The fishes of this river elude me more and more successfully. Perpetually it rains. I cannot angle; I cannot paint. I propose to boast.
Hitherto I have been absurdly modest. You would suppose from what I have written that I never catch any fishes here. You would be right. But I have caught fishes in my time, great fishes. I am in a mood to dwell upon my bloodstained past. I do this whenever it rains all the week. Let us go to Norway, to that island where I experienced that Perfect Thrill of which I have told you, to that sea-stream where MacAlister and I discovered how to catch flounders esoterically.
At full flood this sea-stream is nothing but a shallow lake, a quarter of a mile each way across, with a narrow mouth at each end, the one opening out of the lake above, the other, fifty yards broad, leading almost directly into the Gulf Stream. At the end of the ebb this second mouth might be cleared by an athletic man,
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