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Side 59 av 112
There were two hundred and forty hours left to midnight on the
thirtieth of September. At least two hundred of these she spent on
the pool; and when Beekman was too exhausted to manage the boat and
the net and the lantern for her, she engaged a trustworthy guide to
take Beekman's place while he slept. At the end of the last day her
score was twenty-three, with an average of five pounds and a
quarter. His score was nine, with an average of four pounds. He
had succeeded far beyond his wildest hopes.
The next year his success became even more astonishing. They went
to the Titan Club in Canada. The ugliest and most inaccessible
sheet of water in that territory is Lake Pharaoh. But it is famous
for the extraordinary fishing at a certain spot near the outlet,
where there is just room enough for one canoe. They camped on Lake
Pharaoh for six weeks, by Mrs. De Peyster's command; and her canoe
was always the first to reach the fishing-ground in the morning, and
the last to leave it in the evening.
Some one asked him, when he returned to the city, whether he had
good luck.
"Quite fair," he tossed off in a careless way; "we took over three
hundred pounds."
"To your own rod?" asked the inquirer, in admiration.
"No-o-o," said Beekman, "there were two of us."
There were two of them, also, the following year, when they joined
the Natasheebo Salmon Club and fished that celebrated river in
Labrador. The custom of drawing lots every night for the water that
each member was to angle over the next day, seemed to be especially
designed to fit the situation. Mrs. De Peyster could fish her own
pool and her husband's too. The result of that year's fishing was
something phenomenal. She had a score that made a paragraph in the
newspapers and called out editorial comment. One editor was so
inadequate to the situation as to entitle the article in which he
described her triumph "The Equivalence of Woman." It was well-
meant, but she was not at all pleased with it.
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