My Brave and Gallant Gentleman Part 45

"Oh, dear me!" she cried anxiously, "there's something on."

"Pull it in," I shouted, "steady,--not too quickly."

Immediately thereafter, a fine, two-pound trout lay flopping in the bottom of the boat.

"Just think of that," cried my fair troller, "my first fis.h.!.+ And all by moving up a foolish little hook an inch or so."

Her eyes were agleam. She chatted on and on almost without ceasing, almost without thinking, so excited and absorbed did she become in the sport.

Back went the line, and in it came again with another wriggling, s.h.i.+ning trout.

For an hour I rowed round the Island, and, in that hour, Mary Grant had equalled Rita's best that I knew of, for between thirty and forty fish fell a prey to the deadly bait and hook.

"How would you like to try for a salmon?" I asked at last. "They are running better now than they have done all the year so far."

"All right!" she agreed, with a sigh of pent-up excitement, pulling in her trout line and running out a thicker one with a large salmon spoon and a fairly heavy sinker.

I rowed out to the mouth of the Bay, keeping inside the Ghoul Rock; then I started crossways over to the far point.

We were half-way across, when Mary Grant screamed. The line she was holding ran with tremendous rapidity through her fingers. I jammed my foot on the wooden frame lying in the bottom of the boat and to which the line was attached. I was just in time to save it from following the rest of the line overboard.

I pulled in my oars and caught up the line.

Away, thirty yards off, a great salmon sprang out of the water high into the air, performing a half-circle and flopping back with a splash from its las.h.i.+ng tail.

"She is yours," I cried. "Come! play her for all you can."

But, as I turned, I saw that Miss Grant's fingers were bleeding from the sudden running-out of the line when the salmon had struck; so I settled down to fight the fish myself.

All at once, the line slacked. I hauled it in, feeling almost certain that I had lost my prize. But no! Off she went again like a fury, rising out of the water in her wild endeavours to free herself.

For a long time I played her. My companion took the oars quietly and was now doing all she could to a.s.sist me.

Next, the salmon sank sheer down and sulked far under the water.

Gradually, gradually I drew her in and not a struggle did she make.

She simply lay, a dead thing at the end of my line.

"She's played out, Miss Grant. She's ours," I cried gleefully, as I got a glint of her under the water as she came up at the end of my line.

But, alas! for the luck of a fisherman. When the salmon was fifteen feet from the boat, she jerked and somersaulted most unexpectedly, with all the despair of a gambler making his last throw. She shot sheer out of the water and splashed in again almost under the boat. My line, minus the spoon and the hook, ran through my fingers.

"d.a.m.n!" I exclaimed, in the keenest disappointment.

"And--that's--just--what--I--say--too," came my fair oars-woman's voice. "If that isn't the hardest kind of luck!"

Away out, we could see our salmon jump, and jump, and jump again, out of the water ten feet in the air, darting and plunging in wide circles, like the mad thing she probably was.

"It serves me rightly, Miss Grant. I professed to be able to fix your tackle and yet I did not examine that spoon before putting it into use.

It has probably been lying in a rusty condition for a year or so.

"Well,--we cannot try again to-night, unless we row in for a fresh spoon-hook."

"Oh!--let us stop now. We have more fish already than we really require."

"Shall I row you in?" I asked.

"Do you wish to go in?"

"Oh, dear, no! I could remain here forever,--at least until I get hungry and sleepy," I laughed.

"All right!" she cried, "let us row up into the Bay and watch the sun go down."

I pulled along leisurely, facing my fair companion, who was now reclining in the stern, with the sinking sun s.h.i.+ning in all its golden glory upon the golden glory of her.

Moment by moment, the changing colours in the sky were altering the colours on the smooth waters to harmonise: a lake of bright yellow gold, then the gold turned to red, a sea of blood; from red to purple, from purple to the palest shade of heliotrope; and, as the sun at last dipped in the far west, the distant mountains threw back that same attractive shade of colour.

It was an evening for kind thoughts.

We glided up the Bay, past Jake Meaghan's little home; still further up, then into the lagoon, where not a ripple disturbed that placid sheet of water: where the trees and rocks smiled down upon their own mirrored reflections.

We grew silent as the nature around us, awed by the splendours of the hus.h.i.+ng universe upon which we had been gazing.

"It is beautiful! oh, so beautiful!" said my companion at last, awaking from her dreaming. "Let us stay here awhile. I cannot think to go home yet."

She threw her sweater-coat round her shoulders, for, even in the height of summer, the air grows chilly on the west coast as the sun goes down.

"You may smoke, Mr. Bremner. I know you are aching to do so."

I thanked her, pulled in my oars and lighted my pipe.

Mary Grant sat there, watching me in friendly interest, smiling in amus.e.m.e.nt in the charming way only she could smile.

"Do you know, I sometimes wonder," she said reflectively, "why it is that a man of your education, your prospective attainments, your ability, your physical strength and mental powers should keep to the bypaths of life, such as we find up here, when your fellows, with less intellect than you have, are in the cities, in the mining fields and on the prairies, battling with the world for power and fortune and getting, some of them, what they are battling for.

"I am not trying to probe into your privacy, but what I have put into words has often recurred to me regarding you. Somehow, you seem to have all the qualities that go to the making of a really successful business man."

"Do you really wonder why?" I smiled. "--And yet you profess to know me--a little."

It was an evening for closer friends.h.i.+ps.

"If you promise for the future to call me George and permit me the privilege, when we are alone, of calling you Mary, I shall answer your query."

"All right,--George,--it's a bargain," she said. "Go ahead."

"Well! in the first place, I know what money is; what it can bring and what it can cause. I never cared for money any more than what could provide the plain necessities of life. As for ambition to make and acc.u.mulate money;--G.o.d forbid that I should ever have it. I leave such ambitions to the grubs and leeches."

Mary listened in undisguised interest.

"Oh! I have had opportunities galore, but I always preferred the simpler way,--the open air, the sea and the quiet, the adventure of the day and the rest after a day well spent.