He was a
big one, and I am inclined to think that he was the Devil. For, if I had
stepped in deeper, and the water had come over my wading boots, the odds
are that my frail days on earth would have been ended by a chill, and I
knew this, and yet that fish went on tempting me to my ruin. I suppose I
tried to reach him a dozen times, and cast a hundred, but it was to no
avail. At length, as the afternoon grew grey and chill, I pitched a rock
at him, by way of showing that I saw through his fiendish guile, and I
walked away.
There was no rise now, and the lake was leaden and gloomy. When I
reached the edge of the deep reeds I tried, once or twice, to wade
through them within casting distance of the water, but was always driven
off by the traitorous quagginess of the soil. At last, taking my courage
in both hands, I actually got so near that I could throw a fly over the
top of the tall reeds, and then came a heavy splash, and the wretched
little broken rod nearly doubled up. "Hooray, here I am among the big
ones!" I said, and held on. It was now that I learned the nature of
Nero's diversion when he was an angler in the Lake of Darkness. The loch
really did deserve the term "grim"; the water here was black, the sky was
ashen, the long green reeds closed cold about me, and beyond them there
was trout that I could not deal with.
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