Ernest Hemingway’s GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA
From Ernest Hemingway’s GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA, (Copyright 1935 by Charles Scriber’s Sons, copyright renewed 1963 by Mary Hemingway), First Scriber Classics edition 1998, pages 150-151:
“Do you know what it’s like?” I said. “It’s just like when we were kids and we heard about a river no one had ever fished out on the huckleberry plains beyond the Sturgeon and the Pigeon.”
“How did the river turn out?”
“Listen. We had a hell of a time to get in and the night we got there, just before dark, and saw it, there was a deep pool and a long straight stretch and the water so cold you couldn’t keep your hand in it and I threw a cigarette butt in and a big trout hit it and they kept snapping it up and spitting it out as it floated until it went to pieces.”
“Big trout?”
“The biggest kind.”
“God save us,” said Pop. “ What did you do then?”
“Rigged up my rod and made a cast and it was dark and there was a nighthawk swooping around and it was cold as a bastard and then I was fast to three fish the second the flies hit the water.”
“Did you land them?”
“The three of them.”
“You damned liar.”
“I swear to God.”
“I believe you. Tell me the rest when you come back. Were they big trout?”
“The biggest bloody kind.”
