong one. When the line was gone to the first knot in the backing, the trout was the whole length of the pool away; he dared not let it run any further, so he stopped the line dead for a second; it stretched and he let it go slack. The trout stopped, leapt twice, but went on under the bridge, down through the dark tunnel of swift water, and the fisherman’s heart sank. But he ran down the bank, now in the water, now out of it, stumbling and panting and sweating. The line was fraying against the stone foot of the bridge both this side and that; the strain was unwarrantable, and still the trout was running. He reached the bridge, with a couple of yards of backing on his reel, and the fish curved across to lie under the shade of the far bank, with its gills opening wide and fast.
Jeremy had been under the bridge; he knew its dark-green slipperiness and the almost certainty of a ducking. The rod might break too. However, there was nothing for it: he pushed his rod through, tip foremost, and bowed his head under the arch. The pent-in water took him behind the knees and nearly had him down at once: its note changed as soon as he was under the bridge. Then the trout began to rush across the stream again, and in his flurry of spirit he was through the bridge and on the shingle the other side before he had had time to think about it.
The heavy strain of the angled line had tired the trout, and its rushes were now much shorter, and they lacked the irresistible fire of the first. He made line on it fast, and fought it hard, never giving it a moment to recover. He thought he had it once, and pulled it in towards the bank as it lay inert upon the water, but before he had got it more than halfway it revived with a desperate rush and very nearly broke him against a stone on the bottom.
The trout lay on the bottom and would not move: the fisherman had been so near success and failure that he grew over-cautious now. He knew that his cast must be in a bad way, and he dared not pull until a sudden feeling of desperation nerved him to it. The fish had recovered, and it had learnt cunning. It meant to go through the bridge again, and he only stopped it with a strain that came within an ace of snapping the cast at the worst fray. Then he saw the line coming back and he scrabbled his way fast up the bank to keep the strain, reeling in as he went. I know I shall trip, he said, and that will be an end to it: but his good fortune was with him, and he kept his feet among the bushes and lumps. He kept the fish on the top now and bore masterfully on it, because there was no other way. Its strength ebbed in short rushes and a few angry leaps; the continual pressure was breaking its heart, and at the end it lost its head, used up the last of its strength in an unavailing burst and rolled sideways in the water.
He reeled in it very cautiously over the shingle where he stood ankle-deep. He was between the fish and the water as it grounded; there was a wild flurry and he had it out jerking and gasping on the grass in the last golden sunlight of the day.
He took the draggled fly from the corner of its jaw – it had nearly worn free in the fight – and he stood above the fish, gazing at it with satisfied admiration. It was a perfect fish: he looked down on its small, well-formed head, the gleaming pools of its eyes, and the golden yellow under the delicate white of its throat, and it lay there quiet with labouring gills. He must weigh a good four pounds, he said, drawing his finger down the fine, pink-flecked line that divided its belly from its gorgeous spotted sides. The fish bounded at his touch, and lay still again. He saw its strong shoulders, the saffron of its fins and the splendid play of colours over its whole glowing body, and he could not find it in his heart to kill the fish. It was the day and an undefined symbolism that worked upon him too.
Bending to the water, he held the trout upright with its head upstream: it was certainly four pounds. Its gills opened and closed and the cool water laved through them: for minutes he held it so, until fresh life and a little strength flowed into it and it lashed free. The trout almost turned belly-up a little way out, but more strength came to it. It turned into the stronger current and sank down to the waving green. He could see it there plainly, working