CHAPTER VI

OF LITTLE BROWN TROUT

“Loughareema! Loughareema! Lies so high among the heather, A little lough, a dark lough, The wather’s black an’ deep: Ould herons go a-fishing there, An’ sea-gulls all together Float roun’ the one green island On the fairy lough asleep.” MOIRA O’NEIL.

A WEEK went by with the mysterious swiftness of holiday weeks, especially in Ireland. No one quite knew what became of the long June days; they dawned in light mists that lay on the surface of Lough Aniller, reddened with the sunrise, only to vanish as the sun mounted; they widened to warm brightness, with clear blue skies flecked with the tiniest cloudlets; and sank to long, delicious twilights, with just enough chill in the air to make light coats necessary. No one was inclined for strenuous exertion. Jim and Wally, under orders to take life very easily for the present, were content to lie about in the fragrant grass, to go for short walks along the borders of the lough, or to let Patsy Burke row them slowly up its placid waters, where scarcely a ripple marked the rising of a trout. To Norah and her father it was sufficient happiness to watch their boys gradually winning back strength. Each day that went by and brought no recurrence of throat-trouble was something achieved; and the long, golden days smoothed the weary lines from the boyish faces, and brought something of the old tan into their cheeks. There was no doubt that as a sanatorium Donegal merited all that had been claimed of her.

They were the only guests in the old stone house. Later on, Mrs. Moroney told them, people were coming from Dublin and Belfast: but the war had temporarily killed the tourist traffic from England, and Irish fishing was having a much-needed rest.

“But for the fowl I have, indeed, I’d be hard put to it,” said Mrs. Moroney. She reared innumerable ducks and chickens, and carried on a thriving trade, sending them ready dressed to England—aided by a parcels post system which, unlike that of Australia, does not appear to regard the senders and receivers of parcels as wealthy eccentrics, to be heavily charged, but otherwise unworthy of consideration. At all times Mrs. Moroney was to be found plucking and dressing her wares—keeping, nevertheless, an eagle eye upon her household, and always ready to take interest in the doings of her guests. Good nature beamed from her countenance, and chicken-fluff always ornamented her hair.

Timsy had constituted himself Jim’s shadow, and courier-in-chief to the party. He knew all the country with a boy’s knowledge, had an acquaintance with the ways of trout which seemed miraculous in one of his years, and cherished a feud of long standing with John Conolly, whose treatment of the little ass did not come up to the standard instilled into Timsy by the sergeant, now in France. All these matters he placed at the absolute disposal of Jim. The rest of the party he treated politely: they were well enough. But the big boy in khaki was somehow different, and Timsy gave him all his warm little heart.

It was a shock to him that Jim and Wally appeared in rough tweeds on the morning after their arrival.

“Where’s you uny-forms?” demanded Timsy, hopping on one foot on the mossy path, rather like an impertinent sparrow.

“Upstairs,” Jim said, solemnly.

“Why for don’t you put ’em on?”

“Didn’t want to.”

Timsy surveyed him with a pained air.

“Me daddy says uny-form had a right to be wore all the time,” he said. “He didn’t have no uvver clothes when _he_ came home.”

Jim relented at the small, worried face.

“Tell you how it is, old man,” he said. “The old Germans laid us out; and we’re going to get better as quick as we can, to go and lick them.”

“Yes?” said Timsy, digging his heel into the earth, in bloodthirsty ecstasy. “That’s what me daddy’s after doing.”

“Of course he is. Well, we’ll get better quicker if we haven’t got to wear heavy uniforms all the time, don’t you see? So we asked leave; and a big general said we could put on other clothes. He was a very big general, so it’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Was he very big?”

“Enormous,” said Jim, gravely.

“If he was very ’normous, I ’spect it’s all right,” Timsy said, relinquishing his point with reluctance. “Only I likes you best in uny-forms.” His eye suddenly lit with new hope. “Do you think you’d wear ’em on Sunday, an’ you goin’ to church?”

“I would,” Jim said. “There, it’s a bargain, Timsy.” So Timsy accepted the tweed knickerbockers as necessary evils, and peace reigned.

As for the trout, they had remained in peace. Patsy Burke had given the Australians a few lessons in throwing a fly, a gentle art to which they did not take very kindly, though they proved apt enough pupils. But the trout were not rising, and they found it dull. Their previous experience had been either the primitive method of a stick, a string, and a worm, in the creeks at home, or a deep-sea hand-line with a substantial bait and a heavy sinker. They liked these peaceful ways, and to them the incessant business of casting seemed, in the Australian phrase, “too much like hard work.” They endeavoured, however, to keep this view from the scandalized Mr. Burke, whose scorn at the mere mention of a hand-line was almost painful to witness.

In defence of their apathy, it must be admitted that the sport was poor. The weather had been unfavourable, and the brown trout declined to rise; but even in the best of years Lough Aniller, the big lough by the house, was not a good fishing lake. A few rises came to them, which they missed: and they had the poor satisfaction of beholding Mr. Burke land a specimen which weighed not quite a quarter of a pound. It did not seem, to untutored eyes quite worth the candle.

“’Tis a poor lake, anyways,” Mr. Burke said. They were paddling home in the setting sun, the water full of bright reflections. “I dunno why the trout wouldn’t be in it: it’s the biggest hereabouts, but they don’t seem wishful for it at all. There’s Lough Nacurra and Lough Anoor—they’re little enough, but you’d get finer fishing in them in a day than in a week of Lough Aniller.”

“Why don’t we go there?” spoke Wally, lazily.

“There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t. Sure, they’re no distance, and the fishing belongs to the house; there’ll not be a rod on them, barring your own.”

“What do they mean, Patsy?” Norah asked. Mr. Burke was her instructor in the Irish language, and she thirsted for translations of each unknown word.

“Lough Anoor’s the lough of the gold, miss, and Lough Nacurra’s the lough of the Champions. I dunno why they have those names on them; there’s a lot of ould stories goin’. Whatever reason anybody was to give, no one could say it was wrong.”

“Well, Lough Aniller means the lough of the Eagle, you said, Patsy, but there don’t seem any eagles about.”

“Thrue for ye,” agreed Mr. Burke; “they do not. But I wouldn’t wonder if there was any amount of them here in the ould ancient times.” He scanned the placid waters with disfavour. “There’s one thing they couldn’t call it, and that’s Nabrack—the lough of the Trout!”

“They certainly couldn’t—whoever ‘they’ may be,” said Wally, laughing. “There are just about as many trout in this lough as there are in the front garden, I believe. Who’ll come to one of the others to-morrow?—I’ll have to learn their names before I say them in public. I vote for the one that belongs to the Champions!”

“Lough Nacurra—ye might do worse,” said Patsy. “’Tis a good little lough, and there’s a small little island in it, that ’ud be a good place for you to be taking your dinners. The boat’s no great thing at all—but she’s better than the one on Lough Anoor.”

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Linton. “Is she worse than this one?” The boat on Lough Aniller had not struck the party as an up-to-date craft.

“She is,” said Mr. Burke. “But there’s no distance to be pulling her: sure, the lough’s not big enough to go any ways far. If ’twas Lough Anoor, now, there’d be no good in me comin’ with you, for five couldn’t sit in her. Four’ll be all she’ll hold.”

“Is she safe?” asked Mr. Linton.

“Is it safe? Sure, you wouldn’t sink that one, not if you danced in her,” said Patsy.

They had drifted almost to the end of the lough. Above them the high road crossed the stone bridge. The whir of a motor hummed across it, and, looking up, they saw a grey runabout car, driven by a man of whose face little could be seen, since goggles hid his eyes and his cap was pulled low. Patsy touched his cap hastily as the car vanished in its own dust.

“’Tis the young masther,” he said; and added, as if in further explanation, “Sir John, I mean—Sir John O’Neill.”

“Does he live here?” Norah asked.

“He do, miss. But a lot of his time he’s somewhere else—London or foreign parts.”

“I thought every landowner about here had gone to the war,” Mr. Linton said.

“Begob, Sir John ’ud give the two eyes out of his head to be gone, too,” said Patsy, shortly. “But they won’t take him. ’Tis—’tis weakly he is. He have the spirit of ten men in him; them ould German’s ’ud find their hands full, and they to be tackling him in a tight place. Well, well—some people don’t get much luck.” He stopped short, and rowed violently for some time.

“Do you get many salmon here?” Jim asked, idly. It was evident that Mr. Burke did not wish to pursue the subject of Sir John O’Neill.

“In the river—but only a few,” replied the boatman. “’Twouldn’t be worth your while getting a licence, sir. Sure it’s them ’ud give you a different idea of fishing. I got one in Lough Illion, in Kerry, one time when I was staying in them parts. That was the fish! He tuk me four and a half hours to kill.”

“Whew—w!” said Jim, respectfully. “He must have been a big fellow.”

“Well, he was not that big at all; but he tuk the fly as if he meant it, and down he went to the bottom like a shtone. An’ there he lay, and I going round and round him in the boat, trying any ways to shift him, and he sulking in the weeds. Banging my rod I was, and pelting at him all the bits of rock I had in the boat, and I couldn’t shtir him. I was famished out, for it was pegging hailshtones and sleet. At last he come up; and then he thought better of it, when he saw the sky above him, and he was going down again, and I let a dhrive at him with the gaff, and got him just near the tail—great luck I had with him, to be sure.”

“It was about time you did have some luck,” Jim remarked.

“There’s not many of them ’ud sulk like that,” said Patsy. “Generally they’d be tiring themselves with the runs they’s take at the first. And if they thrun a lep or two—’tis the lep takes most out of them: it breaks their courage. There’s nothing like a salmon, to my way of thinking, though there’s a lot of the gentry do be sticking to the little brown trout. Will ye be for Lough Nacurra in the morning, sir?”

“We will—if you’ll promise us fish,” Jim responded.

“It ’ud be a bold man to promise anything this weather,” said Patsy, looking with disfavour at the clear sky and the placid lough. “Still-an’-all, ’tis a good lough; if they’re rising anywhere it’ll be on Nacurra.”

Morning came with a haze lying on the blue hills, and a fitful breeze: the best fishing day yet, Patsy pronounced it, as he shouldered a gigantic luncheon-basket and led the way down the avenue and along the dusty high road. They struck across the bog presently, following a path that led through a tangle of the sweet bog-myrtle; and, in a little harbour of smooth grey stones at the western end of Lough Nacurra, came upon their boat, half-concealed among the rushes fringing the water’s edge. The lough was a long narrow sheet of water, widening a little at the far end, where a thickly-wooded island showed dimly through the haze.

“Have you been storing water in the boat?” Jim inquired, gravely, surveying the ancient craft among the rushes. Its bottom timbers bore evidence of long soaking.

“Tis a thrifle of dampness she have in her,” admitted Mr. Burke, stepping in carefully and getting to work with a baling-tin. “I’m after sending John Conolly up only this morning to bale her out, but he’s the champion at scamping a job. Ah, she’ll dry out beautifully in the sun, sir, once I have her emptied. There now—let you get in gently, sir.”

“I will,” said Mr. Linton, placing his feet with extreme caution, and coming to rest thankfully in the stern. “I don’t want to begin the day with a ducking, and those bottom boards look as if they would crumble under my weight. Take care, Wally—this is a craft to be treated with respect.”

“Have you drowned many in this one?” queried Jim.

Mr. Burke emitted a deep chuckle.

“Yerra, you will have your joke, sir!” he said, making hasty repairs to a rowlock that chiefly consisted of rusty wire, of which more than one strand had broken away. “There’s many a good fish killed in worse boats than this. A lick of paint, now, and you wouldn’t know her.”

“I wouldn’t call her a boat at all,” retorted Jim, disposing his long legs so as to avoid, as far as possible, the steadily increasing dampness in the bottom. “She’s a hoary antique, and she ought to be in a museum; but if you say she’ll stay afloat, Patsy, we’re game. Lend me that baling-tin while you’re rowing, and I’ll try to discourage the lough from entering.”

Mr. Linton declined to fish, remarking that he preferred to be ready to swim when necessary, and would meanwhile officiate as baler as soon as Jim was ready to get to work with his rod. Patsy pulled out gently, until they were clear of rushes. A light wind rippled the water, sending tiny wavelets lapping against the sides of the boat; overhead, clouds drifted across a soft blue sky and now and then blotted out the sun. The hills sloping down to the lough on three sides were half shrouded in haze.

“’Tis a perfect fishing-day,” Patsy pronounced, shipping his oars and letting the boat drift gently. “If there was a little more wind itself ye’d soon have a tremenjious basket of fish.”

Patsy’s predictions were by this time well known to the Australians. He suffered, as Wally said, from enthusiasms, and all his geese were swans; so that his cheerful forecast raised no throb of hope in their hearts. He had been as cheerful on other mornings, when they had fished in vain.

“I don’t quite see the fascination of it,” Wally commented, after ten minutes of steady whipping the water. “It’s so continuous; and you get nothing for it.”

“Give me a good sinker and a plump slab of clam for a bait—and the schnapper on the bite,” Jim responded. “I don’t believe these trout know how to bite at all.”

“You don’t say bite—it’s ‘rise,’” said Norah, gloomily.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because they don’t bite. They certainly don’t.”

“They do not,” Wally agreed. “Perhaps they rise and saunter past this queer collection of sham insects that we dangle on the face of the waters: and if you have luck you hook them as they go by. Only we don’t have luck.”

They fished on, sadly, casting with a precision that won commendation from Mr. Burke, and to which long practice with a stock whip had probably contributed. Nothing occurred, except the end of the lough: whereupon Patsy resumed the oars, rowed to the end whence they had started, and began up drift again.

“Do people do this all day—for weeks?” Norah demanded.

“Yerra, they do, miss.”

“Well, what do they do it _for_?” Norah said, desperately. “I don’t see any fun at all. I’m going to take the oars presently, Patsy, and you can have my rod.”

“If ever I put hard-earned pay into contraptions like this again!” Jim uttered, gazing despondently on the dainty ten feet green-heart rods, new and workmanlike with their fresh tackle. “They looked just top-hole in the shop, and they do still; but that’s all there is about them. I vote we go and scramble over a heathery mountain or two, and stop whipping this old lough.”

“Hear, hear!” said Wally. “Let’s get Patsy to put us ashore at the lower end, and we’ll leave the trout to some one else. I’m blessed if I fish again until we get back to the creek at Billabong—with a worm and a sinker, and a nice little cork bobbing on the top of the water. No science, but you get fish. These old Irish trout—my aunt!”

His reel whirred suddenly under his hand, and his rod bent double. There was a swirl in the water. The line ran out sharply, and something that was living gold in the sunlight leaped, flashed for an instant, and was gone again. Patsy uttered a howl.

“Leave him run, sir!—give and take! Reel in when the strain is off him. Aisy now, sir!”

“Off him!” gasped Wally. “Why, he pulls like a working bullock! Won’t the rod break?”

“It will not,” said Patsy. “Drop the point, sir, if he leps. Yerra, sure that’s a fine grand trout ye have—did ye see the great splashing rise he made to ye? Howld him, sir—he’ll get off on ye if ye slacken too much. Wind in when ye get a chanst, and bring him nice and aisy to the boat—I have the net ready.”

“Bring him to the boat!—it’s himself that’s doing all the bringing!” uttered Wally. “Tell me if I’m messing it up, Patsy.”

“Begob, you’re doing fine!” said Patsy—“ye’re playing him beautiful. Give and take, and his head’ll come up presently—don’t be afraid if he do run from ye. Oh, murder, there’s the little mistress got one too!”

Norah’s reel sang suddenly, and a fish went off astern. The owner of the rod made a wild effort to play him sitting down, and then stood up, her rod describing erratic circles while Mr. Linton grasped her skirt in a desperate effort to steady her.

“I’m all right, daddy!” she gasped. “Oh, such a beauty—I know he weighs a ton!”

“Let him go, miss!” shouted Patsy, rendered desperate by the hopelessness of coaching two novices at once. “Give him his head—he’ll come back to ye. There y’are, sir—did ye see his head come up?—wind him in! No, not you, miss—let him have his run: sure that one won’t be tired this long while, by the looks of him. Oh, murder, sir, is he gone from you?”—as the trout made a fresh dash for freedom and fled under the boat. “No,—howld on to the vilyun an’ he’ll be back. Kape a nice, steady strain on him, miss—give and take.” He hovered over the side, feverishly grasping the handle of the landing-net. “Ye have him bet, sir—here he comes. Nice and aisy does it—don’t hurry him—kape your point up. Back a little—ah, I have him!”

The net slipped under Wally’s fish deftly. Simultaneously, Norah’s trout executed a wild leap, and Norah reeled him, quite involuntarily, near the boat. Patsy, responding gallantly to her cry for help, dropped the first trout hastily, and turned just in time to net the second, by sheer good luck. The excitement of the moment overcame him, and Norah’s fish, falling upon Wally’s, entangled both casts and lines by a few frantic leaps, before Patsy could collect himself sufficiently to pounce upon them. The boat rocked with enthusiasm. Jim had prudently reeled in, to be out of the way of possible happenings, and stood, beaming, while the victorious anglers looked at each other with parted lips and shining eyes, and Mr. Burke wailed and triumphed alternately.

“Wirra, but them lines is destroyed on us! Oh, the grand fish, entirely!—would ye get as good now, sir, with your sinkers and your big lump of bait! An’ you played ’em fine, both of ye! Lave off flopping, will ye, and let me get a howlt of the fly—begob, he have it ate, no less!” Norah’s trout was put out of its misery by a quick blow on a thwart, and the fly rescued. “There you are, miss, and he well over a pound if he’s an ounce!”

“Oh, daddy, isn’t he a beauty!”

“He is, indeed,” Mr. Linton said, looking at the golden-brown fish, with his splendid spots. “I never saw a handsomer fellow. Is yours as good Wally?”

“Betther, I believe,” boomed Patsy, a vision of triumph. “They might be mates—but Mr. Wally’s is bigger. Have ye the little spring-balance, sir? Ye’d ought to weigh them.”

“I have it,” Wally said. “Eighteen ounces, Nor,—and mine’s a pound and a half. Well-l!” He drew a long breath. “If ever I say a word against my little rod again!”

“Oh, wasn’t it glorious!” Norah uttered. “Will those lines ever come clear, Patsy?”

“Yerra, they will. Have patience, miss, and I’ll get them undone in no time. Cast away now, Mr. Jim—and heaven send he do not land his on the top of this tangle!” added Mr. Burke, in pious hope.

“Hurry up, Jim—it’s the best fun since we went bombing!” said Wally. “Gives you a feeling like nothing on earth, and the little rod’s just a live thing in your hands. Glory! there’s one at you—ah, the brute!” as a big trout rose at Jim’s fly, missed, and went down, giving a full view of his beautiful speckled side.

“Cast over him again, Mr. Jim—that one’ll come back,” Patsy whispered. “Gently—ah, that’s the lovely throw!” The flies settled gently on the water, but the trout failed to respond. “Thry him again, sir—that’s it; dhraw them back quiet, now. Begob, he have him—howld him, sir! Hark at the little wheel singing: isn’t that the fine run he made! Wind him in—don’t check him sudden.” Mr. Burke babbled on happily until the third big trout lay gasping in the landing-net.

“Didn’t I tell you there’d be trout in Lough Nacurra?” he demanded. “Oh, the beauties! them’s the grand fish, entirely, no matter where you’d be fishing. Let ye cast out again, sir. Aisy, Miss Norah, let be—sure I’ll have it for ye quicker than ye would yourself. There’s the terrible tangle now; ye’d not get it in a knot like that, not if ye tried for a week. And is it in Australia you’d get them like that, with a stick and a sinker and a lump of bait? and play them too, same as ye did them there? Well, well, that must be the fine country!”

Mr. Linton laughed.

“Oh there’s plenty of good trout-fishing in Australia, Patsy, and plenty of people who use the proper tackle. But it doesn’t happen to be in our part of the country.”

“Ye’ll not beat Irish trout, anywheres in the world,” said Mr. Burke, shortly. “Them new countries is all very well in their way, but give me the ould places I’m after knowing all my life.” He drew a long breath. “There—I have them untwisted at last: and more by token, here we are at the end of the lough.” He fixed Wally with an inquiring gaze. “It was here you wanted to be landed, sir, wasn’t it? Will I take down the rod and put you ashore?”

Wally grinned in appreciation.

“It’s your game, Patsy,” he admitted, cheerfully. “I take it all back. If you’ll just hand me that rod again, you won’t get me off this lough before dark!”