Printed by Simmons-Bloxham Ltd., Sydney.
Chapter I.
PIRATES ALL.
The Broadstream punt was grating gently on the pebbles at the South Side. Morning, gowned in silver grey, with trimmings of gold, still slept voluptuously on her divan in the Orient East. The mists were slowly lifting from the river, but hung yet lovingly along the creeks and upon the reedy lagoons.
Tom Pagdin, with his bare legs hanging over the rails of the punt, watched the cork floater of his fishing line sleepily. His bamboo rod cast a clear shadow in the water of the deep Broadstream. It was a new rod, cut some days before from the lower boundary of Henry Dobie’s garden. Old Tom Pagdin was not on speaking terms with Dobie, hence young Tom had taken that rod; at dusk, knowing that the particular commandment relating to the case was temporarily suspended.
Old Tom (cheerfully so-called by roystering fishermen) rented the Broadstream punt from the Government, which he regarded as his natural enemy. It was only at election times that Pagdin, senior, got anything like even with the Government, exercising the right of secret ballot against the sitting member behind his back, while pretending absolute fealty to his face. On these occasions the puntman invariably came home to the little shanty by the riverside glorious, and next day young Tom was usually too sore to sit down with any degree of comfort.
But the life of a boy on the Broadstream could not possibly be dull for long, and the thrashings which Tom Pagdin so regularly received at the hands of the ‘old man’ possibly gave greater relish to his pleasures.
In the Northern streams the perch bite best in the early morning, but it happened that the fish were dainty, or shy, and even the black cricket still kicking on the hook did not draw them.
So, when a waterhen came out on the broad green leaves of the lilies, which were just opening their purple flowers to the rising sun, Tom Pagdin let his rod drop gently in the water, drew his catapult from the pocket of his frayed trousers, fitted a carefully-chosen pebble in the sling, and let fly.