Beekman sat in the bow of the boat, with
his rod over the left side; Cornelia in the stern, with her rod over
the right side. The night was cloudy and very black. Each of them
had put on the largest possible fly, one a "Bee-Pond" and the other
a "Dragon;" but even these were invisible. They measured out the
right length of line, and let the flies drift back until they hung
over the shoal, in the curly water where the two currents meet.
There were three other boats to the left of them. McTurk was their
only neighbour in the darkness on the right. Once they heard him
swearing softly to himself, and knew that he had hooked and lost a
fish.
Away down at the tail of the pool, dimly visible through the gloom,
the furtive fisherman, Parsons, had anchored his boat. No noise
ever came from that craft. If he wished to change his position, he
did not pull up the anchor and let it down again with a bump. He
simply lengthened or shortened his anchor rope. There was no click
of the reel when he played a fish. He drew in and paid out the line
through the rings by hand, without a sound. What he thought when a
fish got away, no one knew, for he never said it. He concealed his
angling as if it had been a conspiracy. Twice that night they heard
a faint splash in the water near his boat, and twice they saw him
put his arm over the side in the darkness and bring it back again
very quietly.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115