chance of getting a fly to the fish was to shoot it out of a gun through a gap some ten inches wide. I said, "This is not a particularly easy cast. But, remember, if you hook him you must bustle him. Though you break, you mustn't give him his head. This is your only chance. Recollect what I told you about raising your rod high in the air and walking backwards into the meadow? This is an occasion when you must do that."
MacArthur asked me if it was possible to cock a fly properly at that distance. This seemed to be the only doubt that troubled him. I told him (because he had on a dry, well-oiled and well-made fly, which would cock itself quite independently of the person who threw it) that it was quite possible.
"For you, perhaps," said MacArthur, and as he began to get out line I could feel the blushes chasing each other up and down my body. The next moment MacArthur's fly passed through the gap which I have described and lit, cocked to a miracle, in the only square inch of water where it could have served any useful purpose whatever. The trout hurled itself on to the hook. MacArthur struck, raised his rod high in the air, and began to walk backwards steadily into the meadow, just as I had told him to do.
