Savagely it took the fly, but always the line broke
when I struck; rather, it dissolved; there would be no resistance. And
the giant fish mocked me each time, jeered and flouted me, came
brazenly to the surface and derided me with antics weirdly human.
Then, as I persisted, it surprisingly became a musical trout. It
whistled, it played a guitar, it sang. How pathetic our mildly amazed
acceptance of these miracles in dreams! I was only the more determined
to snare a fish that could whistle and sing simultaneously, and
accompany itself on a stringed instrument, and was six feet in length.
It was that by now and ever growing. It seemed only an attractive
novelty and I still believed a brown hackle would suffice. But then I
became aware that this trout, to its stringed accompaniment, ever
whistled and sang one song with a desperate intentness. That song was
"The Rosary." The fish had presumed too far. "This," I shrewdly told
myself, "is almost certainly a dream." The soundless words were magic.
Gorge and stream vanished, the versatile fish faded to blue sky showing
through the green needles of a jack pine.
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