Svend Fleuron

“ THE RASPER The horde of marauders were chasing through the lake again, and behind them came the pike. These last did not go together, like the perch, in serried ranks at a furious hunting pace, but slunk along one by one from stone to stone, and from weedy clump to weedy clump.
Grim is with them, and like a seal she helps herself to the flying bleak which in their terror rush blindly into her jaws. It is quick work, but nevertheless not quick enough. The gluttony of the perch angers and irritates her; she feels her belly growing larger, and her throat widening. ”

“ Grim’s eyes are alight with the eagerness of the hunter, and her stiff tongue quivers in her mouth as, with widely opened jaws, she springs upon her prey.
The roach is good enough! It wriggles between her teeth and tickles her cheeks and chin with slaps of its little tail; and yet ... it has an inexplicable strength like that of a little pearly fish that she dimly remembers.
She grows angry. Is an insignificant little fish like this going to resist her will? The silly little thing is ready to go any way but the one she wants it to go; she can hardly get from one thicket of weeds to the other. ”

“ His clothes are the colour of the heron’s feathers, his rod painted sky-blue, and his line is grey-green like the long stalks of the water-plants.
He creeps along the mossy, boggy bank, taking care to avoid all disturbance of the water. The pike is timid, and easily put to flight, watchful and agile; if he only breaks a reed, if he only lets a snail-shell drop into the water, it will perceive him. He finds out places where he thinks the fish is lying, and expectantly drops his bait beyond the edge of the reeds on the point of land. ”

“ The great bog-snail, with its horse-like head and bat-like ears, has come out of its shell and is feeling everything that comes within its reach, groping its way along, and then with a jerk dragging its spiral shell after it. Now it fastens itself to a little dead fish and sucks out its eyes, and finally comes to rest upon the broad leaf of an iris, the point of its shell still trembling with the movement of the water.
A boat-bug that has grown tired, and drawn in its oars, also composes itself to rest. ”

“ Spring comes on apace, the sun’s rays piercing ever deeper into the water, where the plants shoot and rise out of the ooze with herculean strength, mass themselves, expand, and throw wide arms abroad. From the stubbly reed-bed rise fresh stems; and all the fallen willow wands that are floating about put forth leaves and take root.
Soon the banks grow green, and in the sour mud of the creek, where in a short time water-soldiers and duck-weed will form hanging islands, brown toads and green frogs are beginning to bark and croak.
All kinds of fish are gambolling with joy and delight ”

“ Grim is never weary of rubbing against the soft, muddy peat.
Half-decayed remains of dead stalks form a network all over the great cushion at the bottom, and fresh remains of cell-tissue and organic things just dead are always on their way down. But from the depth new life rises once more; the sun is ever setting free tiny, green, mossy balls of slime that lie moored, as it were, to a single fine umbilical cord, and twirl and sway down on the bottom. All at once the cord breaks, and they rise through the water in a cluster like bubbles, and expand into large, fringed umbels. ”

“ It looks to him like one of the ancient oaks of the bog coming up to lie and float on the surface.
Gradually, as the large, pointed steel hook enters farther and farther into Grim’s intestines, and makes her cold, red blood flow the wrong way, her movements become less and less rapid.
The water makes things dim; she no longer sees clearly, and runs full tilt into banks and clumps of reeds. She feels delightfully surfeited, and darts about the pool with the sensation of dragging with her the greatest booty she had ever taken in her life. How it seems to fill her stomach! ”

“ She always gets so hungry in stormy weather, and feels as if she must go to the surface for air.
Feeling her way with her sensitive barbels, she glides out of her hole on the east side of the submarine mountain slope. Like a huge eel she wriggles up to the surface, where she lies in wait, slowly drifting with the current.
Grim’s white belly is not turned down now. The colour that makes the fish look one with the water would then have hidden her well enough for any one looking up from below. ”

“ Grim is a remnant of primeval ages, a creature from the time of the great swamps.
Late in the autumn, when the dock was turning red, and the stiff spikes of the mare’s-tails were bent like withered grass, black autumn showers filled the marsh to overflowing. The wet mud lay far up over the meadows and pastures, and poured like rivers through the ditches. Pool ran into pool, and the peat-cuttings, which lay side by side, only separated by high, narrow ridges, became one huge pit. ”

“ Now and again she stops and lies in wait among the water-plants, with her torn, dorsal fin, still but half healed, standing a little above the water.
On one of these occasions the osprey discovers her, and without recognizing what sort of a fish it is, hovers above the spot.
More than once it descends in vain, but is at last successful. Unobserved by Grim, the bird darts upon her from behind with outstretched claws, and drives them with full force into her back. It feels its claws sink in, and the pleasant struggling of something alive. ”

“ She was a mythical pike, one of those old-time fish about which the late lamented angler had told wonderful tales in his day. Even the regular mane of scales of a finger’s length, from the back of the neck down over the pectoral fins, was not wanting.
But her eye was evil, a mixture of yellow and green, cold and deceitful as the foam of the bog-waves; it always shone with a fierce hunger, and even on the rare occasions when the hunger was appeased, the expression of that eye was one of insatiable voracity. ”

“ As her spawning-time draws near, she grows heavy and swollen with her roe, and at the same time more irritable and uncertain in temper. She eats nothing, and thinks only of swimming over a flat grassy bottom, where she can rub her distended belly over the soft grass, arching her back like a dog in the consciousness of well-being.
The lake, whose banks are for the most part steep and reedy, never tempts her when she is about to spawn. She prefers to make her way up the brook to a number of large flooded peat-bogs and meadows. ”

“ Bleak and little roach revel in her roe; and when she has spawned her heart once more grows cold, and she sinks back into the deep water, gloomy and sullen as before.
Grim becomes more and more eager. Her deep-blue pupils, surrounded with a brass-coloured ring, shine like sapphires in an amber setting; the clayey tones along her sides and flanks change to green, and her gill-covers take on a deep orange hue.
Little by little she feels herself attracted by the numerous eager little male pike that incessantly frisk about her, and are already resplendent in their magnificent golden bridal attire. ”

“ See the marsh now that July has come!--July, luxuriant, mature, with clouds for hips and swelling breasts, and a sun that seems weary of journeying. Like sea-birds that have no air under their wings for their flight, come puffs of wind, throwing themselves into peat-bogs and marsh-pools. The air is one continuous drowsy hum of flies and gnats; and the reed-warbler is in full voice.
Grim lies dozing in the tepid water, and sees the world above her indistinctly and uncertainly as through thick grass. ”

“ Faint and dead-beat, they fall over on their sides. The blood in their red gills scarcely circulates, their strength is ebbing, and there is no longer any question of either being leader. They only take it in turns now to splash a little with their tails and try to right themselves.
Grim, who is lying with her gills outside in the free water, is still alive and in possession of all her senses, but the Rasper is half dead.
Then they float up and drift over the surface of the water like dead fish. ”

“ Life is quickly departing from the hitherto victorious bird; the bold flyer, who has darted down hundreds of times and let the water close over his light, oiled feathers, to rise a moment later in a shower of spray and ascend proudly to dizzy heights, now sways, suffocated, ruffled and limp, upon feet whose claws seem rooted in fish-flesh.
Grim lived all that winter with the eagle on her back, and felt strangely hampered in her movements. The bird gradually decomposed, and at last was only a skeleton that sometimes appeared weirdly above the surface. ”

“ They come from deep down at the bottom, and shine with mud and slime and water-moss. They whisk along with much movement and many strokes of the tail. Reeds and rushes swing and sway as they stop for a moment to rub themselves against them. As they pass through the open water, between the masses of vegetation, where the sun suddenly shines upon their amber scales, Grim hastily conceals herself in the forest of weed. ”

“ The terns are diving down after small fish, and along the rush-bordered banks the rising sun is treading the water.
Grim is abroad, pushing herself forward like a shadow along the bottom. Her cunning crocodile eyes are turned up so that they project from her head.
A number of roach are thronging about a clump of rushes, examining leaves and stalks just as long-tailed tits search tree-tops and bark; they are inside it and outside it, sucking up the water-snails and insects.
Grim stops with a jerk. She scarcely moves her ventral fins, and breathes very gently. ”

“ The eel twists, and refuses to be swallowed; so the bird has to reduce its liveliness by rolling up and down in its sharp-edged beak. Then it glides down.
This time, too, fortune is disposed to favour the young pike. The heron, coming up behind her, cautiously bends its neck over the drifting piece of reed. It sees there is something suspicious about it, but thinks it is mistaken, and is about to take another step forward. When only half-way, it pauses with its foot in the air; and the next moment the blow falls.
Grim only once moved her tail. ”

“ One cloudy, misty night, Grim, followed by three ardent male pike, the largest not half her size, makes her way through the ditch. Other suitors have already appeared; the great migration before spawning is in full swing.
In and out she moves, among the shallows and banks of water-plants. Sometimes there is only a channel in mid-stream to follow, sometimes she has to go through a long, narrow passage beneath an over-hanging bank, until she reaches open, submarine plains in broad creeks. Her ardour and determination to overcome all difficulties help her, notwithstanding mud and a rotting dam. ”

“ A moment later the vegetation trembles, the thick masses of sphagnum moss bulge out like clouds, a storm rises on the bottom. The heap of moss lifts, the surface of the water rocks and is suddenly broken by a splash as Grim darts up at the very moment that a swallow, with a graceful swing, skims a gnat off the water.
The surface grows calm, the bubbles float off and burst before reaching the bank, while Grim sinks back into her bed with the bird on its way through her gullet. ”

“ There is just a movement of the extreme tip of the tail. Only the shifting shadow-lines that the reeds cast over her body indicate that she is moving forward. She peers about continually, peevishly, and evilly. Only one thing troubles her; she can never decide which fish out of the swarming multitude she will take. True, she has made a special study of the way to direct her attack--as the ardent hunter his aim--where the throng is thickest; but the roach are nimble, and she seldom gets more than one at a stroke. ”

“ He has let go of Grim, and now makes his escape from the hole with so sudden a jerk that the old crayfish accompanies him; but the dread of water, which no living being that breathes with lungs can quite overcome, has taken possession of the otter. With all possible speed he slips out from among the roots, and is already rising; and as he approaches the surface and finds the blessed light beating more and more strongly upon the mud about his eyes, he hastens his flight, until, with an eager sniff, he reaches the surface. ”