“We’ll draw straws,” says Plunk.
We did, and Mark and I were the ones to fish. We took one of the clinker-bottomed rowboats, though the paint wasn’t quite dry. It didn’t leak much. Each of us took an oar and we trolled with two lines. First we made a sweep down the far side of the lake, and inside of twenty minutes I’d landed a three-pound bass and Mark was fighting with a pickerel that weighed four pounds and a quarter when we got him into the boat. For ten minutes the fish let us alone; then Mark hitched on to a regular old sockdolager of a bass, and, after a quarter of an hour of about as busy fishing as anybody ever did, we got him into the boat. He weighed just short of five pounds. Mark dropped a lead sinker down his throat to give him a little more heft, and weighed him again.
“Guess we made a m-mistake first time,” says he. “Look! He weighs f-five pounds and an ounce.”
“That’s right,” says I. “Gives Plunk and Binney a mark to shoot at. Five-pound bass ain’t biting every hook that dangles in the water.”
“Calc’late we got about enough fish, eh?”
“Enough to pay Mr. Ames and more’n we can eat besides.”
“Then,” says he, “l-let’s take a look around.”
We rowed about a mile down the lake toward the road and got out.
“Wonder if anybody ever passes here,” I says. “Let’s wait and see.”
The road didn’t look like it was traveled over as much as Main Street in Wicksville, and I didn’t very much expect to see anybody unless we waited all day. But Mark liked the idea of trying, so we hid among the underbrush and pretended we were a scouting-party from the castle. We talked in whispers and were pretty cautious, I can tell you, for Mark said that part of the country was swarming with foraging parties of the enemy. He said they’d either shut us up in a dungeon fifty feet deep or else sell us into slavery in a far country if we got caught.