No sooner was lesson done than Pike, whose rod was ready upon the lawn, dashed away always for the river, rushing headlong down the hill, and away to the left through a private yard, where “no thoroughfare” was put up, and a big dog stationed to enforce it. But Cerberus himself could not have stopped John Pike; his conscience backed him up in trespass the most sinful when his heart was inditing of a trout upon the rise.
All this, however, is preliminary, as the boy said when he put his father’s coat upon his grandfather’s tenterhooks, with felonious intent upon his grandmother’s apples; the main point to be understood is this, that nothing—neither brazen tower, hundred-eyed Argus, nor Cretan Minotaur—could stop John Pike from getting at a good stickle. But, even as the world knows nothing of its greatest men, its greatest men know nothing of the world beneath their very nose, till fortune sneezes dexter. For two years John Pike must have been whipping the water as hard as Xerxes, without having ever once dreamed of the glorious trout that lived in Crocker’s Hole. But why, when he ought to have been at least on bowing terms with every fish as long as his middle finger, why had he failed to know this champion? The answer is simple—because of his short cuts. Flying as he did like an arrow from a bow, Pike used to hit his beloved river at an elbow, some furlong below Crocker’s Hole, where a sweet little stickle sailed away down stream, whereas for the length of a meadow upward the water lay smooth, clear, and shallow; therefore the youth, with so little time to spare, rushed into the downward joy.
And here it may be noted that the leading maxim of the present period, that man can discharge his duty only by going counter to the stream, was scarcely mooted in those days. My grandfather (who was a wonderful man, if he was accustomed to fill a cart in two days of fly-fishing on the Barle) regularly fished down stream; and what more than a cartload need anyone put into his basket?
And surely it is more genial and pleasant to behold our friend the river growing and thriving as we go on, strengthening its voice and enlargening its bosom, and sparkling through each successive meadow with richer plenitude of silver, than to trace it against its own grain and good-will toward weakness, and littleness, and immature conceptions.
However, you will say that if John Pike had fished up stream, he would have found this trout much sooner. And that is true; but still, as it was, the trout had more time to grow into such a prize. And the way in which John found him out was this. For some days he had been tormented with a very painful tooth, which even poisoned all the joys of fishing. Therefore he resolved to have it out, and sturdily entered the shop of John Sweetland, the village blacksmith, and there paid his sixpence. Sweetland extracted the teeth of the village, whenever they required it, in the simplest and most effectual way. A piece of fine wire was fastened round the tooth, and the other end round the anvil’s nose, then the sturdy blacksmith shut the lower half of his shop door, which was about breast-high, with the patient outside and the anvil within; a strong push of the foot upset the anvil, and the tooth flew out like a well-thrown fly. When John Pike had suffered this very bravely, “Ah, Master Pike,” said the blacksmith, with a grin, “I reckon you won’t pull out thic there big vish,”—the smithy commanded a view of the river,–“clever as you be, quite so peart as thiccy.”
“What big fish?” asked the boy, with deepest interest, though his mouth was bleeding fearfully.
“Why that girt mortial of a vish as hath his hover in Crocker’s Hole. Zum on ‘em saith as a’ must be a zammon.”
Off went Pike with his handkerchief to his mouth, and after him ran Alec Bolt, one of his fellow-pupils, who had come to the shop to enjoy the extraction.
“Oh, my!” was all that Pike could utter, when by craftily posting himself he had obtained a good view of this grand fish.
“I’ll lay you a crown you don’t catch him!” cried Bolt, an impatient youth, who scorned angling.
“How long will you give me?” asked the wary Pike, who never made rash wagers.
“Oh! till the holidays if you like; or, if that won’t do, till Michaelmas.”
Now the midsummer holidays were six weeks off—boys used not to talk of “vacations” then, still less of “recesses.”
“I think I’ll bet you,” said Pike, in his slow way, bending forward carefully, with his keen eyes on this monster; “but it would not be fair to take till Michaelmas. I’ll bet you a crown that I catch him before the holidays—at least, unless some other fellow does.”