We were half-way across, when Mary Grant screamed. The line she was holding ran with tremendous rapidity through her fingers. I jammed my foot on the wooden frame lying in the bottom of the boat and to which the line was attached. I was just in time to save it from following the rest of the line overboard. I pulled in my oars and caught up the line. Away, thirty yards off, a great salmon sprang out of the water high into the air, performing a half-circle and flopping back with a splash from its lashing tail. "She is yours," I cried. "Come! play her for all you can." But, as I turned, I saw that Miss Grant's fingers were bleeding from the sudden running-out of the line when the salmon had struck; so I settled down to fight the fish myself. All at once, the line slacked. I hauled it in, feeling almost certain that I had lost my prize. But no! Off she went again like a fury, rising out of the water in her wild endeavours to free herself. For a long time I played her. My companion took the oars quietly and was now doing all she could to assist me. Next, the salmon sank sheer down and sulked far under the water. Gradually, gradually I drew her in and not a struggle did she make. She simply lay, a dead thing at the end of my line. "She's played out, Miss Grant. She's ours," I cried gleefully, as I got a glint of her under the water as she came up at the end of my line. But, alas! for the luck of a fisherman. When the salmon was fifteen feet from the boat, she jerked and somersaulted most unexpectedly, with all the despair of a gambler making his last throw. She shot sheer out of the water and splashed in again almost under the boat. My line, minus the spoon and the hook, ran through my fingers. "Damn!" I exclaimed, in the keenest disappointment. "And--that's--just--what--I--say--too," came my fair oars-woman's voice. "If that isn't the hardest kind of luck!" Away out, we could see our salmon jump, and jump, and jump again, out of the water ten feet in the air, darting and plunging in wide circles, like the mad thing she probably was. "It serves me rightly, Miss Grant. I professed to be able to fix your tackle and yet I did not examine that spoon before putting it into use. It has probably been lying in a rusty condition for a year or so. "Well,--we cannot try again to-night, unless we row in for a fresh spoon-hook." "Oh!--let us stop now. We have more fish already than we really require." "Shall I row you in?" I asked. "Do you wish to go in?" "Oh, dear, no! I could remain here forever,--at least until I get hungry and sleepy," I laughed. "All right!" she cried, "let us row up into the Bay and watch the sun go down." I pulled along leisurely, facing my fair companion, who was now reclining in the stern, with the sinking sun shining in all its golden glory upon the golden glory of her.