"Well, you see, it was such a fine subject that I thought I had ought to knock off another view, so that if one proved poor the other might be good. And just as I was all ready, why, it happened!"
"And you snapped it off as they were falling in?" Elmer continued.
"I think I did," said Landy, eagerly; "for my finger just pressed the trigger unconsciously. I was that astonished, you see. And I'm going to develop this roll to-night. Wouldn't it be just immense if it turned out to be a good picture!"
"Oh, yes; something to amuse the rest of the troop, and chase the blues away," grunted Ty, as he hunched his shoulders and sauntered back to the camp to ascertain what Elmer might have been doing there.
Elmer did take Adam up the river a piece, and finding a promising spot where there seemed to be a likelihood of bass frequenting, he proceeded to instruct the other in the rudiments of the art.
Adam took to it from the very first. He was frank enough to confess that he had never done any fishing in the old country, and was therefore utterly green; but he showed an aptitude for catching on to what Elmer told him; and before they had been an hour at work he had not only succeeded in hooking a fine specimen of the gamey bass, but played and landed him in great style.
"You'll do, I reckon, now, Adam; so I'll leave you here and go back to camp. Be sure you come in when you hear the signal, which will be three loud cooies."
At noon, when the fishermen gave it up for the day, as the heat stopped all biting on the part of the bass, it was found that while Ted had caught seven fair-sized fish, five of them bass, one a large perch, and a sucker that was the largest Elmer had ever seen around that region, Adam had brought in two bass and a big catfish.
"Py shiminy crickets, dot feller vas dry some foolishness py me," he said, as he held up the still wriggling catfish; "I haf drouples to get him off der hook; and he sthick me dwice so hardt in der finger. Ooch! put it do feel sore yet somedimes. I dink me he preak off some dot thorn in der pone."
"That's another lesson you must learn, Adam," said Elmer. "The catfish has ugly spines that hurt like fun when you run your hand against them. I guess they're poisoned, like the tail of the stingy-ray, down South. I've known a fellow who had a running sore for a month after being stuck by the fin of a cat. And, Ted, seems to me here's another chance to use that colored stuff that was so fine with Landy."