Читать книгу The Black Schooner - Roy J. Snell - Страница 5

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In spite of the fact that he had not crept into his blankets until one o’clock, Johnny was up and away again before Pant had come in from his turn at watching.

Tossing his cap into the clinker-built rowboat, he shoved her off and laughed in the face of the sun, which was just climbing over the fringe of timber. The lure of the woods and river was upon him. It had been many months since he had enjoyed the out-in-the-open or answered the call of still shadows and rippling streams.

The experience they had just embarked upon promised to be all that a boy might desire. There were mysteries to be attended to at night and what red-blooded boy does not love the baffling challenge of a real mystery? In the daytime there was the call of the rainbow trout, the whirr of the pheasant, the long-drawn whistle, the chatter, the cooie-cooie and the hundred other challenging calls of creatures of the forest.

Just at present he was thinking of that rainbow trout he had seen flash for a fly the night before. Morning is a good time to fish. Who knows what a rainbow trout will rise to before the sun is high?

So with a fly glittering at the point of his steel rod and with his supple arms bending the stout ashen oars, he shot out into the river and upstream toward that deep pool where at least one speckled beauty rested.

He had scarcely sent his fly dipping down upon the still surface of the pool than, flooie! out of the dark waters there came a flash of foam, a steel-blue gleam and his reel sang.

The strike, coming all unexpected as it did, caught him unprepared. The reel, entirely out of his control, spun around like mad. In vain he attempted to regain control of it. Only when the entire fifty yards had spun out and the rod had been all but torn from his fingers, did he succeed in checking this master fish’s mad career.

“Right for swift water,” he groaned as he strove madly to lift his anchor.

“Line’s a good one, but it can’t—”

Giving up his attempt at the anchor, he gripped the handle of the reel and attempted to turn it.

“Might as well be hooked to a dock,” he whispered.

Then of a sudden his hope rose; the fish had swerved. He gained a dozen turns of the reel.

Now the fish appeared to give in. A good twenty yards were added to the gain.

But sudden as a gleam of light, the trout leaped clear of the water; a full four feet he flashed.

“Man! Oh, man! What a fish!”

He leaped again, and yet again. The third time Johnny’s fingers slipped. The reel was slack for an instant; one instant was quite enough. The next instant Johnny was quite free to reel in his line at his leisure. The fish was gone.

For a moment, quite speechless, he stood in the boat. He was staring at the spot where the fish had vanished, as if contemplating a dive in pursuit of him.

“All right,” he murmured hoarsely, “all right for you. But that’s only the first round. This is a twenty round battle and I’m not knocked out yet; I’ll not quit until I get a decision.”

After that he reeled in his line, then paddled to a point just above the master-trout’s lair.

“I thought so,” he murmured, as if speaking to the fish. “You’ve got a cozy home down there with a shady porch to it, a big boulder in fifteen feet of water. That’s the kind of place a retired champion like you usually chooses for a home. And the rock’s split, split from end to end; a two foot crevice, I’ll be bound. Extra fancy, I’d say.

“All right, old fellow, I know you’re not connected in any way with the mystery we’ve been hired to unravel, but all the same I’m going to lay for you. And I’ll get you. I’ll get you.” Whereupon he dipped his oars in the water and continued his journey upstream.

Strange as it might seem, Johnny’s remark about the master-trout and his split rock home not being connected with the big mystery was not quite true. They were destined to be connected with it in a very real way, as you shall see later on.

For the present Johnny was headed upstream. He was bent upon a day of pleasure on the river. If the distance did not prove too great nor the current too strong, he meant to have a look at the sawmill up the river.