loon!” muttered Sleuth, crestfallen. “It is? Well, anyhow, I know what I saw, and I’ll stick to it about the white face and the fiery eyes.”
Crane had placed the lantern on the ground almost beneath the dangling sleeping bag, and now Grant stooped and picked up something revealed by the light.
“Here’s a white feather,” he said. “A stray shot from Sleuth’s gun may have knocked it out of some sort of a bird. That’s it, I reckon; he saw a white owl that had lighted on the very branch this bag hangs from. That accounts for the big fiery eyes and the terrible voice.”
Piper was struck dumb; he tried to say something, but the words choked in his throat and he abandoned the effort. Mercilessly his companions joshed him, and he realized that his exploits on this first night in camp were destined to provide a topic for raillery for some time to come. With his head down, he turned and plunged into the tent. They found him wrapped in the blankets and stretched on the ground, and to their continued badinage he would utter no word of retort.
With the first gray streaks of morning showing in the eastern sky, Springer attempted to arouse Piper and get him up.
“Come on, Sleuth,” he said. “You want to fish, and this is the time to get at it.”
“Go on,” was the smothered retort. “I’m going to get some sleep. Fish all you want to; I don’t care.”
Grant was up in a moment. “I’m with you, Phil,” he said. “Let’s take a plunge and a rub-down to wake us up, then we can try the fishing, and leave the others to start the fire and have things ready for breakfast when we get back.”
Flinging off everything, they raced out to the rocky side of the point, and Sleuth heard them go plunging into the water, one after the other. With a shivering sigh, for the damp coldness of the earth had crept up through the ground-cloth and blankets and seemed to pierce his bones, Piper got upon his hands and knees, crawled to the bed of boughs just deserted, pulled the blankets of the others around him and again courted slumber. Hazily he heard the early risers return, rub down with coarse towels and get into their clothes. They were putting their rods and reels together when he drifted off for the first time into sound and peaceful sleep.
Rod and Phil made their way slowly along the lake shore toward the south, casting the flies as they went, at which feat Springer, having had more experience, was by far the most skilful.
“It’s the back-snap that does it, Rod,” he explained. “Don’t swing your whole arm so hard; use your wrist more. If you can get a good sharp back-snap and time the forward movement of your hand properly, you’ll catch on pup-pretty soon. You don’t want to cast out as hard as you bring the line back, for if you do you’ll snap the fly like a crack of a whip, and you may even snap it off. Watch me now.”
Rodney watched and saw his companion send the fly soaring far out on the water with a double movement of the wrist, sharp and then gentle, and scarcely any movement whatever of the shoulder.
“It sure looks right simple,” confessed the Texan. “I can do it fairly well with a short bit of line, but I get plenty balled up when I try to let it out and make a longer cast.”
Phil reeled in and gave a demonstration of the proper manner to whip a line out by repeated casts, drawing off more and more from the reel with the left hand and holding the slack until the proper moment to let it run. Indeed, as Grant had said, it seemed an extremely simple thing to do, and Rodney, being an apt pupil, soon began to get the knack of it, and was not discouraged, although he repeatedly made a failure right on the heels of a very praiseworthy effort.
“You’re getting it all right,” encouraged Springer. “You’re doing sus-splendidly.”
“There I go into a bush,” said Rod, as his fly caught in some shrubbery at a distance behind him.
“Never mind that. You’ll need pup-plenty of room at first, and you’ll keep forgetting every little while to make your back cast good and sharp and your forward cast easy. The two movements must be tut-timed just right, too.”
“It must be right good sport when there are fish to catch, but we don’t seem to get any bites.”
“There are fuf-fish enough in the lake,” declared Phil. “Wait till we find them. It’s only the real true fisherman who has plenty of pup-patience and perseverance; the ordinary fellow gets tired and quits after a short time. He seems to think he ought to find fuf-fish anywhere and everywhere. Perhaps the flies we have on are not right, and we’ll try some others as we mum-move along.”
In the east the pearly gray light was taking on the tint of pink coral, and gradually this deepened, until it displayed the tone of a red-cheeked apple dangling from an orchard branch in autumn. Presently the white cross marking the cliff called “Lovers’ Leap” at the further side of the lake gleamed out golden bright, like the spire of a church. The morning air was clear and sweet with the faint odors of the woods, and it seemed to effect the boys like wine, filling their bodies with vibrating energy and tingling enthusiasm.
Although Springer paused to change his flies as they moved along, trying in turn a “Morning Glory,” “Parmacheenee Belle,” “Silver Doctor” and “Brown Hackle,” it was not until he cast into the shadow of some overhanging bushes at the mouth of a brook that he had a strike. There, almost as soon as the hackle sailed out and dropped lightly upon the smooth surface of the water, there was a swirl, a snap at the line, a sharp bending of the delicate bamboo rod; and the clear, buzzing whirr of the multiple reel told that the fish was hooked and running with the fly.
CHAPTER VI.
A MORNING’S SPORT
Instantly both boys were athrob with excitement, although Springer, handling the rod and “playing” the fish, was somewhat less agitated than Grant, who immediately dropped his own tackle and seized the landing net, ready to render such assistance as he might.
“He sure must be a dandy, Phil,” palpitated the Texan, his cheeks flushed and his eyes glowing. “Great Scott! see the rod bend. He hasn’t jumped yet. Don’t they jump?”
“If it’s a sus-sus-salmon,” stuttered Phil, swiftly winding in as the fish ceased its spurt and yielded a little, “it will jump; and maybe it will if it’s a bub-bass. It may not break water at all if it’s a tut-trout.”
Heedless of wet feet, Phil waded out until the water had reached to the knees of his canvas trousers, and there he stood, displaying no small amount of skill at the delightful task of baffling and tiring the fighting fish. Whenever the finny victim grew weary and permitted the line to slacken the angler reeled in, keeping it fairly taut, all the while prepared to let the reel run when it was necessary. In this manner, following the fish’s repeated breaks for liberty, the boy gradually brought it closer, admonishing his companion, who had likewise waded out and was waiting near at hand, to be ready to dip with the net when told to do so.
It was indeed exciting work, which kept them keyed to the highest tension. Both knew what it was to experience the fierce thrills of a savage football clash and the triumphant elation of brilliant and successful work upon the baseball field, but in the sport of this midsummer morning hour there was something different, yet quite as intensely enjoyable and blood-stirring. The reason, perhaps, lay in the fact that both possessed the natural instincts of the sportsman who finds the highest pleasure in a fair and honorable battle where victory and defeat hang in the balance until the last moment. For until the net should lift the fish from its native element they could not know how securely or how lightly it was hooked, and it was possible that, through a sudden swirling struggle of the creature itself or
