Without A Halt, About A Hundred Yards Of Line Were Taken At The First Rush Towards The Middle Of The River; He Then Stopped, And I Waited For About A Minute, And Then Fixed Him With A Jerk That Bent My Bamboo Like A Fly-Rod.

To this he replied by a splendid challenge; in one jump he flew about six feet above the water,

And showed himself to be one of the most beautiful fish I had ever seen; not one of those nondescript antediluvian brutes that you expect to catch in these extraordinary rivers, but in colour he appeared like a clean run salmon. He gave tremendous play, several times leaping out of the water, and shaking his head furiously to free himself from the hook; then darting away with eighty or a hundred yards of fresh line, until he at last was forced to yield to the strong and elastic bamboo, and his deep body stranded upon the fatal shallows.

"Bacheet was a charming lad to land a fish: he was always quiet and thoughtful, and never got in the way of the line; this time he closely approached him from behind, slipped both his hands along his side, and hooked his fingers into the broad gills; thus he dragged him, splashing through the shallows, to the sandbank. What a beauty! What was he? The colour was that of a salmon, and the scales were not larger in proportion: he was about fifty pounds' weight. The back fin resembled that of a perch, with seven rays; the second, dorsal fin towards the tail had fourteen rays; the head was well shaped, and small in proportion; the eyes were bright red, and shone like rubies; and the teeth were very small.

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