Part 23

As she does so, she feels as if an eel were winding its pliant body round her chest. She rolls round, unable to use her fins. She quickly regains her balance, however, frees her body from the pressure, and sets off, with sudden twists, and leaps from the bottom to the surface, turning so suddenly that the fish-snatcher’s body swings out and hangs down in the water.

But the otter only keeps a firmer hold. He is used to these desperate rallies, which always become fiercer and more violent as the quarry is on the point of giving in. He takes care, however, in turning, not to let any of his legs hang in front of the pike’s mouth; he is too well acquainted with the teeth of the fresh-water shark!

Up and down, the two well-matched opponents dive incessantly.

Whenever Grim goes to the surface, a puffing and growling is heard. The otter hastily gasps for breath, and tightens his hold with his fore-claws; but when they are on their way down to the depths, and air-bubbles, like silver beads, roll through the water behind him, he has only to hold on and let himself go.

Once Grim is lucky. An old snag sticks up in the water, and, in turning, the otter’s body is dashed against it. It sends a shock through the animal, but as Grim for the moment has exhausted her energy and succumbed to one of the well-known fits of weakness common to her species, the otter once more apparently gets the upper hand.

Thus with varying fortunes the battle rages for some time.

They lie fighting on the surface--a golden-streaked, slimy, scaly fish twisted into a knot with a dark, hairy, furred body!

Once more there is a pause in the fighting.

Unobserved by Grim, who has just fallen into one of her apathetic fits, the otter endeavours carefully to float the pike up under one of the large mounds, in order to drag her up with an effort of strength on to dry land; but the attempt fails utterly: he is simply unable to manage so great a load.

Now Grim’s strength returns once more. With a powerful stroke of her tail, she disappears with lightning rapidity from the surface, and goes to the bottom with her rider, whose merry-go-round jaunt makes his head swim. She is trying to get hold of his leg or body, and therefore twists round with him so that he flaps like a loose piece of strap on an axle; but she is not sufficiently supple to reach him. Her back aches, her flexor muscles hurt. At last she has met with an opponent who puts her judgment, her ingenuity, and her endurance to the extreme test.

Down on the bottom, sticking out from the bank, are the roots of the willow-bushes on the edge. In her mad rush down, Grim has come near these, and instinctively seeks shelter beneath them. At full speed she runs her long body into the network and sticks fast, rapidly twisting her tail-screw both ahead and astern.

The otter treads water now on the right, now on the left side of her, and tries, by utilizing the roots as steps, to lift her up with him. But in vain; he cannot even stir the huge fish!

His teeth are still far from having forced their way through; it seems as if, short and rounded as they are, they cannot reach the bottom. But he makes tremendous exertions, whipping his tail in under the peat-bank, while with his hind paws he seeks for support in clefts and cracks. Suddenly he feels one of his feet seized. The grasp tightens, so that his whole leg aches; he tries to draw in his foot, but it is held immovable.

A monster crayfish, that has become so stiff with age that it can scarcely manage to strike a proper blow with its tail, has made for itself, in fear of Grim, a reliable place of refuge in the hole. For a long time it has patiently followed the battle through its feelers, and hoped that some morsel would fall to its hungry stomach; now, with gratitude to Providence, it closes its great claw upon the warm-blooded fisher.

A growing uneasiness steals over the otter. He had once been caught by the tip of one claw in an otter-trap. The trap was heavy, and had dragged him under water; and he had only escaped at the last moment. With the grasp on his leg, his lungs begin to warn him, his throat contracts, and his eyes seem on the point of bursting. Up! Up! With or without his prey!

He has let go of Grim, and now makes his escape from the hole with so sudden a jerk that the old crayfish accompanies him; but the dread of water, which no living being that breathes with lungs can quite overcome, has taken possession of the otter. With all possible speed he slips out from among the roots, and is already rising; and as he approaches the surface and finds the blessed light beating more and more strongly upon the mud about his eyes, he hastens his flight, until, with an eager sniff, he reaches the surface.

Grim is close behind him, and as the otter lands, there is a loud splash. It would have been all over with the brown beast if the old crayfish, on its way down from the surface, where it had at last let go its hold, had not dropped like a stone straight into Grim’s mouth. Grim has now to content herself with sending her opponent a cold, dull, fishy glance, and let the Nipper continue its journey down into her draw-bag.

The wound that the old giant pike had received was not a dangerous one. True, there were two rows of deep cuts made by a pair of thick, round-toothed jaws in the flesh on one side of her back; but they healed like so many others that she had had in her time. Her back, however, was tender for days after, and she found it a little difficult to leap.

The impudent, four-footed fisher never went hunting again in her water-hole. The otter felt quite sure that it was only by good fortune that it had not been annihilated by its great, dangerous rival.

XIV: THE ANGLER FROM TOWN

The lake had changed since the old angler’s death; its former peace and poetry were gone. The big swimming-birds had multiplied tremendously, and dashed about restlessly every day, swallowing the fish by means of constantly improving implements.

One of the latest of these was a ten-horsepower motor-boat, manned by a little, sinewy man, thin and elastic, and with a superabundance of energy. He was a journalist by profession, and editor of a paper; the hurry and unrest of a new age burned in him; whether he wrote or refreshed himself with sport, he did it with the same strength and enthusiasm.

Grim’s first captor had been an old-style votary of the rod and line; he loved to cast anchor in some quiet spot, light his pipe, and sit watching his lines. The journalist from town was of the very opposite temperament, constantly rushing about and hauling in and making fresh casts elsewhere.

He had taken a house for the summer by the lake, and among the red-currant bushes in the garden he had set up his little aquarium, which contained a couple of crayfish, a few perch, and a young pike.

Every morning he dug up worms for his aquarium-fish, and fed them carefully.

If neither pike nor perch touched the worms, and the crayfish did not take them either when they sank to the bottom, he tranquilly devoted himself to his work all day; but if the reverse happened, then the leading article would be short; the editor was occupied elsewhere.

One day, when he was sitting in his office in town, the telephone rang. His wife was at the other end of the wire, and told him that the pike was feeding like mad.

He thrills at the news. His paper has long had news about Grim, the mysterious monster. The expedition is all prepared, his tackle is in order; he has only been waiting for the signal from the aquarium.