The day of that most momentous interview must have been the 14th of May.
Of the year I will not be so sure; for children take more note of days
than of years, for which the latter have their full revenge thereafter.
It must have been the 14th, because the morrow was our holiday, given
upon the 15th of May, in honour of a birthday.
Now, John Pike was beyond his years wary as well as enterprising, calm
as well as ardent, quite as rich in patience as in promptitude and
vigour. But Alec Bolt was a headlong youth, volatile, hot, and hasty,
fit only to fish the Maelstrom, or a torrent of new lava. And the moment
he had laid that wager he expected his crown piece; though time, as the
lawyers phrase it, was “expressly of the essence of the contract.”
And now he demanded that Pike should spend the holiday in trying to
catch that trout.
“I shall not go near him,” that lad replied, “until I have got a new
collar.” No piece of personal adornment was it, without which he would
not act, but rather that which now is called the fly-cast, or the
gut-cast, or the trace, or what it may be. “And another thing,”
continued Pike; “the bet is off if you go near him, either now or at
any other time, without asking: my leave first, and then only going as I
tell you.”
“What do I want with the great slimy beggar?” the arrogant Bolt made
answer. “A good rat is worth fifty of him. No fear of my going near him,
Pike. You shan't get out of it that way.”
Pike showed his remarkable qualities that day, by fishing exactly as he
would have fished without having heard of the great Crockerite. He was
up and away upon the mill-stream before breakfast; and the forenoon he
devoted to his favourite course--first down the Craddock stream, a very
pretty confluent of the Culm, and from its junction, down the pleasant
hams, where the river winds toward Uffculme. It was my privilege to
accompany this hero, as his humble Sancho; while Bolt and the faster
race went up the river ratting. We were back in time to have Pike's
trout (which ranged between two ounces and one-half pound) fried for the
early dinner; and here it may be lawful to remark that the trout of the
Culm are of the very purest excellence, by reason of the flinty bottom,
at any rate in these the upper regions. For the valley is the western
outlet of the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the north,
and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone
hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit
mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under
good, well-pastured loam; and here are chalcedonies and agate stones.
At dinner everybody had a brace of trout--large for the larger folk,
little for the little ones, with coughing and some patting on the back
for bones. What of equal purport could the fierce rat-hunter show? Pike
explained many points in the history of each fish, seeming to know
them none the worse, and love them all the better, for being fried. We
banqueted, neither a whit did soul get stinted of banquet impartial.
Then the wielder of the magic rod very modestly sought leave of absence
at the tea time.
“Fishing again, Mr. Pike, I suppose,” my father answered pleasantly; “I
used to-be fond of it at your age; but never so entirely wrapped up in
it as you are.”
“No, sir; I am not going fishing again. I want to walk to Wellington, to
get some things at Cherry's.”
“Books, Mr. Pike? Ah! I am very glad of that. But I fear it can only be
fly-books.”
“I want a little Horace for eighteen-pence--the Cambridge one just
published, to carry in my pocket--and a new hank of gut.”
“Which of the two is more important? Put that into Latin, and answer
it.”
“Utrum pluris facio? Flaccum flocci. Viscera magni.” With this vast
effort Pike turned as red as any trout spot.
“After that who could refuse you?” said my father. “You always tell the
truth, my boy, in Latin or in English.”
Although it was a long walk, some fourteen miles to Wellington and back,
I got permission to go with Pike; and as we crossed the bridge and saw
the tree that overhung Crocker's Hole, I begged him to show me that
mighty fish.
“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “It would bring the blackguards. If the
blackguards once find him out, it is all over with him.”
“The blackguards are all in factory now, and I am sure they cannot see
us from the windows. They won't be out till five o'clock.”
With the true liberality of young England, which abides even now as
large and glorious as ever, we always called the free and enlightened
operatives of the period by the courteous name above set down, and it
must be acknowledged that some of them deserved it, although perhaps
they poached with less of science than their sons. But the cowardly
murder of fish by liming the water was already prevalent.
Yielding to my request and perhaps his own desire--manfully kept in
check that morning--Pike very carefully approached that pool, commanding
me to sit down while he reconnoitred from the meadow upon the right bank
of the stream. And the place which had so sadly quenched the fire of the
poor baker's love filled my childish heart with dread and deep wonder
at the cruelty of women. But as for John Pike, all he thought of was the
fish and the best way to get at him.
Very likely that hole is “holed out” now, as the Yankees well express
it, or at any rate changed out of knowledge. Even in my time a very
heavy flood entirely altered its character; but to the eager eye of Pike
it seemed pretty much as follows, and possibly it may have come to such
a form again:
The river, after passing though a hurdle fence at the head of the
meadow, takes a little turn or two of bright and shallow indifference,
then gathers itself into a good strong slide, as if going down a slope
instead of steps. The right bank is high and beetles over with yellow
loam and grassy fringe; but the other side is of flinty shingle, low and
bare and washed by floods. At the end of this rapid, the stream turns
sharply under an ancient alder tree into a large, deep, calm repose,
cool, unruffled, and sheltered from the sun by branch and leaf--and that
is the hole of poor Crocker.
At the head of the pool (where the hasty current rushes in so eagerly,
with noisy excitement and much ado) the quieter waters from below,
having rested and enlarged themselves, come lapping up round either
curve, with some recollection of their past career, the hoary experience
of foam. And sidling toward the new arrival of the impulsive column,
where they meet it, things go on, which no man can describe without his
mouth being full of water. A “V” is formed, a fancy letter V, beyond
any designer's tracery, and even beyond his imagination, a perpetually
fluctuating limpid wedge, perpetually crenelled and rippled into by
little ups and downs that try to make an impress, but can only glide
away upon either side or sink in dimples under it. And here a gray bough
of the ancient alder stretches across, like a thirsty giant's arm, and
makes it a very ticklish place to throw a fly. Yet this was the very
spot our John Pike must put his fly into, or lose his crown.
Because the great tenant of Crocker's Hole, who allowed no other fish
to wag a fin there, and from strict monopoly had grown so fat, kept
his victualing yard--if so low an expression can be used concerning
him--within about a square yard of this spot. He had a sweet hover, both
for rest and recreation, under the bank, in a placid antre, where
the water made no noise, but tickled his belly in digestive ease. The
loftier the character is of any being, the slower and more dignified his
movements are. No true psychologist could have believed--as Sweet-land
the blacksmith did, and Mr. Pook the tinman--that this trout could
ever be the embodiment of Crocker. For this was the last trout in the
universal world to drown himself for love; if truly any trout has done
so.
“You may come now, and try to look along my back,” John Pike, with a
reverential whisper, said to me. “Now don't be in a hurry, young stupid;
kneel down. He is not to be disturbed at his dinner, mind. You keep
behind me, and look along my back; I never clapped eyes on such a
whopper.”
I had to kneel down in a tender reminiscence of pasture land, and gaze
carefully; and not having eyes like those of our Zebedee (who offered
his spine for a camera, as he crawled on all fours in front of me), it
took me a long time to descry an object most distinct to all who have
that special gift of piercing with their eyes the water. See what is
said upon this subject in that delicious book, “The Gamekeeper at Home.”
“You are no better than a muff,” said Pike, and it was not in my power
to deny it.
“If the sun would only leave off,” I said. But the sun, who was having a
very pleasant play with the sparkle of the water and the twinkle of
the leaves, had no inclination to leave off yet, but kept the rippling
crystal in a dance of flashing facets, and the quivering verdure in a
steady flush of gold.
But suddenly a May-fly, a luscious gray-drake, richer and more delicate
than canvas-back or woodcock, with a dart and a leap and a merry zigzag,
began to enjoy a little game above the stream. Rising and falling like
a gnat, thrilling her gauzy wings, and arching her elegant pellucid
frame, every now and then she almost dipped her three long tapering
whisks into the dimples of the water.
“He sees her! He'll have her as sure as a gun!” cried Pike, with a gulp,
as if he himself were “rising.” “Now, can you see him, stupid?”
“Crikey, crokums!” I exclaimed, with classic elegance; “I have seen that
long thing for five minutes; but I took it for a tree.”
“You little”--animal quite early in the alphabet--“now don't you stir a
peg, or I'll dig my elbow into you.”
The great trout was stationary almost as a stone, in the middle of the
“V” above described. He was gently fanning with his large clear fins,
but holding his own against the current mainly by the wagging of his
broad-fluked tail. As soon as my slow eyes had once defined him, he grew
upon them mightily, moulding himself in the matrix of the water, as a
thing put into jelly does. And I doubt whether even John Pike saw him
more accurately than I did. His size was such, or seemed to be such,
that I fear to say a word about it; not because language does not
contain the word, but from dread of exaggeration. But his shape and
colour may be reasonably told without wounding the feeling of an age
whose incredulity springs from self-knowledge.
His head was truly small, his shoulders vast; the spring of his back was
like a rainbow when the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his deep
elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what the power
of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time, with the
vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. His latter end was consistent
also. An elegant taper run of counter, coming almost to a cylinder, as
a mackered does, boldly developed with a hugeous spread to a glorious
amplitude of swallow-tail. His colour was all that can well be desired,
but ill-described by any poor word-palette. Enough that he seemed to
tone away from olive and umber, with carmine stars, to glowing gold and
soft pure silver, mantled with a subtle flush of rose and fawn and opal.
Swoop came a swallow, as we gazed, and was gone with a flick, having
missed the May-fly. But the wind of his passage, or the stir of wing,
struck the merry dancer down, so that he fluttered for one instant on
the wave, and that instant was enough. Swift as the swallow, and more
true of aim, the great trout made one dart, and a sound, deeper than a
tinkle, but as silvery as a bell, rang the poor ephemerid's knell. The
rapid water scarcely showed a break; but a bubble sailed down the pool,
and the dark hollow echoed with the music of a rise.
“He knows how to take a fly,” said Pike; “he has had too many to be
tricked with mine. Have him I must; but how ever shall I do it?”
All the way to Wellington he uttered not a word, but shambled along with
a mind full of care. When I ventured to look up now and then, to surmise
what was going on beneath his hat, deeply-set eyes and a wrinkled
forehead, relieved at long intervals by a solid shake, proved that there
are meditations deeper than those of philosopher or statesman.