Under A Bank, In A Pool Crossed By A Log And Shaded By A
Tree, We Found A Drove Of The Speckled Beauties At Home, Dozens Of
Them A Foot Long, Each Moving Lazily A Little, Their Black Backs
Relieved By Their Colored Fins.
They must have seen us, but at first
they showed no desire for a closer acquaintance.
To the red ibis and
the white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they were
alike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificial
taste and has to be cultivated. These at any rate were uncivilized
-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregor
and baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in our
day's sport. They could not resist the lively wiggle of the worm
before their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other,
gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel,
until we had a handsome string. It may have been fun for them but it
was not much sport for us. All the small ones the young McGregor
contemptuously threw back into the water. The sportsman will perhaps
learn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in Cape
Breton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.
The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into the
bay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf;
and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and the
peaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the loveliness
of this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuous
person on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary height
was made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and his
very short pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a little
difficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the back
of his head to preserve his equilibrium. He had arrived at that
stage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowing
with information and good-nature. With what might in strict art be
called an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civil
engineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a great
traveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humorous
satisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsec
junction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as a
joke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light.
From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, to
the relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore. When the boat
drew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edge
of the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail by
a friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing us
prosperity and the Fourth of July.
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