THE WATER BABIES
and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages; under dark bridge-arches, and away and away to the sea. And Tom could not stop, and did not care to stop; he would see the great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide, wide sea.
And when the daylight came Tom found himself out in the salmon river.
And what sort of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream winding through the brown bogs where the wild ducks squatter up from among the white waterlilies, and the curlews flit to and fro, crying, Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep"; and Dennis tells you strange stories of the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat pools, among the old pine-stems, and puts his head out at night to snap at the cattle as they come down to drink? But you must not believe all that Dennis tells you, mind; for if you ask him—
"Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis?"
"Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes? Salmon? Cartloads it is of thim, thin, an' ridgmens, shouldthering ache out of water, av' ye'd but the luck to see thim."
Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise.
"But there can't be a salmon here, Dennis! and if you'll but think, if one had come up last tide, he'd be gone to the higher pools by now."
"Shure thin, your honour's the thrue fisherman, and understands it all like a book. Why, ye spake as if ye'd known the wather a thousand years! As I said, how could there be a fish here at all, just now?"
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