Part 12

Now only patience, a little more time to wait; for this time she would make sure of her fish!

Just then there is a movement in one of the clumps of weed. The dusky-hued perch with the high back forestalls her. Right before her nose he darts like an arrow after the fugitive, but hesitates at the very moment of striking, stops, and sniffs.

“Oh! so he daren’t! He wants to have the whole company with him!”

Grim’s eyes are alight with the eagerness of the hunter, and her stiff tongue quivers in her mouth as, with widely opened jaws, she springs upon her prey.

The roach is good enough! It wriggles between her teeth and tickles her cheeks and chin with slaps of its little tail; and yet ... it has an inexplicable strength like that of a little pearly fish that she dimly remembers.

She grows angry. Is an insignificant little fish like this going to resist her will? The silly little thing is ready to go any way but the one she wants it to go; she can hardly get from one thicket of weeds to the other. She becomes so angry that she feels the blood burning in the back of her neck, and with a sudden vigorous effort, she gives the roach a violent tug.

That helps; the fish becomes manageable, its strength vanishes. She is triumphant. Yes, she knew, of course, how it would be!

Grim had been fortunate in her misadventure. True, it was a man-roach that she had bitten into, but she had fortunately broken the line, and now went off with a long trace dragging after her. She had swallowed the bait, but what made her horribly uncomfortable was that in doing so she had got a long, thorny water-plant fixed to her upper lip.

They were the barbs of the triple hook that she took for thorns!

At that moment she sees another little roach shining. It is just as languid as the previous one, and makes the same tempting impression. Instantly she makes a dash at it.

The same comedy was gone through, the same incomprehensible strength in a puny roach, and the same work to get the refractory fish into her power.

Well, she managed it at last; at last she had her mouthful.

This one she swallowed too, but once more she had to spit out something sharp and prickly that hung to her upper lip on the opposite side.

It was a long time before Grim managed to wear away the two triple hooks from the corners of her mouth, and in the meantime she swam about with the rusty things like an extra set of monster eye-teeth sticking out of her mouth. The pieces of line that trailed behind her often caught in things and chained her in an incomprehensible manner to reeds and rushes; but at last she pulled out one, and a little later the other, and a hard, gristly, leather-like skin formed where they had been.

She gained some experience from this incident; henceforward, she regarded solitary, sickly-looking roach with keen suspicion. She would still take with confident voracity large roach and small; but she very reluctantly took a halting, languid fish like those that had pricked her so horribly that morning. Their drooping fins and heavy, wriggling flight had fixed themselves clearly in her mind’s eye.

Her peaceful youth, in which she had only had the heron and the crayfish and her own kind to fight with, had long since passed, and henceforth she was to see more and more of the angler’s implements.

* * * * *

But the old sportsman, whose tackle was wearing out, had to overhaul and renew his stock. It irritated him beyond endurance, and for a long time he felt ashamed of himself. From the resistance it had offered he felt quite convinced that the pike he had lost was at least worth a bronze medal. He would not tell anyone where it lay, but would take it himself when he had the opportunity.

VII: THE RASPER

The horde of marauders were chasing through the lake again, and behind them came the pike. These last did not go together, like the perch, in serried ranks at a furious hunting pace, but slunk along one by one from stone to stone, and from weedy clump to weedy clump.

Grim is with them, and like a seal she helps herself to the flying bleak which in their terror rush blindly into her jaws. It is quick work, but nevertheless not quick enough. The gluttony of the perch angers and irritates her; she feels her belly growing larger, and her throat widening. She has room for more fish, mountains of fish!

With a jerk of her body she comes nearer, and is now right in the whirlpool of bleak and perch.

Quivering and trembling, the little fish fly in all directions as she tears among them, and with strong beats of her tail to right and left pursues her victims. Her eyes gleam, and her thin lips quiver with insatiable desire.

A big, high-backed perch coolie makes a capture right in front of her. In his eagerness he makes such a commotion in the water that it looks as if it were full of thick, shining snakes. Snap! Snap! There goes a bleak right before her nose!

This is more than she can endure! She dislikes this insolent lake-dog in a still greater degree than when, as a young pike, she stayed in the shelter of the creek. His cunning and deceit, his ability to save himself and to get her into a scrape, has of late frequently irritated her.

A moment later, while she is in the middle of a spring, he happens to be pushed by his comrades right in front of her mouth. Her jaws are already opened, and the water is streaming in like a mill-race; she sees the bleak-fat upon the mouth of her plump opponent, and her ferocity and murderous lust are doubled.

Then she gives way to the innermost need of her being. With an enormous development of energy, intoxicated with the joy of capture, she attacks the Rasper with the full strength of both her serrated jaws, opening them so wide, and dashing at him with such force, that they engulf him to far down his plump hog-back. The hundreds of little teeth with which her palate is paved have the same desire, the same purpose; to bore right in and hold fast.

Just as the pike’s attack is at its height, the Rasper suddenly raises his twelve-spined dorsal fin. During his chase of the little fish, it had lain neatly folded like a fan along his back; now it is transformed into a murderous weapon, and its bony ribs into a bundle of hidden sword-blades, now stiff and sharp like polished bayonets, now elastically pliable like rapiers.