Years went by; and Grim grew into a splendid fish. Her long, flat
forehead was now continued straight into the strong duck-like beak of
the upper jaw. A hollow in the middle enabled it, as it were, to
project in canopies that hung down over her eyes, which thus acquired
an expression even more cruel and scowling.
The cheeks stood perpendicularly on each side of the forehead, and
enclosed the cranium as between walls; it was as though she had had a
dent on both sides of her head. The back of her neck swelled up like
that of a bull, for here the muscles lay over the cranium in large,
thick curves, until down by the neck, they gave place each to its
branchial cleft, which was as large as a barn door.
And what a mouth! It opened up far past the eyes! Generally, it only
stood ajar; but to look into it when it opened wide was like looking
into a barrel studded with nails.
In the front of the lower jaw, the teeth stood thick as pins in a
pincushion. They were small and pointed, and sloped backwards, so that
they served as barbs. In along the sides came the long,
widely-separated incisors, whose purpose was to enter into and hold
fast the prey. They were more than half an inch in length, rounded and
blunt, and resembled the teeth of a rake.
The upper jaw was provided with a far more terrible armature. Whole
rows of harrow-like teeth stood out, making a diabolical grater of the
palate. They continued far down the throat, and even came forward over
the tongue. Woe to the body that became jammed here! It was only
released as mince-meat.
But the throat that swallowed the victim was by far the most horrible
contrivance.
It resembled the drawn-up mouth of a sack. Down through it lay great
rolls of swallowing-muscles, studded with grasping protuberances. In
the midst of them the œsophagus was discernible, its aperture
incessantly opening and closing with a suction that inexorably drew
everything down with it.
And her external equipment corresponded to her internal. The wonderful,
dark colours of the shallows drew a broad stripe along her great back.
About the forehead and along the back of the neck, the water-grasses
had laid a ground-wash of their own deep green; and her sides were
veiled by the flickering streaks of the reed-beds. Patches of gold,
like the sunshine falling through the glassy surface of the water,
shone out between the transverse stripes on her sides; and over the
branchial arch and the belly lay the pure whiteness of the water-lily.
Yes, she was adorned in all her splendour. Her scales gleamed with the
rays of the sun and moon; and when, with the rapidity of lightning, she
made a dart, it seemed like the twinkling of stars in the dark night of
the deep waters.
From this time onwards, her voracity knew no bounds. The desire for
food, which she had possessed from her earliest days, and which had
lain like a germ in the very heart of her nature, was given free play
by means of the terrible weapons that Nature had placed at her
disposal. No one else should now get a bite; she would be alone in
clearing the waters of food.
She now as readily seized her prey lengthwise as cross-wise; indeed,
she even preferred, when hungry, to make straight for the head; by so
doing, she wasted no time in turning it, but could swallow it at once.
By nature she was very reserved, and had no desire for companionship;
but her mental abilities were by no means small, and she was well able
to make various observations, and profit by their lessons. Nor was she
deficient in memory, as she distinctly showed every spring when going
to spawn; she always found her way up the brook to the wide fen.
She was very sensitive to every movement in the water, and in a way
_heard_ with ease the boats, “the big birds.” They always splashed so
much with their oar-feet, or whisked their tail round in the water. She
had often wondered at them! She had discovered that, like the grebe,
they carried their young on their back; and, like all the other fish in
the lake, she supposed them to be a part of the unrest up on the
surface.
Long before they came near her, she was distinctly aware of their
approach.
If she were high in the water, and the bird suddenly rushed down
towards her, she darted to one side and hastened out of the way. It was
different when the boat came slowly gliding along; then she only moved
so as not to be run down.
But it was many a day before she came to understand that it was they
especially who wanted to harm her.
One evening the old angler was rowing home late from his
fishing-ground. The moon had risen, and shed her silvery light around
his oars. They dipped down rhythmically, and came up with the silver
dripping from them. Suddenly he noticed that one of them struck
something, and the shock passed through the oar up into his arm. He was
dragging something heavy, and could not bring the oar forward; and then
he pulled the head of a pike up above the water. At the same moment the
fish dropped, and the oar was free; but Grim was wiser after that.
As the years passed she developed into a powerful ruler, and
increasingly felt herself to be the divinely-favoured inmate of the
lake. _She_ was not one of the rabble! She hunted large and small, and
lorded it over the inhabitants of the lake as far as she possibly
could.
By more frequent and longer expeditions, she increased her knowledge of
the lake, and learned the routes to all the reefs, creeks and banks;
and she ascertained that in certain directions her world was immense.
It was only the surface that she shunned, and the deepest depths; for
there were great crayfish--to whom the Creator had been so good as to
set their maxillary half at the end of a pair of long, jointed
claws--and there, too, lived Oa, the dreaded fish-monster.
Grim’s territory lay half-way between these.
In the pure light of early dawn, when the night flies and moths, drowsy
and intoxicated with their nocturnal visits to the flowers, fell by
hundreds into the water on their way home; when the swallows relieved
the bats, and the whirligigs in the sheltered nooks began their
noiseless scurrying over the water, beneath which the water-plants were
beginning to appear in green, yellow and rust-red colours; when the day
dawned down where Grim had her home, and the wide surface above her was
filled with light and radiance--then she hunted most keenly, and felt
most voracious, and then there was terror in her splash and snap.
One morning early, a breeze is ruffling the surface of the lake, and
winding, white-foamed currents are eating their way out among black
shallows. The terns are diving down after small fish, and along the
rush-bordered banks the rising sun is treading the water.
Grim is abroad, pushing herself forward like a shadow along the bottom.
Her cunning crocodile eyes are turned up so that they project from her
head.
A number of roach are thronging about a clump of rushes, examining
leaves and stalks just as long-tailed tits search tree-tops and bark;
they are inside it and outside it, sucking up the water-snails and
insects.
Grim stops with a jerk. She scarcely moves her ventral fins, and
breathes very gently. At each breath she cautiously opens her mouth and
draws back her tongue, thus filling the spiked barrel with water; then
she carefully closes it again, shoots her tongue forward, and emits the
water through her gills.
The little fish gambol unwittingly close to her mouth. Her upturned
eyes look still higher, and see the gleam of their white-scaled
bellies.
Now she is ready to spring.
There is just a movement of the extreme tip of the tail. Only the
shifting shadow-lines that the reeds cast over her body indicate that
she is moving forward. She peers about continually, peevishly, and
evilly. Only one thing troubles her; she can never decide which fish
out of the swarming multitude she will take. True, she has made a
special study of the way to direct her attack--as the ardent hunter his
aim--where the throng is thickest; but the roach are nimble, and she
seldom gets more than one at a stroke.
Slowly and imperceptibly she rises, while all the fin-tips wag and wave
in lingering enjoyment.
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.