Luke Bridgeman, his mind dizzy with guilt, continued pushing his tanned birchbark canoe through the choppy waters of a windswept Northern Ontario glacial lake. The air was insinuating that balmy temperatures were to come. But the breezes disemboweled any thermal hyperactivity underneath the cloudless skies.

The dugout pitched, swayed and teetered both to the incessant current and Luke's preoccupation with what he had done. Normally he was a proficient boatsman. He had to be, he made his living as a fishing guide out here in the pristine wilderness far removed from most of humanity. Instead of cutting a straight, well-defined path through the lake, the canoe caressed to and fro more to the wind's whim than the clean sweeps of the canoeist's paddles.

Luke spotted a protected inlet along the deeply wooded shoreline. It would be a good place to come to a rest. A small, pale limestone cliff pushed its face above the murky waters of the inlet. Its reflection was waveringly mirrored in the barrage of wavelets racing to shore.

As the canoeist drew near, the pine scent of the shore stealthily stole its way to his enflared nostrils. Whenever he was upset, the flaps of his arched nose would stretch out like a wind blowing through an open canvas tent. At the top of the precipice there stood only a sparse thicket of pine and yew. Some of these trees were clinging for their lives as they rested ever so dangerously to the edge. A few had taken the tumble into the water over the course of time and now were forever pinned in the methane-laden muck at the lakeﾒs bottom. Luke tied his dugout's yellow nylon line around one of these half-submerged victims of time and erosion.

Once secure that the dugout would not drift away, Luke began to scale the fifteen-foot cliff to the precipice above. The limestone face rose at an angle that would test the most surefooted of mountain goats but there were many ledges and ridges along the way to provide sufficient footholds and handgrips for the wiry, golden-haired twenty-three year old. Within seconds he was resting on top in the tall reedy grasses that frothed to the wind in a hypnotic constancy. A redwinged blackbird, not too far off, was shrilly chirping in either a display of territoriality or a forlorn cry to some hidden mate. Luke didn't know and he didn't care. He had troubles of his own.

He sat and stared across the serene bay out into the angry lake. It reflected his soul. Safe for now but there was an ominous pall lying in the offing, threatening to overthrow any sense of normalcy that he strived to enforce upon his being.

"Ouch!" Luke cried. A blackfly had somehow managed to pilot itself from the gnarly forest that fringed the premonitory and through the whistling winds blowing inland and had been able to clasp its voracious mandibles on his exposed leg. Luke slapped at it but the nigricant miniature demon escaped with a smidgen of his lightly tanned flesh. The man cursed, damning all arthropods everywhere to an exosletetonary netherworld.

Then he saw him. Luke blew a jet of frustrated air from his glum mouth. His expelled breath came back at his face just as his worst nightmare did. A couple of moments later, he heard what he so desperately wished that he would never hear again.

"Hey Breedjmin! You up dare?" Ned Popocropolis, a fiftyish rotund, olive-skinned Greek restauranteer, called out. His fat-laden cheeks were flushed. Beads of sweat clung to his face and his white-starched shirt which emphasized his souvlaki-filled paunch was drenched from the exertion of working his canoe against the overpowering waves.. Ned brought his birchbark vessel in along side of its twin sister, the one that brought Luke here.

Luke didn't answer the man who had hired him out as a fishing guide for the entire month of July. Instead he crouched low and hoped against hope that Ned would not see him and go away. Ned would be hopping mad and would unleash that sharp-tongued Aegean temper of his upon him. A fishing guide was not suppose to abandon his client but Luke could not stand the Greek immigrant and his preconceived notions on how to angle in the wilderness. Ned didnﾒt need a guide, he just needed a companion to suffer through his constant rantings and ravings and someone to blame when things went wrong.

In his four years as a trout hole sniffer and hound, Luke had never encountered anyone as obnoxious as Ned Popocropolis. The hardnosed neo-fascist restauranteur demanded the impossible from Luke and when the guide could not provide it, he would be viciously tongue-whipped. With a personality like Nedﾒs, Luke had to wonder how he ever became the genial host and owner of a fine five-star restaurant in Toronto as the bulky brute claimed. Ned was rude and bearish, the complete antithesis of genial.

It was at Luke's insistence that Ned take another canoe. He managed to convince Ned that it might improve his luck. Thus far not one trout had made it to the frying pan. He doubted any would. Popocropolis did everything wrong even though all of the blame was thrown onto Luke. It was just a relief to Luke to be in another boat away from the man.

"Ah, dare you are Breedjmin!" Ned huffed as the top of his greasy salt and pepper hair peaked above the cliff. How the fat, wheezing man was able to scale such a steep precipice was beyond Luke. The annoying must find a way to continue being annoying.

Under his breath, Luke boiled, "It's Bridgeman not Breedjmin." Even the manﾒs thick accent grated the guide. Luke had always believed that he was a tolerant, accepting individual but Ned Popocropolis was showing that this might be only a thin veneer and that the former university student was as unaccepting of foreigners as his fatherﾒs generation.

"Why did you not answer me?" Ned's bulky form eclipsed over the edge of the precipice like a walrus coming out of the ocean.

The burly man sauntered through the swaying grasses towards his guide. The redwing blackbird who had maintained a steady cacophony of complaint flew away with shrill screeches. The Greek's shadow totally enveloped the still prostrate guide. Luke grudgingly rose to his feet and heard Nedﾒs thick lips utter the inevitable "Why'd you take off on me? I pay you good money for you to stay with me."

"I didn't really take off on you. Listen, Ned, there were no fish in the place where we were trying but you still kept on casting out your line even after I told you that it was a waste of time. I figured the only way that I could get you to move from there was by paddling away and leaving you alone."

"Is dis spot any better?" Ned studied the inlet and drew in a great raft of the pine-scented air through his tulip-bulbed nose as if he were trying to detect the scent of a bass or pike swimming by below the surface.

"Yeah, better than where we were before." Luke thought he might as well get to the point. "Ned, you aren't going to be catching any fish unless you start listening to me. I've been doing this for years. I know this lake better than I know my own mother."

"Dare's no feesh in dare Breedjmin. I dhink dat you are doing every ting dat you can to make my trip meeserable. I've wasted dirteen days wid you so far and got nutting! Eef I don't get any feesh dis day I'm going to have a word wid da manager of da lodge about you. I dhink dat you don't like immigrants and especially Greeks. You are prejudiced. My money is as good as da next man's. I demand dat I get da same good service dat I have heard dis lodge has geeven to some of my customers back at da restaurant in da city!"

Now Luke was not biased against anybood from any ethnic background This had come up before and he knew that Ned used it as a weapon to get specialized treatment from others. 'I'm an immigrant so you had better make me feel at home or Iﾒm going to cry out discrimination!' This was what Ned was saying and the sad truth was that he was able to get away with it.

But a customer was a customer and a customer was always right. Popocropolis was paying for this excursion and Luke was obliged to provide the service if he wanted to keep his job. "Any place you want to try Ned?" Luke sighed.

"What's back dare?" Ned was pointing into the thick coniferous bush that skirted the clifftop that they were standing upon.

"Mosquitoes."

"Always da joker, you are, Breedjmin. I mean is dare any lakes or reevers back dare that we might try?"

"Yeah, there's a small marshy pond back there a bit. There's no fish worth catching in it though. Mostly just minnows and a few crappies maybe.ﾔ Luke replied honestly. He had gone back to that pond several years ago and came out from it scratched and bleeding and fishless.

"How'd'you know? When was da last time you were back dare?" Ned was being his usual disagreeable self.

"Oh, it's been a couple of years or so, I guess."

"See, you don't know! Tings can change very queekly. In Greece, we have a saying dat da only ting dat doesn't change is change itself. I betcha dat da marsh is loaded wit da fat juicy big-leeped bass and da humungous pike dat would bite at anyding. Let's go back dare Breedjmin and geeve it a whirl! Okay?"

"There's no fish there Ned. Believe me. I'm paid to take you where the fish are and I am telling you that there's none back there. Youﾒve got to stay with the lakes and rivers if you want the big ones."

"You haven't taken me to da feesh yet, Breedjmin! Now, do what you are being paid for!"

"You haven't let me take you to where the fish are yet! Anytime I want to take you to a place that I know is just crawling with fish, you insist on trying other spots where no right-minded fully finned fish would ever go!"

"Bu-ull! I've been following you all da time!"

Luke shook his head. Ned probably saw it that way, no doubt.

"C'mon Breedjmin, let's go to da pond."

The guide finally relented. "It's about a mile or so back in the bush. Weﾒre going to have to portage so we'll take only one canoe."

ﾓIf da pond is beeg enough for a canoe it is beeg enough for a pike!ﾔ Ned chirped. Luke could see that the man was filling his head with false illusions again. Likely, once reality sets in on the arduous trek back from the fishless lake, all of this would fall on the guideﾒs shoulders once more.

The task of hauling the canoe over the fifteen foot limestone precipice proved to be as difficult for the two men as Luke had imagined. Staying true to his personality, Popocropolis forced the guide to do it his way. Luke, at waterlevel, hauled the canoe from the cove and lifted it so that its nose could be as high in the air as possible. Ned, leaning over the drop, tried clumsily to get a hold of the gunwale which jittered to the stress in the Luke's strained biceps. When the Greek did manage to get a firm grip, he yanked it up. Luke grimaced as the canoe scraped its bottom over the craggy rock, shredding some slivers that threatened to admit to a leak, once the craft was waterborne again.

Popocropolis was drenched in sweat. A sickly wheeze issued from his exasperated lungs. But even with this difficulty, he still managed to give Luke an other command. "Hey, Breedjmin hhhha, don't forget my feeshing rod and tacklebox." Luke held back a sneer. He couldn't stand people who had always felt compulsed to say the obvious.

"So are you ready, Ned?", Luke said spryly, hoping that Popocropolis would feel like a victim of age and the soft city life. Ned had thirty years and at least a hundred pounds on him. This portage should stack up against the restauranteur and soon make him whine to turn back.

"You can carry da canoe Breedjmin. I'll take da rod and da box." Ned said after clearing his phlegmish throat. Luke figured as much. It didn't bother him about having to tote the dugout by himself. It was only for a mile or so. But what peeved him was the Greek's refusal to offer him a hand.

With the prow riding piggyback on his shoulders, Luke made his way toward the mosquito-laden forest and soon was stumbling through the underbrush. After a couple of hundred yards, he came across the old path that led directly from the lodge to the musty methane pond. Some of it was grown over with an oleo of plants and ferns. A few cedar footlings sprouted out of the once trampled walkway. The smell of rotted logs and midsummer leaves alluded to the reality of the natural attrition of the forest. The old gives way to the new, weaning it until the young become replicas of what had come before. Luke mused that although this forest was stilled labeled primaeval by the vast majority of people, it was not the same woodland that the Ojibway roamed through three hundred years ago. Forest fires and regeneration saw to that. Few of these trees would have witnessed a shaman studying their roots for any signs of magical spirits hidden within. Too bad that some of the Ojibways' myths were not reality. Too bad that Godzilla and King Kong did not exist. Awe in life was a rapidly deplenishing commodity.

"Wait a minute!" Popocropolis' heavy breath took the form of words. Luke stopped, rested the rear of the canoe upon the ground, turned, and saw the Greek's top of the line Shimano rod and reel all tangled up on an overhanging branch.

"Ned, I told you to break down your rod! That'll always happen to you whenever you carry it upright!ﾔ the guide scolded. Untangling a birdnest of fishline was one of his least favourite activities.

"Meester Know-It-All." Ned tried to undo the knot in his line himself. Luke waited and felt a throng of mosquitoes stage a haphazard attack upon him. The Greek, frustrated by his inability to get anywhere with the tangle and the flurry of biting exoskeletons that had descended upon him, snapped the branch where his line was enwrapped. "You can get dat out when we get to da pond. How much farther anyways? I daught dat you said it was only a mile."

"Not too much more." Luke said, taking the fishline from Ned and stuffing it into the canoe.

But it was much further. They trudged along, Luke with the canoe and all the gear, Ned with only his tackle box. Clinging desperately to the path as it veered left through a damp gully, they soon were rising gradually to the right, and then zigzagged around fallen trees, they crossed a host of narrow dried out streams, and then they ascended over a rakish shale outcrop.

The portage had to have been at least three miles long! That wasn't right. "I think we must have picked the wrong fork back there at the second last stream. It's hard to tell, the way this path has grown over. We should have been up to the pond by now." Luke said with a hint of dread in showing his fallibility to the sweating, grumbly Ned Popocropolis.

"What are you talking about? I can smell da water from here." Ned said, flaring those tomatoe shaped nostrils of his.

Luke inhaled, jerking his nose up and down in the fashion of a raccoon sniffing out a bag of garbage. Popocropolis was right. There was the distinct odour of a pure wash somewhere in the vicinity.

They continued along the woodpath and soon began to hear the whooshing sound of the waves petting a shoreline. Something was out of kilter for Luke Bridgeman. From what he recalled, the pond was in a guarded valley where it would not be privy to the wind's sway. It was always stagnant with a green slime shading the multitudinous lillypads.

A mournful cry from a loon filled the air between the trees as Luke stepped out onto a clearing overlooking a broad, choppy, dark blue body of water spotted by a myriad of white swells. Luke was astonished. In all his four years working as a guide in this territory he had never known such a lake to exist in this location before. Was it possible that he had never come out this way before? He stopped and thinked. No, he surely would have known about a lake as big as the one in front of him. But why didnﾒt he know? This was extremely odd.

The topography about the lake was gently sloping downwards towards the waters, this valley was like a bowl that was not completely filled. On the other side of the lake, the land was more rugged with many sheer brown-green bevels dropping straight down into the waters. It was more picturesque than the other lakes in this territory that he regularly took his paying customers.

"I daught you said it was a pond. If dis is a pond dan doze udder lakes you took me to were only puddles." Popocropolis wiped the sweat from his furry, pronounced brow. He walked over to a young yew whose branches were trembling in the wind, and began to urinate.

With no assistance from the Greek, Luke flipped over the canoe and placed it into the chilly waters. It must be a very deep lake, he thought. Most of the other tarns around here were considerably warmer than this one.

Ned flopped into the dugout's bow. He was equipped with his Shimano rod and reel and his double-decker Old Pal tacklebox which was loaded with brand new lures, most of which had no more chance of attracting a fish than a cornstalk could entice a starving cougar. Luke helmed the rear and began sculling out toward the center of the lake.

"Hey, Breedjmin, can you undo dis tangle?" Ned handed his guide the end of his rod. The eyelet whizzed perilously close to Luke's face. Within seconds, the experienced outdoorsman had the birdﾒs nest unravelled.

Ned casted out, using a bait that was supposed to resemble a young muskrat and began trolling while Luke paddled his way along with the current. The winds were beginning to settle down. It still just might be a nice afternoon Luke thought.

...... "I've got one! I've got one!" Ned called out hysterically and began to horse in his line.

"Take it easy, Ned. You might break the line."

The Greek paid no heed, his hand twirling feverishly clockwise and making the reel hiss and buzz. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw the artificial muskrat splashing across the watertop. An attached long, serpentine weed was dragging a steady stream behind the muskrat's tail.

Disappointed, Ned pulled the weed out of the water and growled at Luke.

After several minutes of using the baby muskrat, Ned switched to a Mepps 3 Black Fury. His first sensible choice. Luke suggested that the Mepps would work better if a worm was put on it but Popocropolis said authoritatively that the only things you use worms on were hooks and worm harnesses. "What kinda guide are you, anyways?"

Popocropolis casted the Black Fury about fifteen yards behind the canoe. The lure plunked though the blue-black water. The reel was clicked over and Ned began to retrieve it. When it reached the side of the dugout, he pulled it out and repeated the entire process about ten more times without any incident.

Being balked, Ned unclipped the Mepps from the leader, tried a jitterbug whose yellow-green colour scheme was not suitable for this lake. After several casts, this was verified for the Greek. He tried other baits, all with the same result.

"Dare's no feesh in dis lake. Whyﾒd you take me here? You knew dat I wanted to go to dat pond you told me about! You are da worst guide in da world!"

"Patience, Ned, patience. A fisherman's most important trait should be his willingness to undergo long periods of time without any success. When a fish does bite, it would then be all the more exciting. There's a psychological term for it. What is it? Oh yeah, delay of gratification."

"Dat's all bu-ull, Breedjmin! I betcha any money dat da most happy feesherman is da one who catches a feesh on each and every cast dat he takes."

"Not necessarily, Ned." Luke began paddling toward the far end of the lake. "If a person caught a fish on every cast, the excitement of the sport would soon be gone. What makes fishing so exciting is that you never know when a trout or a musky is going to strike. This uncertainty is the thing that brings the fisherman to the lake. In pyschology, they found that the habits that are the hardest to break are those where the person only gets occasional success, not the ones where success is guaranteed each and every time. That's what is meant about being bitten by the fisherman's bug. It's a lot like gambling in casinos."

"You talk too much Breedjmin." Ned began changing his lure again. He resorted to the artificial baby muskrat again.

Luke took offence at the remark. He knew that Popocropolis had not listened to a word that he had said. He had a momentary urge to splash water onto the Greek. But what good would that do? He thought it over and decided it would do plenty. But he didn't, somehow he managed to stifle the urge Instead he said, "Be patient, Ned. Enjoy the scenery. The fish will bite in good time."

He began circling the canoe back toward the point where they had first set out onto this mysterious lake. The waters' listlessness had all but disappeared. A tranquil calm flattened the waves, making the lake take on seemingly more depth. It was warmer now. Luke took off his shirt and heard a loon cry out in its patented call of the Canadian wilds. Along the reflection of the elevated shore bluffs, he discerned the stream of either a beaver or a muskrat making its way to shore. From this distance he couldn't tell. They were way out in the middle of the lake.

How come he had never heard of this lake before? It certainly was deep enough and probably loaded with huge trophy sized lake trouts although Popocropolis would never catch any. The Greek never let out enough line so that his bait would reach the necessary depth to attract one of these lunkers. The artificial baby muskrat was ludricrous. Especially the way Ned skimmed it through the watertop with its tail knotted up around one of its phoney legs. There weren't any other anglers on the lake nor was there any evidence that there had been any recently. It could be a gold mine for him if he started bringing real fishermen here who would be more adept at the rod than Ned Popocropolis. They would reward him handsomely and they too would reap benefits from huge lunker classed fish.

"Why dontchu stop pattling Breedjmin? Maybe you are scaring dem wit all dat noise dat you are making!"

It was preposterous to think that the slight bubbling from his strokes would disturb the fish but Luke acquiesced anyways. The customer is always right, even if the customer is Ned Popocropolis. "You think that we should drift for awhile?"

"Ya."

"Fair enough." He pulled the paddle from the lake, waited for all the drops to roll off the end and then settled the scull on the dugout's ribbed floor. He began thinking of all the money he could make on this newly found boon. Soon he was lulled into a dreamless sleep.

....... "Breedjmin! Breedjmin wake up!"

Luke slowly opened his eyes. A sense of vertigo overwhelmed him. In his somewhat somnolent state, he thought that he was in the centre of a tarn in the midst of the Rockies. Towering tors filled all the horizons. Something was out of whack. Instead of being foliaged at the lower elevations and barren on top, this behemoth alpine topography was inversed. Way on top stood a thick coniferous forest. The mountainsides were a bleak purple without a trace of any trees, grasses or other herbage.

A pungent odour of fenny gases burned within his enflared nostrils. He felt nauseated, cramps tightened within his stomach which twisted his intestines into a protesting helixed serpent. Something was wrong here! He must be still asleep, he decided. What he needed was water on his face. Yes, water on his face, that's what he needed. With his eyes shut he reached over the side of the canoe, cupped his paddle-calloused hands to scoop some of that magic elixir. His hand could not find any of the glorious life-preserving fluid. He stooped over the gunwale until his fingers did make contact into something cold and clammy. He opened his eyes and saw a crimson-raven ooze that smelled like a well-used hundred year old outhouse. The smell was enough to wake him up out of his eerie reverie.

He lifted his head. All that he could be see in all directions was more of this ooze. What happened to all of the water? Where did the lake go?

Of course.

"Ned, you idiot! Why didn't you wake me up when you saw that we were drifting into this marsh?" Luke growled. He had a vague, partial memory of the water suddenly getting shallower.

"We didn't! Da wat ...."

"What do you mean we didn't? I can see with me eyes that we did! It's probably going to take hours to get us out of this. And you're going to help too!" Luke was livid. He didnﾒt want to be a Humphrey Bogart dragging his African Queen through leech-infested waters especially when his Katherine Hepburn was a 250 pound obnoxious restauranteur from Toronto.

"You don't talk to me like dat Breedjmin!" Popocropolis shook a clenched fist at his guide. "I should curse you for dat and for bringing me here into dis unholy lake! One second dare is water, and da next second, poof! All da water is gone! You're going to pay for dis Breedjmin!" He began to climb out of the canoe.

"Don't step in that mud, Ned! It's a lot deeper than you think!" Luke envisioned the Greek sinking to his chin in the ooze. It would take a tandem of four by fours to haul his great bulk out of the muck.

Ned ignored the warning and plodded his foot into the putrid slime. Luke got up and was prepared to grab for Ned as he slowly started to sink into the ooze.

But the mud only settled at the top of Ned's foot. Underneath, there seemed to be solid, hard rock. "Ahhh, you're wrong again Breedjmin! See, it doesn't even cover my boot." He kicked at the canoe. His steel-reinforced toe broke right through the birchbark skin. "Dare, dat's what I dhink about you and your smug attitude! Iﾒm going to see to it dat you wonﾒt be working here ever again!" Ned stormed away leaving deep momentary deep tracks in the mud before they filled in again as the surface sought out its homogeneity.

Luke watched Ned disappear, then he took a look at the hole in the canoe. It would be below the waterline if it were to be placed into water. Its size was beyond any remedial repair. The dugout would have to be abandonned for now. He would have to come back for it later. Right now, he had better attend to his disgruntled client. He was responsible for his safety and he would be in big trouble if Popocropolis got lost or drowned.

The distraught guide ran out after Ned through the bogs of the marsh. What did the fool say? One second there was water and the next it was all gone. Impossible.

Within seconds, Luke had Popocropolis in sight. The Greek had climbed down or actually slid down an ooze layered ten foot ridge. How could there be a drop off in a marsh? Marshes tend to find some homeostatic level that they could call their own. There is no such thing as a ridge in a marsh. Luke looked up at the tree-covered mountaintops. Hills of that scale would be noticed for miles around. Yet he had never seen them before. The actual contours of the uppermost peaks bore a striking resemblance to the shoreline of the mysterious lake that they had been fishing earlier. Could it be as Ned said, one second water, the next none. No, it couldn't be. Yet what mountains would only have trees on their summits and none along their face?

"Ha ha! Breedjmin! Come here! Come here!" He heard Ned's distant voice. What could get him so excited? He had better go check it out.

As he plodded through the ooze, an obscure Ojibway myth that was told to him by an old Indian friend back at the trading post came to mind. Phantom lakes. Mysterious bodies of water coming out of nowhere, that on first appearance would be most inviting and alluring. But as soon as anybody was out in the phantom lakeﾒs centre, the water would suddenly vanish, leaving a man drowning in the unfathomly deep bogs and fens at its bottom. The next day there would be no evidence that any body of water had ever existed there and the drowned victim would be buried hundreds of feet below the earth's surface forever gone. His friend said that the Ojibways believed that the phantom lakes were the works of their trickster spirit, Nanabush, who would use these lakes to destroy those that would destroy the natural harmony and integrity of the forest.

If this was a phantom lake, he and Ned were lucky that they came down at a spot where the bottom wasn't covered with a deep murdering layer of slosh. They would have to be careful in choosing their path out of this mire and do it as fast as they could before everything turns back to what it should be.

There was something flopping beside Ned. It was almost as long as Popocropolis was tall. A huge, monstrous Northern Pike. Luke estimated that it must weigh at least eighty pounds.

"Hey! Hey! Breedjmin! Looks like we've struck it big! Ha ha!" Ned laughed while reaching down to pick up the monster.

"Be careful Ned! Those things can be dangerous!" Luke began to run toward his customer. The fishing guide's foot flew out from underneath him and he fell headfirst into the muck. The methane ooze engulfed his face and he began spitting and coughing.

After struggling for what seemed like an eternity, Luke finally broke free with a large popping and gurgling sound as the ooze reconstituted its unbroken surface. Clearing the smelly slime from his eyes, he saw Popocropolis bend over and try to pick up the pike by its gills. The fish swayed its tail and arched its back.

Luke cried, "No!"

The pike opened its cavernous mouth displaying a row of formidable razor-sharp teeth and clamped these down into Ned's arm. The Greek howled in agony and began yanking his limb back and forth trying to free it from the determined fish. Ned started kicking into the fish's side with his steel-toed boots but the pike would not let go.

Ned's blood began to flow over the pike's alligatorish snout and its eaglish eyes. The fish began thrashing its head violently. From where Luke stood he heard the bones in Ned's forearm cracking and he saw the man collapse.

Popocropolis' grotesque form lay smothering on top of the Northern Pike whose tail continued to make an angelic image in the slimy ooze beneath it. The man's upper arm was lying in a most peculiar position. His shoulder must have popped into dislocation. As Luke tried to pull Ned away, he could smell the musky odour of the fish, the smell of the swamp. As Ned's body was raised, the pike abruptly reared its bullet-shaped head into the air. The guide was horrified at what he saw next. A cylinder of dangling sinew, flesh and bone was being gobbled up by the fish. Ned's forearm was forever disappearing into the belly of the pike.

The Greek was starting to come around. All the blood loss and shock was not enough to put Ned Popocropolis out of commision. "My wrist, my wrist! It's killing me!" He moaned pathetically. Luke knew that what Popocropolis was experiencing was a phantom pain. His wrist was in the pike's stomach with the rest of his forearm.

When Ned saw that his arm had been severed, he fainted again. The stump was bleeding profusely. Luke tore a shred off the Greek's shirt and made a makeshift tourniquet. Ned was in dire need of medical attention.

He came to consciousness a couple of times during the arduous and lengthy hike home. Getting out of the phantom lake was painstakingly slow but the spirits of the forest must have figured that they had exacted enough of a price from the two men for the dried-out lakebottom and the hole that it had gouged into the earth never refilled as the fishing guide struggled feebly hauling out his semi-conscious suffering client from it.

It took about seven hours before a thoroughly exhausted, sweat-soaked, mosquito-welted Luke arrived at the lodge. An hour later the ambulance sped away. Ned had come to as he was being tucked into the emergency vehicle. Through half-drooped eyes, he clutched at Luke's collar with his remaining arm and said through a wheezing, tired breath, "You haven't heard the last of me, Breedjmin!"

------ Two weeks passed. Luke was tying up his newly patched birchbark dugout to the floating dock in front of the lodge. He had just finished a busy day with his new client, a likeable accountant from the city named Steve. Steve appeared to be gifted with the rod and reel. He caught the legal limit of yellow pickerel that day and kept only the largest one, a whopping nine pound seven ounce trophy fish destined to be mounted in the accountant's recreation room back home.

Luke had forgotten all about Ned Popocropolis during that time. He was sure that that would be the last that he would ever see of the ignorant and rude restauranteur. Two days after the ambulance had left, he and the manager went to the spot where the phantom lake had been. Instead of a scenic northern lake or a barren, bleak basin what they saw was a gnarly old forest valley indistinct from the woodlands that surrounded it. The manager was somewhat upset that one of his customers had a misfortunate and bizarre accident but the insurance man said that the lodge was covered for this kind of thing in the event of a lawsuit. The manager didn't believe the story of a phantom lake. That Luke Bridgeman was always trying to pull his arm.

Luke and Steve, the accountant, began loading Steve's late modeled General Motors pick-up truck with Steve's gear when they both heard the blaring of a car horn. A baby-blue Cadillac Seville pulled up into the parking lot beside the two men.

A charcoal-tinted window lowered automatically. A chubby, blackhaired, oily skinned cherubic head popped out, grinning ear to ear. "Hey Breedjmin, you still have to take me to dat pond you told me about! I dhink dat I feel lucky today!ﾔ

The guideﾒs heart sank as low as he knew that his own luck had sank that day.