A few days ago, a friend who is kind and patient enough to encumber
himself with the care of a blind man and a boy took me and my
twelve-year-old a-fishing. It was with a fresh realization of my
deprivation that I passed along the watery way once as familiar as the
dooryard path, but now shrouded for me in a gloom more impenetrable than
the blackness of the darkest night. I could only guess at the bends and
reaches as the south wind blew on one cheek or the other, or on my back,
only knowing where the channel draws near the shore upon which the
Indians encamped in the old days by the flutter of leaves overbearing
the rustle of rushes. By the chuckle of ripples under the bow, I guessed
when we were in mid-channel; by the entangled splash of an oar, when we
approached the reedy border where the water-lilies rode at anchor, and
discharged their subtle freight of perfume as they tossed in our wake. I
knew by his clatter, drawing nearer only with our progress, that a
kingfisher was perched on a channel-side fishing-stake, used in turn by
him and bigger but not more skillful fishers. I heard his headlong
plunge, but whether successful or not the ensuing clatter did not tell
me, for he has but one voice for all expressions. Yet as his rattling
cry was kept up till the rough edge of its harshness was worn away in
receding flight, I fancied he was proclaiming an unusually successful
achievement. For the sake of his reputation, he would never make such a
fuss over a failure, unless he was telling, as we do, of the big fish he
just missed catching. At any rate, I wished him good luck, for who would
begrudge a poor kingfisher such little fish as he must catch! They would
need years of growth to make them worth our catching or bragging over
the loss of, and by that time we may be done with fishing.
Suddenly there was a roar of multitudinous wings as a host of redwings
upburst from springing and swaying wild rice stalks, all of which I saw
through the blackness illumined for an instant by memory,--the dusky
cloud uprising like the smoke of an explosion, the bent rice springing
up beneath its lifted burden, the dull-witted or greedy laggards
dribbling upward to join the majority. My companions exclaimed in one
voice at the rare sight of a white bird in the flock, and by the same
light of memory I also saw it as I saw one in an autumn forty years ago,
when, with my comrade of those days, I came "daown the crik"
duck-shooting, or trolling as to-day. Again and again we saw this
phenomenal bird like a white star twinkling through a murky cloud. The
fitful gleam was seen day after day, till the north wind blew him and
his cloud away southward.
The pother of the blackbirds overhead disturbed the meditations of a
bittern, who, with an alarmed croak, jerked his ungainly form aloft in a
flurry of awkward wing-beats, and went sagging across the marshes in
search of safer seclusion. I wished that he might find it, and escape
the ruthless gunners that will presently come to desolate these
marshes. Very different from his uprising was that of a pair of wood
ducks, revealing their unsuspected presence with startling suddenness,
as they sprang from water to air with a splash and whistle of rapid
wings and their squeaking alarm cry, and then flew swiftly away, the
sibilant wing-beats pulsing out in the distance. These, too, I wished
might safely run the gauntlet of all the guns that will be arrayed
against them when the summer truce is broken. If I had not been mustered
out, or if my boy were mustered in, no doubt I should feel differently
toward the inhabitants of these marshes. Compulsory abstinence makes one
exceedingly virtuous, and because I am virtuous there shall be no cakes
and ale for any one.
The absence of the rail's cackle was noticeable, a clamor that used to
be provoked at this season by every sudden noise. We never got sight of
the "ma'sh chickens" as they skulked among the sedges; and when the
birds were pressed to flight, rarely caught more than a fleeting glimpse
as they topped the rushes for an instant, and dropped again into the
mazes of the marsh. But they were always announcing a numerous if
invisible presence where now not one answered to our voices or the noise
of our oars.
All this while our trolling gear was in tow: the boy's a "phantom
minnow" bristling with barbs, a veritable porcupine fish; mine a fluted
spoon. The larger fish seemed attracted by the better imitation, or
perhaps age and experience had given them discernment to shun the other
more glaring sham, and the best of them went to the boy's score; but the
unwise majority of smaller fish were evidently anxious to secure
souvenir spoons of Little Otter, and in consequence of that desire I was
"high hook" as to numbers. They were only pickerel at best, though some
of them, bearing their spots on a green ground, are honored with the
name of "maskalonge" by our fishermen. A scratch of the finger-nail
across the scaly gill-cover gives proof enough to convince even a blind
man of the worthlessness of this claim to distinction.
Once I enjoyed an exaltation of spirit only to suffer humiliation. There
was a tug at the hooks, so heavy that my first thought was of a snag,
and I was on the point of calling out to my friend to stop rowing. Then
there was a slight yielding, and the tremor that tells unmistakably of a
fish. "Now," said I, with my heart but a little way back of my teeth, "I
am fast to something like a fish, but I shall never be able to boat him.
He is too big to lift out with the hooks, and I can't see to get him by
the gills, and so I shall lose him." As he came in slowly, stubbornly
fighting against every shortening inch of line, I almost wished he had
not been hooked at all only to be lost at last. When, after a time, my
fish was hauled near the boat and in sight of my companions, my catch
proved to be no monster, but a pickerel of very ordinary size hooked by
the belly, and so my hopes and fears vanished together.
I think distances are magnified to the blind, for it seemed twice as far
as it did of old from the East Slang to the South Slang, as we passed
these oddly named tributaries of Little Otter.
At last I sniffed the fragrance of cedars and heard the wash of waves on
the southward-slanted shore of Garden Island, and these informed me we
were at the lake. In confirmation thereof was the testimony of my
companions, given out of their light to my darkness, of an eagle's royal
progress through his ethereal realm, making inspection of his disputed
earthly possession. I was glad to know that his majesty had escaped the
republican regicides who haunt the summer shores.
We made a difficult landing on the mainland, on the oozy shore of mixed
sawdust and mud, and followed the old trail to the old camping ground
under the rocks, a place full of pleasant memories for the elder two of
our trio, and offering to the boy the charms of freshness and discovery.
For him the cliff towered skyward but little below the eagle's flight;
its tiny caves were unexplored mysteries, their coral-beaded curtains of
Canada yew and delicate netting of mountain-fringe strange foreign
growths. Through his undimmed eyes I had glimpses of those happy shores
whereon the sun always shines and no cloud arises beyond. What a little
way behind they seem in the voyage that has grown wearisome, and yet we
can never revisit them for a day nor for an hour, and it is like a dream
that we ever dwelt there.
Bearing with us from this port something not marketable nor even
visible, yet worth carrying home, we reembarked, and the wind, blowing
in my face, informed me we were homeward bound. One after another, we
passed five boats of fishing parties tied up at as many stakes, the
crews pursuing their pastime with steadfast patience, as their intent
silence proclaimed. To me they were as ships passed in the night. I had
no other knowledge of them than this, except that my friend told me
there was a fat woman in each boat, and that one of them boasted to us,
with motherly pride, of a big pickerel caught by her little girl.
A blended hum of bumblebees droned in among us, and my companions
remarked that one of the aerial voyagers had boarded our craft, while I
maintained there were two, which proved to be the fact; whereupon I
argued that my ears were better than their eyes, but failed to convince
them or even myself. I welcomed the bees as old acquaintances, who, in
the duck-shooting of past years, always used to come aboard and bear us
company for awhile, rarely alighting, but tacking from stem to stern on
a cruise of inspection, till at last, satisfied or disappointed, they
went booming out of sight and hearing over marshfuls of blue spikes of
pickerel weed and white trinities of arrowhead. I cannot imagine why
bees should be attracted to the barrenness of a boat, unless by a
curiosity to explore such strange floating islands, though their dry
wood promises neither leaf nor bloom.
I hear of people every year who forsake leafage and bloom to search the
frozen desolation of the polar north for the Lord knows what, and I
cease to wonder at the bees, when men so waste the summers that are
given them to enjoy if they will but bide in them.
We passed many new houses of the muskrats, who are building close to the
channel this year in prophecy of continued low water. But muskrats are
not infallible prophets, and sometimes suffer therefor in starvation or
drowning. The labor of the night-workers was suspended in the glare of
the August afternoon, and their houses were as silent as if deserted,
though we doubted not there were happy households inside them,
untroubled by dreams of famine or deluge, or possibly of the
unmercifulness of man, though that seems an abiding terror with our
lesser brethren. Winter before last the marshes were frozen to the
bottom, blockading the muskrats in their houses, where entire families
perished miserably after being starved to cannibalism. Some dug out
through the house roofs, and wandered far across the desolate wintry
fields in search of food. Yet nature, indifferent to all fates, has so
fostered them since that direful season that the marshy shores are
populous again with sedge-thatched houses.
As we neared our home port we met two trollers, one of whom lifted up
for envious inspection a lusty pickerel. "He's as big as your leg," my
friend replied to my inquiry concerning its dimensions, and in aid of my
further inquisitiveness asked the lucky captor how much the fish would
weigh. "Wal, I guess he ought to weigh abaout seven pounds," was
answered, after careful consideration. We learned afterwards that its
actual weight was nine pounds, and I set that man down as a very honest
angler.
Presently our boat ran her nose into the familiar mire of well-named Mud
Landing, and we exchanged oars for legs, which we plied with right good
will, for a thunderstorm was beginning to bellow behind us.