"I should say you will very likely have some sport," said Uncle Dick.
"Try by all means."
"I hardly like to, uncle," I said.
"Nonsense, my lad! All work and no play makes Jack--I mean Jacob--a
dull boy."
"But it will seem as if I am neglecting my work."
"By no means. Besides, we shall not be busy for a day or two. Have a
few hours' fishing, and I daresay one of us will come and see how you
are getting on."
The opportunity was too tempting to be lost, so I got a cheap rod and a
dear line--a thoroughly good one, asked a gardener just outside to dig
up some small red worms for me, and, furnishing myself with some paste
and boiled rice, I one morning took my place up at the head of the dam
where the stream came in, chose a place where the current whirled round
in a deep hole and began fitting my tackle together prior to throwing
in.
I had been longing for this trial, for I felt sure that there must be
some big fish in the dam. It was quite amongst the houses and
factories, but all the same it was deep, there was a constant run of
fresh water through it, and I had more than once seen pieces of bread
sucked down in a curiously quiet way, as if taken by a great slow moving
fish, a carp or tench, an old inhabitant of the place.
Certainly it was not the sort of spot I should have selected for a day's
fishing had I been offered my choice, but it was the best I could obtain
then, and I was going to make the most of it.
I laughed to myself as I thought of the eels, and the great haul I had
made down in the wheel-pit, and then I shuddered as I thought of the
horrors I had suffered down there, and wondered whether our troubles
with the men were pretty well over.
I hoped so, for from what I heard the business was succeeding beyond the
hopes of the most sanguine of my uncles, and if we were left alone
success on the whole was assured.
Of course it was this brilliant prospect that induced them to stay on
and dare the perils that lurked around, though, during the past few
weeks, everything had been so quiet that once more we were indulging in
the hope that the war was at an end.
In spite of Dr Johnson's harsh saying about a fisherman, I know of no
more satisfactory amusement than is to be found in company with a rod
and line. The sport may be bad, but there is the country, the bright
sky, the waving trees, the dancing waters, and that delicious feeling of
expectation of the finest bite and the biggest fish that never comes but
always may.
I was in this state of expectancy that day. The sport was not good
certainly, for the fish I caught were small, but I argued that where
there were small fish there must be large, and sooner or later some of
the monsters of the dam would see and take my bait.
I fished till dinner-time, varying my position, and when the bell rang
some of the men came and sat on the edge and watched me, chatting
civilly enough as they smoked their pipes.
As luck had it I caught a couple of good-sized silvery roach, and
Stevens gave his leg a regular slap as he exclaimed:
"Well if they'd towd me there was fish like that i' th' dam I wouldn't
hev believed it."
The bell rang for work to be resumed, and the men slowly moved along the
dam edge, Stevens being left, and he stopped to fill and light his
pipe--so it seemed to me; but as he stooped over it, puffing away large
clouds of smoke, I heard him say:
"Don't look. Soon as men's gone in, yow go and stand on ledge close
under grinding-shop windows, and see what you catch."
"It's such an awkward place to get to," I said. "I suppose it's deep,
but--"
"You do what I tell'ee, and don't talk," growled Stevens, and he
strolled off with his hands in his pockets after his mates.
"I sha'n't go," I said. "It's a very awkward place to get to; the ledge
is not above nine inches wide, and if I got hold of a big fish, how am I
to land him!"
The very idea of getting hold of a fish that would be too hard to land
was too much for me, and I should have gone to the ledge if it had only
been four and a half inches wide. So, waiting to have a few more
throws, which were without result, I picked up my basket, walked right
round the end of the dam, and then along the top of a narrow wall till I
reached the end of the works at the far side, and from there lowered
myself gently down on the ledge, along which Pannell had brought me when
he rescued me from the wheel-pit, right at the other end, and towards
which I was slowly making my way.
It was slow travelling, and my feet were not above a couple of inches
above the water, while the windows of the grinding-shop were about four
feet above my head.
I made no special selection, but stopped right in the middle, just where
I imagined that the dam head would be deepest, and softly dropped in my
line after setting down my basket and leaning my back against the stone
building.
As I did so I wished that there had been a place to sit down, but there
was of course only just room to stand, and there I was with the water
gliding on and over the great wheel a few yards to my left; to my right
the windows, out of which poured the black smoke of the forges, and from
which came the _clink chink_ of hammer upon anvil, while above me came
throbbing and vibrating, screeching and churring, the many varied sounds
made by the grinders as they pressed some piece of steel against the
swiftly revolving stone, while, in spite of dripping drenching water,
the least contact drew from the stone a shower of sparks.
I fished on, after making a few alterations in the depth of my bait,
finding the water far deeper than I expected. I renewed that bait, too,
but no monstrous fish came to take it, to hook itself, and to make a
rush and drag me off my ledge. The sounds buzzed and rattled overhead;
there was the echoing plash of the water over the wheel, and the
whispering echoes which did not sound at all terrible now, and above all
from the windows overhead, in intervals of the grinding, I could hear
the men talking very earnestly at times.
I paid very little heed, for I was interested in my fishing and the
water across which the spiders were skating. I wanted a big bite--that
big bite--but still it did not come, and I began to wonder whether there
were any fish of size in the place.
"There's every reason why there should be," I thought. Deep clear water
fed by the great dam up in the hills, and of course that dam was fed by
the mountain streams. This place was all amongst buildings, and plenty
of smuts fell on the surface; in fact the wind used to send a regular
black scum floating along to the sides.
_Plop_!
My heart gave a throb of excitement, for there was a rise evidently made
by a big fish over to my right close inshore.
"Now if I had been there," I thought, "I should have most likely been
able to catch that fish and then--"
Bah! Who wanted to catch a great water-rat that had plumped off the
bank into the water? I could see the sleek-coated fellow paddling about
close inshore. Then he dived down, and there were a lot of tiny bubbles
to show his course before he went right in under the bank, which was
full of holes.
I could almost fancy I was in the country, for there were a few rushes
and some sedgy growth close to where the rat had been busy. Farther
off, too, there was the sound that I had heard down in a marshy part of
Essex with my uncles, during one of our excursions. "_Quack, quack,
quack! Wuck, wuck, wuck_!"--a duck and a drake just coming down to the
water to drink and bathe and feed on the water-weed and snails.
Yes; it quite put me in mind of the country to have wild ducks coming
down to the pool, and--there were the two wild ducks! One, as the cry
had told me, was a drake, and he had once been white, but old age and
Arrowfield soot and the dirty little black yard where he generally lived
had changed his tint most terribly, and though he plunged in, and bobbed
and jerked the water all over his back, and rubbed the sides of his head
and his beak all among his feathers, they were past cleaning.
As to his wife, who expressed herself with a loud quack, instead of
saying _wuck, wuck_ in more smothered tones, she was possibly quite as
dirty as her lord, but being brown the dirt did not show. Her rags did,
for a more disreputable bird I never saw, though she, too, washed and
napped her wings, and dived and drenched herself before getting out on
the bank to preen and beak over her feathers.
Alas! As people say in books, it was not the country, but dingy,
smoke-bewithered Arrowfield, and I wondered to myself why a couple of
birds with wings should consent to stay amongst factories and works.
I knew the top of my float by heart; so must that skating spider which
had skimmed up to it, running over the top of the water as easily as if
it were so much ice. I was growing drowsy and tired. Certainly I
leaned my back up against the wall, but it was quite upright, and there
was no recompense. Whatever is the use of watching a float that will
not bob? It may be one of the best to be got in a tackle-shop, with a
lovely subdivision of the paint--blue at the bottom and white at the
top, or green and white, or blue and red, but if it obstinately persists
in sitting jauntily cocked up on the top of the water immovable, fishing
no longer becomes a sport.
But I did not fish all that time for nothing.
As I said, I was becoming drowsy with looking so long at the black cap
at the top of my float. Perhaps it was the whirr and hum of the
machinery, and the faint sound of plashing water; even the buzz and
churr and shriek of the steel upon the fast spinning stones may have had
something to do with it. At any rate I was feeling sleepy and stupid,
when all at once I was wide-awake and listening excitedly, for the
shrieking of blade held upon grindstone ceased, and I heard a voice that
was perfectly familiar to me say:
"Tell 'ee what. Do it at once if you like; but if I had my wayer I'd
tie lump o' iron fast on to that theer dorg's collar and drop 'im in
dam."
"What good ud that do?" said another voice.
"Good! Why we'd be shut on him."
"Ay, but they'd get another."
"Well, they wouldn't get another boy if we got shut o' this one," said
the first voice.
"But yow wouldn't go so far as to--"
The man stopped short, and seemed to give his stone a slap with the
blade that he was grinding.
"I d'know. He's a bad un, and allus at the bottom of it if owt is found
out."
"Ay, but yow mustn't."
"Well, p'r'aps I wouldn't then, but I'd do something as would mak him
think it were time to go home to his mother."
My face grew red, then white, I'm sure, for one moment it seemed to
burn, the next it felt wet and cold. I did not feel sleepy any longer,
but in an intense state of excitement, for those words came from the
window just above my head, so that I could hear them plainly.
"It's all nonsense," I said to myself directly after. "They know I'm
here, and it's done to scare me."
Just then the churring and screeching of the grinding steel burst out
louder than ever, and I determined to go away and treat all I had heard
with silent contempt. Pulling up my line just as a fisher will, I threw
in again for one final try, and hardly had the bait reached the bottom
before the float bobbed.
I could not believe it at first. It seemed that I must have jerked the
line--but no, there it was again, another bob, and another, and then a
series of little bobs, and the float moved slowly off over the surface,
carrying with it a dozen or so of blacks.
I was about to strike, but I thought I would give the fish a little more
time and make sure of him, and, forgetting all about the voices
overhead, I was watching the float slowly gliding away, bobbing no
longer, but with the steady motion that follows if a good fish has taken
the bait.
And what a delight that was! What a reward to my patience! That it was
a big one I had no doubt. If it had been a little fish it would have
jigged and bobbed the float about in the most absurd way, just as if the
little fish were thoughtless, and in a hurry to be off to play on the
surface, whereas a big fish made it a regular business, and was calm and
deliberate in every way.
"Now for it," I thought, and raising the point of the rod slowly I was
just going to strike when the grinding above my head ceased, and one of
the voices I had before heard said:
"Well, we two have got to go up to the _Pointed Star_ to-night to get
our orders, and then we shall know what's what."