Читать книгу England have my Bones - T. H. White - Страница 17

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Please God, thank you for K.G.’s fish. We are now equal to that record between us, and I am one short of it to my own rod. Here is one of its scales.^[2]

The day was identical with yesterday as regards the weather, only perhaps not quite so much rain. It was cold and rainless till about 10.30, though very windy from the east. I went straight up to the Mill Pool at about 9.15 and fished it as carefully as possible, with the wind. Nothing. Then I took the long straight stretch below the Island Pool, where Macdonald had his fish on yesterday. It gets a little protection from the east wind, and it is possible to fish it straighter. At the very bottom, just above the mound, I had a strong pull, struck, and had him on. He was there three or four seconds. Then the fly came back to me. (It was a Bulldog, by the way: I found that I had bought three after all.) I said audibly: “O God! O Hell!” and put another cast in the same place. Macdonald says that a fish never comes again, but I seem to remember that Chaytor advocates a second attempt. Macdonald is a magnificent fisherman and I believed him, but I made the second cast in a wild attempt to relieve my own feelings. Nothing. I made a third cast, trembling with sorrow and indignation. And then he was there. I pressed on him hard, in an agony of doubt for the first few seconds, in case he should go again. But he stayed there. He was lively and he leapt. I performed acrobatics to look at my watch. The gaff was fifty yards down the bank. He adopted a to-fro tactic across the river. As I am lame it was a struggle. There was a tussling limp back to the gaff, and the fever of taking the champagne cork off its point with one hand. It wouldn’t have mattered so much, except for K.G. I brought him to gaff three times, and laid it along his side, but wouldn’t strike till he was absolutely done in, for fear of bungling. He burrowed the bank with his nose, making me fear for the cast. As I was certain that he was Macdonald’s fish, and therefore that he had twice got off the hook, and as I was still using the sprung rod, I did not cease to be terrified. In exactly nine minutes I lifted him cleanly out (the gaff going right round his spine), panted at him with amazement, and grabbed his tail to knock him on the head. He weighed 8½ lbs., a small fish, but good enough. The Bulldog is the finest spring fly that ever was seen.

The rest of the day was blank and the rain set in. The record is not beaten, and I have only two more fishing days.

A Major Wynne came over to fish to-day, and will be here on Saturday and Monday. Hence Macdonald’s absence, ghillying him. I disliked him at sight and he is a rotten fisherman. He brought about a hundredweight of stuff, fished the Mill Pool with a minnow because he said it was too windy to get a fly across, and had two people trailing down the bank after him carrying his collection of gadgets. He was here so that he could talk about his fishin’ later on. He treated Macdonald and his chauffeur abominably (actually handed the rod to Macdonald, for him to wind up the reel, when he had finished fishing a pool), came over after the morning take and left before the evening one. He has three rods on the Spey, and bucked about it. Enough of Wynne.