Part 16

At last the shrewd fisherman has the upper hand, and cautiously draws his captive close up to the boat. He bends down, with his knees upon the gunwale, and leans over with the landing-net, in his right hand.

Grim suddenly finds herself close to the great “water-bird,” and gives a violent jerk. The fisherman reaches out with his arm, and the upper part of his body as far as they will go; but he forgets that he is in a boat and on unsafe ground, loses his balance, and falls overboard with a splash, upsetting the boat as he does so.

No one sees the accident, and his heavy waders drag him quickly down.

Grim darts this way and that, winding the line round him and drawing him to the bottom. And then, among the rocks of the reef, the line breaks; the angler’s body drifts in among the reeds.

* * * * *

Towards evening the sky becomes overcast and the troubled water looks thick and muddy. Little waves leap up, stand for a moment at their height as if trying to keep their balance, and then give up the attempt and roll down.

A solitary little sunbeam still now and again brightens up all the grey-veiled colours, and then the water takes the hues of a fallow-deer, and the water-lily leaves become floating patches of rainbow.

In the muddy valley between the bottom-springs, Oa is beginning to move. She blinks her cunning eyes, and their blue-black pupils become large and round. Then she sets out on a nocturnal expedition across the lake, steals into the rocky grottos of the cloister-cells, and finds a new hiding-place beneath the wreck of a boat--a new arrival. With her snout just in the rent between the bottom and the gunwale, she lies like a dog in its kennel, until night closes in and all is dark and silent.

Then she lets herself slowly drift along the edge to the reedy borders of the lake, taking every drowned dog or cat as gifts from the Creator’s hand.

Everything that has no longer the power to keep above the water, all that is dead and drifts about, belongs to the crayfish and to her.

* * * * *

The Nipper had already found the body when Oa arrived.

IX: THE WEDDING FESTIVAL

Spring has come, and the pike are about to spawn. Grim, the great she-pike, has been lying motionless for days among the bottom vegetation, waiting the call of the sun. And now it has come. One morning it suddenly bursts through and lights up the forest of stalks in the yellow, weedy margin. In the little open spaces between the tufts there is life and movement, and a sound of splashing everywhere; dark scaly bodies rise slowly out of the water. Then the young fish gambol, their fins beating like wings in the sunshine.

Grim’s cold heart, too, feels the spring, and it warms her icy blood. She swims about, full of gentler feelings, she notes an attraction in the shallow water close inshore, the grass of the ditches, and the sheltered pools of the marsh. And suddenly she recollects her bridal chamber, far up at the end of a broad, sun-warmed ditch fringed with flowering willow and drooping birch, with flickering sunlight and shadow, and the splashing of lively wooers.

Spring comes on apace, the sun’s rays piercing ever deeper into the water, where the plants shoot and rise out of the ooze with herculean strength, mass themselves, expand, and throw wide arms abroad. From the stubbly reed-bed rise fresh stems; and all the fallen willow wands that are floating about put forth leaves and take root.

Soon the banks grow green, and in the sour mud of the creek, where in a short time water-soldiers and duck-weed will form hanging islands, brown toads and green frogs are beginning to bark and croak.

All kinds of fish are gambolling with joy and delight; and at last comes Oa, the old recluse. Without evil intentions she approaches the bank, and in the flaming dawn she lays her hundred thousand eggs among the thronging mare’s-tails and grasses. But there is no bridegroom near her, for none exists. Bleak and little roach revel in her roe; and when she has spawned her heart once more grows cold, and she sinks back into the deep water, gloomy and sullen as before.

Grim becomes more and more eager. Her deep-blue pupils, surrounded with a brass-coloured ring, shine like sapphires in an amber setting; the clayey tones along her sides and flanks change to green, and her gill-covers take on a deep orange hue.

Little by little she feels herself attracted by the numerous eager little male pike that incessantly frisk about her, and are already resplendent in their magnificent golden bridal attire. She receives with delight the attentions of the one that for the moment pleases her most; towards the others, and especially those whom she does not like, she is capricious in the extreme, and will eat them if she has an opportunity.

As her spawning-time draws near, she grows heavy and swollen with her roe, and at the same time more irritable and uncertain in temper. She eats nothing, and thinks only of swimming over a flat grassy bottom, where she can rub her distended belly over the soft grass, arching her back like a dog in the consciousness of well-being.

The lake, whose banks are for the most part steep and reedy, never tempts her when she is about to spawn. She prefers to make her way up the brook to a number of large flooded peat-bogs and meadows.

She generally reaches them by a round-about way. At one place where the brook makes a bend and forms swampy ground with miles of reed-forest along its banks, a broad belt of rushes runs through some low-lying meadow-land for some distance. The belt twists and turns, and all the year through, withered rushes lift thin, seedless tassels above the rest. In summer it is grown over, and is little more than a deep bottomless ditch; but in spring, a sudden thaw will swell it to a wide, full channel.

Here, under flowering blackthorn and budding alder-trees, the waters of the bog and the lake are mingled.

* * * * *

One cloudy, misty night, Grim, followed by three ardent male pike, the largest not half her size, makes her way through the ditch. Other suitors have already appeared; the great migration before spawning is in full swing.

In and out she moves, among the shallows and banks of water-plants. Sometimes there is only a channel in mid-stream to follow, sometimes she has to go through a long, narrow passage beneath an over-hanging bank, until she reaches open, submarine plains in broad creeks. Her ardour and determination to overcome all difficulties help her, notwithstanding mud and a rotting dam.

At last she is through, and swimming about at her ease.