This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string.The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the line on the reel.More butt; more indignation on the part of the captive.The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and Iwas getting exhausted.We had been back and forth across the lake, and round and round the lake.What I feared was that the trout would start up the inlet and wreck us in the bushes.But he had a new fancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre which I had never read of.Instead of coming straight towards me, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit.I reeled in, and kept my eye on him.Round and round he went, narrowing his circle.I began to suspect the game; which was, to twist my head off.--When he had reduced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water.It would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to the occasion.Instead of turning round with him, as he expected, Istepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing.Round went the fish, and round we went like a top.I saw a line of Mount Marcys all round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west made a broad band of pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens.We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled.I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and line, and all, if he would only go the other way for a change.
When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side.
After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound.Fish always lose by being "got in and dressed." It is best to weigh them while they are in the water.The only really large one I ever caught got away with my leader when I first struck him.He weighed ten pounds.
IV
A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self-sacrificing sportsmen who have cleared the Adirondack regions of catamounts and savage trout, what shall be said of the army which has so nobly relieved them of the terror of the deer? The deer-slayers have somewhat celebrated their exploits in print; but I think that justice has never been done them.
The American deer in the wilderness, left to himself, leads a comparatively harmless but rather stupid life, with only such excitement as his own timid fancy raises.It was very seldom that one of his tribe was eaten by the North American tiger.For a wild animal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, regular in his habits, affectionate in his family.Unfortunately for his repose, his haunch is as tender as his heart.Of all wild creatures he is one of the most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill of an experienced model.I have seen the goats on Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of a stranger, climb to the sharp points of projecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner, striking at once those picturesque postures against the sky with which Oriental pictures have made us and them familiar.But the whole proceeding was theatrical.
Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find anything there natural and unstudied.I presume that these goats have no nonsense about them when they are alone with the goatherds, any more than the goatherds have, except when they come to pose in the studio; but the long ages of culture, the presence always to the eye of the best models and the forms of immortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the Temple of Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals, have had a steady molding, educating influence equal to a society of decorative art upon the people and the animals who have dwelt in this artistic atmosphere.The Attic goat has become an artificially artistic being; though of course he is not now what he was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus.There is opportunity for a very instructive essay by Mr.E.A.Freeman on the decadence of the Attic goat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk.
The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yet untouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, and all his attitudes are free and unstudied.The favorite position of the deer--his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among the lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at the moment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest--is still spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him which the artists have put upon canvas.