Bill splashed some water over himself and then swam quickly to the spot where the net was caught. He dived, opened his eyes and could see clearly every mesh of the net as it was held fast by the current over a sharp stump. He lifted it off quickly and threw it over the stump down stream and struck out for shore. His skin was blue and his teeth chattered as he hurriedly got into his clothes. Then he ran back and forth on the sand a few minutes to get warm.
“Now, Mr. Barker,” he said, “let’s make the haul and see what we get out of this deep hole. There ought to be some big ones in it.”
Both men slowly pulled the seine through the deep hole, where by means of small leads attached to the lower edge of the seine, the big drag-net swept the bottom, driving all deep-water fish before it.
As the bag-like middle part of the seine slowly crept into shallower water on a rising sandbank, there was a great stir in the enclosed pool. Big fish of several kinds came to the surface. Some showing a silvery flash for just a moment, dived again to the bottom in their attempt to escape, others, bolder or made more desperate, shot with a loud splash over the seine back into free water.
Bill pulled as he had never pulled on anything before.
“Pull, Mr. Barker, pull!” he shouted. “We’ve got a wagon-load of big ones, but they’re breaking away.”
The old trapper pulled as hard as Bill, but he didn’t hear what Bill called to him, for the fish in their last desperate effort to escape made a deafening confusion and noise with splashing, jumping and flapping about. The big bag was alive with a wildly struggling mass of fish of all sizes; and so heavy was the catch that the two fishermen could not move the net another inch.
“Drop the rope,” commanded the old man, “and throw them out on the sand.”
As Bill sprang into the shallow water, a big flopping fish, the like of which he had never seen before, got between his legs and laid him sprawling flat on his stomach amongst the madly struggling fish. In a moment Bill was on his feet again.
“Help me, Mr. Barker, help me,” he called. “I can’t hold him; he’ll get away!”