# An Angler at Large/Chapter 13

Every day of angling has some measure of joy and some of sorrow. There is, for example, the delight, always very keen, of viewing the water on arrival, though this has, within my experience, been wanting, the pond which I meditated fishing on one occasion having entirely disappeared, owing to a breach in its embankment. But this disappointment was balanced to some extent by the knowledge that I should never fish there again. It had been an infam—nil nisi bonum. On the other side of the account there is the sorrow of catching no fish. This is acute, and usual with me. But even on my blank days I can look back with pleasure. One carries away something with one from a river, though the creel be empty as the day it was woven. One cannot have failed to see all sorts of pretty things, to hear all sorts of pretty sounds, to smell sweet scents, to relish one's lunch. The senses have been exquisitely wooed. One has been out of London. That in itself is a rich satisfaction.
​The blank day of yesterday was, considered as a day's fishing, particularly monotonous in its blankness. Between ten in the morning and nightfall my strained eyes may have witnessed perhaps three young grayling dimple the surface of that chalk stream, and once—tremendous moment!—a pike struck. But to a sportsman such as I was that day the doings of the fish were a small matter. Elsewhere than under water the items of my bag were found.
My scientific friend, Slattery, had given me a ticket for the White Water, three miles across the downs. His day's work ended, he was to come out by train for the evening, and we were to walk back together to Willows. I anticipated much pleasure from my day's angling, much from my walk home in the moonlight with Slattery.
Now you shall hear what happened.
From my arrival on the bank until midday, Hope—faithful creature—buoyed me stoutly up. Line greased, gut soaked, pale olive (I had seen one) attached, paraffined, wetted and dried, net ready on hip, I moved up the White Water at the regulation pace (when fish are not moving) of one quarter-mile in the hour. My eye scanned the surface, searched the depths. My ear was cocked for any likely little sound. I was craft incarnate. Towards noon this overwrought condition of my ​faculties (combined with a complete lack of any sign that the river held fish) produced its inevitable effect. My vigilance relaxed. The lustre of my purism became dimmed. I put on a large Wickham.
At the first cast a swift took it as it was falling. The force of habit struck—I am myself incapable of such an act—and after a short contest the misguided bird was brought to hand, unhooked, and returned to the air. The Wickham, dressed on a No. 1 hook, I have always found peculiarly deadly to swifts. This particular specimen, however, proved wholly innocuous to the trout, if trout there were.
Under such conditions luncheon is doubly welcome. One eats with no sense of time lost. One's enjoyment of food—a very proper enjoyment—is not marred by any anxiety about the river. One lingers over the cigarette that follows and the cigarette that follows it. One does not hurry. There are no fish anywhere at all. One dismisses fish from one's mind and takes one's pleasure in mastication, like a wise man. So I lunched. It was a good lunch, thoughtfully combined by a mistress of the art. There was marmalade in it and a pottle (I think it was a pottle) of ripe strawberries, also half a lobster, lettuce, many things. I have seldom had a better ​lunch while fishing. At length, recollecting that I was not here to guzzle (all was over with the strawberries), but to catch a trout for my wife, I lit tobacco and rose slowly to my feet. And I perceived a duck's egg, pale green against the darker grass—no shell-less wind egg—as honest an effort as ever was dropped in haste and collected at leisure. I was very much pleased at finding this egg. My wife does not like duck's eggs, but I do, and I get too few of them. I ought to have more. They are a particularly sustaining form of egg, I made a nest of sweet hay for it in my creel, covered it up carefully, and passed on, indescribably strengthened. I had something in the creel.
During the next three hours I made slow but steady progress up river, cheering my soul with thoughts of the morrow's breakfast, soothing her with contemplation of the landscape when the water became unbearable. The beeches were exquisite, sweet scents were everywhere, cuckoos hooted, fieldfares piped, the Cloud Artist was wonderfully inspired that day. I met an inspector of the conservancy, who asked to see my licence. I indulged his fancy. His obvious disappointment was alone worth leaving Willows to see, not to mention the shilling I had paid in the local post office for that piece of paper. Wishing me good ​sport in a bitterly resentful voice, he withdrew. The spirit of a wish has never more signally been fulfilled at the expense of its letter. Hope left me by the water, admiring creation. Five o'clock brought appetite and, appropriately, a little public-house. I was half full of seed cake and damson jam before I thought of my duck's egg. But it would come in at breakfast. The charge for tea was preposterously small. Well content, I rejoined the river.
An hour passed, a delicious hour in which the sun, creeping unwillingly to bed after his riot among the clouds, threw out longer and longer shadows under the trees, flushed the green downs with rose, performed miracles—for me. For me the birds sang loudly, praising the good weather. The trout showed no interest in these things. I gathered kingcups. While reaching for a particularly splendid bloom which grew low by the water's edge, I was staggered to perceive a movement, a break in the surface among some rushes some little way above me. Hope came fluttering back. With the infinite precaution of a boy scout engaged on his first practical demonstration of the principles which he has imbibed from Major-General Baden-Powell, I approached the site of the unbelievable occurrence, and beheld, raised from the water, as it were a bunch of feathers, ​motionless, the stern of a bird which, head buried in weed, obviously supposed itself safe from observation. I felt almost certain that it was not an ostrich, though its manœuvre lent colour to that belief. To make absolutely sure, I stooped, and, taking a secure grip, extracted a waterhen—red bill, yellow legs, and all. I had never hitherto guddled a waterhen, and the experience was highly pleasurable. Having heard that these birds are succulent, I thought once of despatching the thing and placing it in my creel to keep the egg company; but it lay quite still in my hands, and its frightened eye disarmed me. Also a shrill little squeaking arose from amidst the rushes, and a small black ball with a scarlet neb became visible, oaring furiously away. This was the child of my captive. It caught sight of me and dived, swam six inches under water, rose, squeaked, dived again, and was no more seen. But its tender voice completed the work. If I destroyed its mother it must undoubtedly perish. Probably I was contemplating an infringement of the law—moorhens are just the sort of bird that would be protected. I restored my prey to the water. It dived, and reappeared presently, uttering maternal calls. I wandered on, my heart aglow with the consciousness of a skilful deed and a good action. All this time no sign of Slattery.
​Dusk found me on the point of land which lay between the end of a mill-tail and the main river. A snipe was bleating about in a neighbouring meadow. There was a primrose sky above one down, a young moon above the other. A water-rat emerged from shadow and took its slanting course across the river, bent on some petty business or other. Idly I cast my line (by this time I was fishing a sedge, wet, down-stream) athwart its course, to see the furry thing dive, always a charming spectacle. It dived. I had hooked a water-rat.
A man approached on the other side of the mill-tail, and, thinking that I had a fish, congratulated me on my fortune. I perceived that he was Slattery. About the same time I drew a highly incensed water-rat on to the gravel at my feet. He was hooked lightly in the extreme point of the tail. As I lovingly unfastened the hook he turned, and with hideous ingratitude bit me to the bone of the first finger of my left hand. Then he rushed into the river. I uttered a loud cry. Slattery, supposing I had lost my fish, cried, "Hard lines!" I said, "It's bitten me." "Bitten you?" he repeated. "Bitten you, did you say?" It occurred to me that I had not told him what I had been catching. If he believed it to have ​been a trout his surprise was very natural. "It was a rat," I mumbled, my finger in my mouth. "A rat?" he cried, and vanished. I thought him unsympathetic, thereby wronging him utterly. The blood gushed; I went up to the mill, my mind dark with misgivings. Blood poisoning, in my imagination, had already set in, and by the time I beheld the man of science hurrying towards me through the gloom my arm had been amputated. This extreme measure had failed, and they were measuring me for my coffin. Slattery carried a little thing like a slate pencil in his hand. He explained that it was a rod of lunar caustic, which, just before leaving his house that morning, he had found lying about and had slipped into his pocket. It was the first time he had ever carried such a thing with him. I swear that this happened.
Thus, with a sharp burning sensation, ended this eventful day. Fishing I had had none, but with a swift, a duck's egg, a waterhen, and a rat to my credit, I could not complain that I had lacked sport. We trudged home to Willows, I nursing my finger. At the gate my wife met me. "Any luck?" she inquired, with her usual hopeful smile. I felt in my creel for the egg. It was smashed. "Nothing," said I. "What!" she cried. "Not a ​single bite all day?" I was obliged to confess that I had had a bite.
Then I had reason to be grateful to the water-rat.