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Cameron had got a big, long-handled gaff-hook, and now, forgetful of his rheumatism, waded out waist-deep into the water. There was a brief but decisive struggle that went hopelessly against the fish, and Mr. Cameron gaffed Old Muskie and dragged him ashore. Lee and Carl stepped out on the beach, both of them on the verge of collapse. There was a great fish supper at Forest Lodge that night.
This time the great fish struck, but was not hooked. Soon Forest Lodge was astir, and fishing for Old Muskie ended for that day. Then came the last day. Carl was to leave for college the following Monday. "We just must get him this morning!" he said, as they pushed out from the landing with the first glow of daylight.
Lee Henly and Carl Mills knew this, and they had been learning more and more of the habits of this particular maskinonge. In every new thing that they learned, they felt that they had one more aid toward the final capture of Old Muskie and the realization of Lee's ambition for college that year. Lee had learned that hooking the big fish was the easiest part of the work of capturing him.
Reeling up as Carl paddled the boat toward shore, Lee found that Old Muskie had entangled the line among the branches, and getting a chance to use his great strength, had broken the heavy silk line. Lee was delighted to see that it had been broken above the point where he had spliced it to the copper leader. "What can you do about that?" asked Carl.
He selects some spot, a cove filled with lily-pads, a bend of a river, or a sunken treetop like the home of Old Muskie, and there he will stay, month after month, if not year after year. So there was little danger of Old Muskie's leaving Forest Lodge Cove that summer unless he was caught or killed or died the mysterious death that comes to the great fish of the streams and lakes.
The skin, head, tail and fins of Old Muskie were carefully preserved and sent to the best taxidermist in Chicago; but there was enough left of his fifty-three-pound body for the company gathered about the big "Oak Hall" dining-table. On the right of Mr. Cameron sat Lee Henly, and on the left, Carl Mills. Mr. Cameron and the Forest Lodge people were jubilant.
When Old Muskie would leap frantically into the air, fiercely shaking himself, down would go the tip of the rod, clear below the surface of the water; and when he would "sound," the tip of the rod pulled upward relentlessly. Whatever the direction of the rushes of the big fish, always the skilled hand and wiry arm of Lee Henly were ready to baffle and turn aside, to hold back and to weary.
Old Muskie in his rush had caught one of the hooks upon a branch and it had held, while the one that was in his mouth had pulled from the minnow, and the big savage of the lake was again at liberty. Lee made a change in his minnow before the next Tuesday morning.
He knew that no fish would break all these strands of copper wire, although he felt that Old Muskie might break the hooks. The next Tuesday morning Lee again hooked Old Muskie. Again the big fish got to the treetops, and again Lee felt the dead pull that meant that he had no longer a fighting fish to deal with.
As he had hoped, Old Muskie pulled the other way, and with a tremendous rush, left the treetops, and started toward the channel into the open lake. Half-way across he gave an astonishing leap into the air, showing the boys for the first time just what a monster they had succeeded in hooking.