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!”