Borne on a gentle breeze, a large crane-fly comes sailing out of the
wood. It likes to cool its long legs, as it flies, by trailing them
along the surface of the water. The whirligigs are after it, but it
easily avoids them. Then comes a sudden surprise: a fish pops up its
mouth, and closes its scissor-jaws with a snap on the insect’s legs,
and it disappears in the centre of a rocking series of rings.
The lake is perfectly calm, its green-black surface smooth and shining,
and full of drifting summer clouds. The reeds are reflected in it and
look double their height, and the trees mirror their branches there,
seeming twice as leafy; and a red house with a white flagstaff on one
of the banks becomes quite a little submarine palace.
More crane-flies arrive, and circle after circle breaks the stillness
of the water, just as mole-hills break the uniform smoothness of the
meadow, as fishes’ mouths dart up by the score side by side.
It is in one of the valleys in the submarine mountainous region that
this shoal of thousands of bleak lies. It covers the area of a
market-place, and makes the water alive for fathoms down.
On the one side rises the forest of weed, like a fir-forest on a
Norwegian mountain; on the other the thick green water-grass waves and
bends like the corn on some fertile plain in Hungary. In front and
behind, the valley winds on between the hill-sides until it widens out
and finally loses itself in the barren, sandy desert.
Suddenly, at the end of the neighbouring valley, the water seethes and
foams. It is cleft incessantly from bottom to surface, bubbles rise and
whirlpools are formed, and a long strip of lake foams and spurts.
It is not like a single large animal darting forward with rapidly
twisting tail, and leaving a wake and waves behind it; but a general
effervescence that makes the depths gleam with millions of scales.
It is the perch, the marauders of the lake, on a hunting expedition!
They go together in a large company, like soldiers in an army, rows of
them above, beside, and behind one another. There are hundreds upon
hundreds of them, and yet a single unit.
With their uppermost layer only a couple of inches below the surface of
the water they hasten on. Then all turn at once, changing from the
long, narrow marching column into compact formation. A fresh signal,
inaudible, imperceptible to all but themselves, and once more, in a
trice, the narrow, smoothly-gliding hunting-column is reformed.
Just as they twist and turn in the horizontal plane, so do they in the
vertical. They go suddenly and headlong from the surface to the depths,
spinning out from their compact mass a long, living thread.
And the thread becomes longer and longer, and thinner and thinner,
while they pass through one of the narrows in the submarine mountainous
region.
It is the shoal of bleak they are after. Now they are in the valley
where it lies.
The lively little freshwater herring as yet suspect no danger; they are
in constant motion, occupied in snapping up the fallen, half-drowned
insects. Noses are pushed up, and little thimble-like mouths open; the
water streams in, and with it the food. An eager interchange from
bottom to surface goes on; for when the upper layer is satiated, it
likes to enjoy its feeling of well-being in peace, until voracity once
more makes them all rivals.
The splash of the waves on the surface lifts the gluttons up and down,
while the ground-swell rocks the satiated to rest.
The perch have quickened their pace; involuntarily the speed is
increased; they already scent their prey.
Foremost of the company, with a dark-golden, high-backed leader at
their head, swim a couple of hundred of the finest perch. They are at
their strongest age, and in best possible condition, suffering neither
from too great a weight of fatness, nor from the nervous lassitude of
insufficient nourishment. They lead, and with frolicsome eagerness push
past one another, so as to be the first to arrive.
After them comes the great mass of the horde, big, heavily-laden craft,
their round backs and swelling bellies testifying to their success in
their toil for material needs. There are perch among them of half an
arm’s-length, and the thickness of the biggest of wrists. Sheaves of
silvery-gleaming rays flicker far out in their wake.
The rest of the fierce horde are large and small mingled--hundreds of
perch of half-a-pound’s weight, and rank upon rank of others well over
two pounds.
For the present the whole flock keeps to the bottom, darting along with
dorsal fin erect, the stiff spines bristling menacingly. It is as well
to have bayonets fixed in case of the sudden appearance of a pike.
All at once the van slips away from the rest, and the latter have to
exert themselves to catch up, twisting and turning their tails, and
unfurling the stiff sail of their dorsal fin. There must be nothing now
to check their speed; fair-weather sailing is over, and the
privateering expedition has begun.
The certainty of booty fills them all.
The vanguard has led the marauders well; they have come _under_ their
prey, and now shoot up among the unfortunate, unsuspecting bleak. All
order among the assailants instantly ceases, and each member thinks
only of its own mouth, and cares for nothing but getting it filled.
Like yellow flashes of water-lightning the perch dart into the shoal of
little fish, and like grain among a flock of chickens, masses of bleak
disappear into their mouths. They kill and devour--and it will be still
worse when the rear-guard comes up.
Now they arrive, and the alarm in the swarm of bleak below spreads with
magical swiftness to the upper layers, where the bewildered little
creatures make off at full speed. Gleam after gleam flashes up as the
little shining fish, uncertain of their way, twist and turn about. Each
makes itself as long and thin as it can, so as to show as little as
possible, and disappear, as it were, in the water.
But now the fierce horde becomes still fiercer. The rear-guard
overtakes the fugitives and cuts off their retreat; and smack after
smack is heard after their charge.
The swarm of bleak scatters in wild panic. Thousands of them, in their
terror, make for the surface, leaping into the air like jets from a
fountain. They tumble over one another and try in their bewilderment
which can leap highest and farthest. They rise like flying-fish out of
the water with a flash, and once more disappear with a splash into the
water. There is a splash when they rise, and a splash when they again
reach the surface of the water; making a sound like the falling of
torrents of rain.
Hell is beneath them in the water! The yellow devils not only menace
them from the side; they come upon them from all directions. When they
descend in crowds from their flight into the air, they grow stiff with
terror on finding themselves face to face with great, amber eyes that
seem starting out of their sockets to go greedily hunting on their own
account. Then a mouth opens, shoots out a pair of concertina-like lips,
and changes into a funnel; and the poor little fish disappear into a
chasm, like threads into a vacuum cleaner.
Above the spot a cloud of terns is circling. They fly low with
half-extended legs and drooping wings, ready to dart down. Sometimes
they make a catch, sometimes miss their aim, but have the good fortune
to take a fish that inadvertently appears close by; indeed the bleak
often leap straight into the birds’ open beak. The birds hold them at
all sorts of angles in their beak, and fly away with them, shrieking
and screaming, pursued by their fellows.
Poor little bleak! they were so pretty to look at. An emerald green
colour extended from the back right over the head and nose; and the
rims of their eyes when they blinked could sparkle and shine like the
gem itself. Their shining breast was whiter than a swan’s, and their
plump sides gleamed and sparkled like ice under a wintry moon.
But from the time they left their Creator’s hand they were intended to
serve as food for _others_.
* * * * *
A boat lay anchored a few hundred yards off. In it was an elderly man.
An angler this. He had been out since early morning, and had a
delightful day.
Not a single bite. But what did that matter?
He was lying now at the bottom of the boat, dreaming.
He was a regular visitor to the lake. His ancestors’ love of a free,
out-of-door life had entered into his blood.
It is well known that it takes three generations to make a gentleman;
but it would take three times as many to create, out of a race that
ever since the morning of time had lived out of doors, a generation
that did not care to handle either gun or rod.
In his youth his gun had been his best friend; but the chase demands
much of legs and muscles and heart. When a man is no longer in his
prime, he should beware of paying ardent court to Dame Diana. In her
suite--it is useless to deny it--the old man is seldom looked upon with
favour: he has had his day. But Father Neptune clasps him rapturously
in his wet embrace, and sets the fish around his boat leaping and
playing.
It was thus in his later years that his fishing rod had become the old
man’s joy and companion.
Season after season he made his weekly journey from town by rail, and
then drove out to the lake. He fished in the good old-fashioned way,
talked very little, and was always alone in the boat.
* * * * *
The weather to-day, from a fisherman’s point of view, is the worst
possible. The July sun is shining hotly, and sends its beams deep down
into the water.
The lake slumbers. There is a bottle-green hue above the deep water,
and a lilac shade in the shallows; but over the sandy bottom the colour
is drab. Far off a flock of wild ducks rising raise some little, gentle
waves, that look so blue, so blue!
The angler, who is a big, sturdy man with large, black-rimmed
spectacles upon his voluminous nose, is in his customary
fishing-dress--an old straw hat with an elastic under the chin, his
coat off, and no collar, on his legs a pair of thick, yellowish brown
moleskin trousers, his feet in a pair of felt shoes, lined with straw.
He generally stays all day, and it is still far from evening.
He is now lying outstretched in midday drowsiness, enjoying the great
peace that rests on the lake. He has wound the ends of his lines round
his wrist; he waits patiently, and if towards evening he is fortunate
enough to haul in a pike, he will be filled with a quiet, intense joy.
Suddenly he awakes with a start. He hears a rushing sound like that of
the paddles of a distant steamer striking and tearing the water; he
sees the terns flocking, and the surface of the water broken again and
again by bleak leaping high into the air. He takes up his anchor, and
rows up until he hears the smack, smack of the greedy perch all round
him, and knows he is in the middle of the whirlpool of fish.
He gets four lines clear, and has enough to do in throwing them out and
pulling them in. He throws off his hat and waistcoat, and loosens his
belt--but even then he is drenched with perspiration.
At last he can do no more, and drops exhausted on to a thwart.
In less than twenty minutes he has caught more than fifty perch,
weighing from one to three pounds apiece; they are lying in a brassy
heap in the boat.
Then he opens his wallet, takes out the bottle containing clear liquid,
and takes a nip. This he is accustomed to do every time he catches a
fish of any importance. He drinks to the health of the lake, the lake
with the fresh waves and the clear, bright water--the lake that
treasures his dearest memories.