Part 4

Suddenly a little scarlet roach-eye discovers her black back, which up to the present had looked just like part of the bottom, and they fly away from her in a panic of terror. In one moment the rushy margin is empty.

An accident that may happen even to the best of us! And Grim has to move on to fresh hunting-grounds.

Among the floating forests of green feather-foil go big, broad-scaled bream. They follow close in one another’s wake, and lie on the surface, letting the sunlight play upon their golden scales. Their fat bellies with the lobster-red fins, and their large, cod-like mouths, give an impression of simpleness. Yet they are cunning enough, and very cautious in all their behaviour.

Several of them are covered with cuts and wounds on the back and sides, and it is evident they have already made acquaintance with a pike’s mouth. The body of one of them is still bloody, and threads of flesh and torn scales make it look quite woolly as it moves through the water.

They come from deep down at the bottom, and shine with mud and slime and water-moss. They whisk along with much movement and many strokes of the tail. Reeds and rushes swing and sway as they stop for a moment to rub themselves against them. As they pass through the open water, between the masses of vegetation, where the sun suddenly shines upon their amber scales, Grim hastily conceals herself in the forest of weed.

The pliant water-plants, with their long stalks, accommodate themselves to the current, hanging westwards for an hour, only to turn just as unresistingly the opposite way the next. Stiff collars of leaves, like life-belts, hold up the naked stalks, and form a close, flickering thicket about the lurking lynx. Without the slime on her body, she would never get through.

Soon the fat-bellies are before her; they are slouching along in little companies, with a thick, greenish, juicy rim to the corners of their fat mouths.

Her purpose strengthens, her powers are doubled, but she is able to restrain herself: the moment has not yet come.

Not until the last “water-cow” is straight in front of her does she reveal herself; and the water flashes and bubbles as Grim twists and turns in her efforts to come up with her prey.

The flank attack, however, does not come altogether as a surprise to the “cow”; it has been prepared for it in this narrow passage, and therefore kept close to the bottom. As a stone bores its way into the ground, so does it plunge into the mud, stirring up the water, and digging itself in, so that Grim gets only mud and grains of sand between her teeth.

Another accident which only sharpened her appetite and made her ungovernably fierce; and just then a little roach swam past.

Grim started. Her embarrassment at her failure almost disappeared, and she involuntarily stiffened as she stood. She could see with half an eye that the little roach, which was limping along without any frolicsome jumps and twists, would be an easy prey.

What luck! Roach were generally lively little fish, and not easily got hold of; and although they formed part of her daily fare, she had to use all her powers and unfold all her energy in order to catch two or three, at the most five, a day. It was only in May, when they lay in bundles among the rushes, amorously flicking their tails, that she had her fill of them, taking as many as a score in the day.

Now only patience, a little more time to wait; for this time she would make sure of her fish!

Just then there is a movement in one of the clumps of weed. The dusky-hued perch with the high back forestalls her. Right before her nose he darts like an arrow after the fugitive, but hesitates at the very moment of striking, stops, and sniffs.

“Oh! so he daren’t! He wants to have the whole company with him!”

Grim’s eyes are alight with the eagerness of the hunter, and her stiff tongue quivers in her mouth as, with widely opened jaws, she springs upon her prey.

The roach is good enough! It wriggles between her teeth and tickles her cheeks and chin with slaps of its little tail; and yet ... it has an inexplicable strength like that of a little pearly fish that she dimly remembers.

She grows angry. Is an insignificant little fish like this going to resist _her_ will? The silly little thing is ready to go any way but the one _she_ wants it to go; she can hardly get from one thicket of weeds to the other. She becomes so angry that she feels the blood burning in the back of her neck, and with a sudden vigorous effort, she gives the roach a violent tug.

That helps; the fish becomes manageable, its strength vanishes. She is triumphant. Yes, she knew, of course, how it would be!

Grim had been fortunate in her misadventure. True, it was a man-roach that she had bitten into, but she had fortunately broken the line, and now went off with a long trace dragging after her. She had swallowed the bait, but what made her horribly uncomfortable was that in doing so she had got a long, thorny water-plant fixed to her upper lip.

They were the barbs of the triple hook that she took for thorns!

At that moment she sees another little roach shining. It is just as languid as the previous one, and makes the same tempting impression. Instantly she makes a dash at it.

The same comedy was gone through, the same incomprehensible strength in a puny roach, and the same work to get the refractory fish into her power.

Well, she managed it at last; at last she had her mouthful.

This one she swallowed too, but once more she had to spit out something sharp and prickly that hung to her upper lip on the opposite side.

It was a long time before Grim managed to wear away the two triple hooks from the corners of her mouth, and in the meantime she swam about with the rusty things like an extra set of monster eye-teeth sticking out of her mouth. The pieces of line that trailed behind her often caught in things and chained her in an incomprehensible manner to reeds and rushes; but at last she pulled out one, and a little later the other, and a hard, gristly, leather-like skin formed where they had been.

She gained some experience from this incident; henceforward, she regarded solitary, sickly-looking roach with keen suspicion. She would still take with confident voracity large roach and small; but she very reluctantly took a halting, languid fish like those that had pricked her so horribly that morning. Their drooping fins and heavy, wriggling flight had fixed themselves clearly in her mind’s eye.

Her peaceful youth, in which she had only had the heron and the crayfish and her own kind to fight with, had long since passed, and henceforth she was to see more and more of the angler’s implements.

* * * * *

But the old sportsman, whose tackle was wearing out, had to overhaul and renew his stock. It irritated him beyond endurance, and for a long time he felt ashamed of himself. From the resistance it had offered he felt quite convinced that the pike he had lost was at least worth a bronze medal. He would not tell anyone where it lay, but would take it himself when he had the opportunity.

VII: THE RASPER

The horde of marauders were chasing through the lake again, and behind them came the pike. These last did not go together, like the perch, in serried ranks at a furious hunting pace, but slunk along one by one from stone to stone, and from weedy clump to weedy clump.

Grim is with them, and like a seal she helps herself to the flying bleak which in their terror rush blindly into her jaws. It is quick work, but nevertheless not quick enough. The gluttony of the perch angers and irritates her; she feels her belly growing larger, and her throat widening. She has room for more fish, mountains of fish!

With a jerk of her body she comes nearer, and is now right in the whirlpool of bleak and perch.

Quivering and trembling, the little fish fly in all directions as she tears among them, and with strong beats of her tail to right and left pursues her victims. Her eyes gleam, and her thin lips quiver with insatiable desire.

A big, high-backed perch coolie makes a capture right in front of her. In his eagerness he makes such a commotion in the water that it looks as if it were full of thick, shining snakes. Snap! Snap! There goes a bleak right before her nose!

This is more than she can endure! She dislikes this insolent lake-dog in a still greater degree than when, as a young pike, she stayed in the shelter of the creek. His cunning and deceit, his ability to save himself and to get her into a scrape, has of late frequently irritated her.

A moment later, while she is in the middle of a spring, he happens to be pushed by his comrades right in front of her mouth. Her jaws are already opened, and the water is streaming in like a mill-race; she sees the bleak-fat upon the mouth of her plump opponent, and her ferocity and murderous lust are doubled.

Then she gives way to the innermost need of her being. With an enormous development of energy, intoxicated with the joy of capture, she attacks the Rasper with the full strength of both her serrated jaws, opening them so wide, and dashing at him with such force, that they engulf him to far down his plump hog-back. The hundreds of little teeth with which her palate is paved have the same desire, the same purpose; to bore right in and hold fast.

Just as the pike’s attack is at its height, the Rasper suddenly raises his twelve-spined dorsal fin. During his chase of the little fish, it had lain neatly folded like a fan along his back; now it is transformed into a murderous weapon, and its bony ribs into a bundle of hidden sword-blades, now stiff and sharp like polished bayonets, now elastically pliable like rapiers.

Joyfully Grim takes the big lump into her mouth. She feels that it pricks her, but the cavity of her mouth is not troubled with any exaggerated sensitiveness.

Splendidly heavy and solid the Rasper feels as he lies upon her tongue! And yet--his rough, tile-like scales, and the very small amount of fat and slime on his skin, make it unusually difficult for her to get the lump down.

He is hurting her now. She quickly takes a better hold, even letting her prehensile teeth come into play, and the long board-like tongue warp in co-operation; but no matter what she does, or how wide she opens her mouth, her efforts are in vain: the high-backed one refuses to move beyond a certain point.

Incomprehensible! Impossible!

She tries again. Besides her tongue and her prehensile teeth, she brings the muscles of her throat into play, and the bones of her head expand like a snake’s. Colours dance before her eyes as the gullet opens and closes, trying to draw in the perch’s head. But to no avail. The wedge remains immovable. The big mouthful is _too_ big!

So there is nothing to be done, but give it up! Grim opens her mouth wide, relaxes her prehensile teeth, which, as readily as an adder’s, turning on their hinges, return to the perpendicular; she opens her throat-muscles as far as she can, and even pushes with her tongue. “There! The torture in the spiked barrel is over. The prison is graciously open to the great perch.”

The Rasper, who, all through the battle, has been lashing out with his strong tail, which is hanging out of the pike’s mouth, and throwing Grim from one side to the other, suddenly notices the loosening of the strait-jacket, and backs with a jerk. He thinks he is free, so easily does he swim now, although the darkness before his eyes is just as thick and oppressive.

He is still in the pike’s throat, and cannot get away, for he has his twelve stiffest dorsal spines bored into his enemy’s palate; and the more he worries and works with his dangerous opponent, the deeper and more firmly do the spines fix themselves.

In the meantime Grim, true to her pike-nature, has for a few moments lost nearly all her energy. The spines begin to hurt her, and her mouthful on the whole to incommode her. She cannot get sufficient water over her gills, and what does filter into her mouth in spite of the gag, is needed by the gag itself. She can feel it breathing inside her mouth; incessantly, with every indication of excitement, its gill-covers open and close, and take the lion’s share of the water.

It is impossible for her to bear this suffocation any longer; she must have air; and in ungovernable rage she begins to lash out with her tail. Now it is she who takes the upper hand, and pushes the hog-backed one before her through the water.

Thus the combat continues. Now it is Grim who has the mastery, and shakes her opponent so that the perch’s tail slaps her weakly on the cheeks, and fetches her blow after blow upon the back of her neck. Now it is the Rasper’s turn to use Grim as a ferule, running her against stones and water-plants on the bottom, and whirling her round.

But no matter how much they exert themselves, it is without result; they do not succeed in getting away from one another.

Faint and dead-beat, they fall over on their sides. The blood in their red gills scarcely circulates, their strength is ebbing, and there is no longer any question of either being _leader_. They only take it in turns now to splash a little with their tails and try to right themselves.

Grim, who is lying with her gills outside in the free water, is still alive and in possession of all her senses, but the Rasper is half dead.

Then they float up and drift over the surface of the water like dead fish.

* * * * *

Thunder is rolling over the lake.

A scorching sun and oppressive heat have long foreboded the storm that is brewing, and now at last it has burst; the clouds and the water have met.

The celestial salute begins rumbling and crackling a long way off in the farthest corner where the reed-forests rally round the mouth of the brook. The lightning ploughs long, white-glowing fibrous sparks out of the sombre, purple horizon, from which the showers come chasing and sweeping over the lake, casting dark, threatening shadows before them.

Under the fringe of forest on the lee-side, where all the grebes have crept together, one of the “big birds” is lying at anchor. She is riding out the storm while the whirlwinds are playing touch over the deep water. She has no lines or fishing-tackle out; she knows well that all angling is in vain.

The water seethes and boils on all sides; the grey troughs of the waves are full of bursting bubbles. Little slate-coloured showers dart about, and plough up the surface of the water like the scratching of a cat on the skin; they dash themselves against the reedy margin and the edge of the wood, cutting broad lanes through them.

All the fish have left the shallow water for the depths where they can lie far enough below the surface to escape the movement of the waves. Only the sheat-fish, the old water-hyena, is out roaming.

The wild weather puts life into Oa; it brings her great opportunities. The fish cannot see in the rough water, they are thrown out of their course, at one moment jumbled together, then separated; and one and another come to grief. It is corpse-weather today. The angry waves stir up carrion from the bottom, or carry it out from bridge and bank. She always gets so hungry in stormy weather, and feels as if she must go to the surface for air.

Feeling her way with her sensitive barbels, she glides out of her hole on the east side of the submarine mountain slope. Like a huge eel she wriggles up to the surface, where she lies in wait, slowly drifting with the current.

Grim’s white belly is not turned down now. The colour that makes the fish look one with the water would then have hidden her well enough for any one looking up from below. Now her flecked sides and black back make a distinct stripe in the water.

A cunning expression comes into Oa’s little eyes. The queer fish with two tails attracts her.

The storm is abating; the last heavy shower is over. A patch of blue sky peeps out like a smiling eye between the frayed, swollen clouds. The lake sinks to rest, and even the pennons of the rushes hang loosely from their stalks; but in the distance can be heard the low rumbling of another storm.

The boat takes advantage of the lull, and is on her way home.

Oa, hearing the swish of her bow, has only time to make a few hasty snaps at the big perch’s already swollen belly; her thick, fleshy lips are still pulling at the Rasper’s intestines as she slowly dives down into deep water.

The gulls and terns, which have begun to gather about the spot, are filled with renewed hope, and swoop down upon their prey with vociferous cries. Involuntarily the angler’s attention is attracted to them.

He takes out his glasses, then rows nearer; and in another moment he has the two fish in his landing-net.

What a haul! A pike that has gorged itself on a giant perch! And it can only just have happened, for as soon as he has them in the boat he puts his nose to them and smells that they are fresh.

The perch, it is true, looks rather poorly, but that is probably because the gulls have been at him already; and he carefully begins to release it, and is greatly pleased when he discovers that the big, voracious pike, which is quite lively, is one of his marked fish.

Grim is furious, and tries to bite and snap while the happy angler makes a guess at her weight by swinging the landing-net up and down in his hands. Ten pounds at the very lowest! No throwing this one back again!

So she was once more in man’s power, between his fingers and nails. The light made her eyes prick and smart, the dry air stopped the course of her blood and her scales rose in terror and pain. For the third time she was as it were in the heron’s throat!

Then at last she awoke, her sight returned and the breath to her red gills; her brain became clear, and she no longer felt that uncomfortable pressure on the back of her neck. Life was once more coursing through her veins.

She was in water, and with a stroke of her tail she made for the bottom. Oh! She had run her nose against a “stone!” She turned away and tried to go to one side, but there was another stone; there were stones all round her.

The fisherman had put her into the well of his boat. She would be all right there--for the present!

The well was full of small fish, which at her appearance immediately crowded together in a corner. She scowled at them, but although her stomach was empty, she felt no desire to eat. She remained perfectly still in the darkest corner of the well, and took note in her own way of what went on around her--the angler’s tread on the planks of the boat, his rattling with the oars and gear, his shouts and hailing of other sportsmen gliding past, fastened themselves in her memory. Now and again a “bushy plant” came down and waved its stalks and leaves about her head. She wanted to get away from the bush, and started with a stroke of her tail, but she ran straight into the landing-net. She could not tear the bushy plant, its numerous thick tendrils were so absurdly strong; and it increased her suspicion and gave her fresh experience.

Deep down, Oa follows the boat and listens to the ripple of the water against the keeled breast of the great “swimming bird.” The old hyena, who had fed on the carrion of the lake for more than fifty years, knew all about the fishermen. With her little blinking, bronze-coloured eyes, that lay floating at the sides of her head, right out where the nostrils are generally placed in mammals, she gives careful attention to the refuse that the fisherman throws out when he cleans the dead perch.

She dares not venture up to the surface. The sun is shining again, and there is no archipelago of water-lily leaves under which she can hide her head. She must wait patiently until her perquisites descend.

She also hears the splashing of the bird, and shouts and strange thumps on the boat-planks; and she keeps her blue-black pupils fixed expectantly upon the great dark shadow up there.

Who knows, some day perhaps a young one might drop out!

As the angler neared the shore he lifted the lid of the well, and stood rejoicing over his catch. He saw the pike throw up her head, and was glad to find her still as lively as ever.

And to think that Heaven should at last reward him for his magnanimity! For the mark on the dorsal fin showed distinctly that this fish had been in his hands before.

Grim saw glimpses of the open water from which the dark land-shadows, in the form of the sides of the boat, shut her off. It must be a ditch she had got into, a pool; such mishaps had befallen her before on her annual wedding-tours up in narrow channels and bogs.

Well then, she knew what to do, and she crouched in a corner, where she lay awaiting her opportunity.

The angler should have replaced the lid before taking his usual nip. As it was, he was standing quietly leaning back with crooked arm, when suddenly, with a tremendous leap, Grim sprang out of the well and over the side of the boat, and with a splash disappeared into the lake.

“Funny thing, very funny!” said a traveller a little later in the railway-carriage, to whom the angler had wrathfully related his story.

But the angler himself saw nothing funny in it at all.

VIII: THE ANGLER’S END

It was so natural for Grim to be once more splashing freely in the lake; it was so natural for her to be feeding on roach again. She should have learned a lesson from her adventure in the air with the man, but the qualifications were lacking.

Her senses, and her power of discrimination, however, had become keener, and she grew more timid and watchful in regard to splashing and noise; indeed, she quite lost her appetite when she was frightened.

The time was past when she would confidently approach the shadow of a boat, she was exceedingly cautious now when she saw the “great bird” on the water.

By this time she weighs about eighteen pounds, and measures the length of a grown man’s leg from hip to heel; her dorsal fin measures more than two hand-breadths, and it would take a large hand to span her back.

She loves peace and quiet, and feels very irritable under the influence of others.

On the approach of storm and bad weather, which she perceives a long time in advance, she generally retires into deep water, where the noise of the waves cannot reach her. She feels indisposed and ill, and remains motionless in her watery lair. Day after day she stays thus, without feeling hunger, or any desire for action. She sleeps and lets all her nerves and muscles rest; only her gills and fins keep working mechanically.

At such times the angler may try to tempt her with spoon or other artificial bait, or with live fish, but she will not touch them! One tempting little decoy-fish after another may whisk past her nose, but both palate and stomach easily withstand the temptations that are placed before her surfeited eyes.

But when the weather calms down and the waves once more grow less, she comes to life again, and is then well and rested. The storm has cleared her blood; she needs food and exercise, and is biting madly.

One afternoon the angler is sitting in his boat with all his rods and lines out; he is smoking a pipe and listening to the loud “karr-karr” of the grebes.

As usual he is alone in the boat.

He has anchored off his favourite bank, a narrow reef which, in the shelter of the wood, runs far out into the lake. This fishing-ground, which in windy weather is the richest in the lake, he has discovered himself.

It was hard work getting out to it! The gusts of wind came down upon him unexpectedly as he bounded over the water in his little green-painted boat. Suddenly the lake assumed a wilder aspect, the great wave-mountains were broken up into small pieces, and the valleys were filled with wrinkles. The boat quivered, and the angler started and let the main-sail down, while the black wind from the frayed clouds raged under the heavens.