Ed Mason had a light air-rifle, and Joe Carter, by virtue of his seniority and experience (he was thirteen that week) carried a small but pernicious revolver. The rest of us had fishing-poles and lines, and I was further equipped with a burning-glass,—without which no one should venture into the wilderness, where matches may fail, and camp-fires have to be kindled.
We had not gone far when the suitability of breakfast occurred to us. We paused by the road,—not far from the brickyard (where Ed Mason had once beaten off an attack by tramps) and ate one third of our provision.
Rob Currier's box proved to contain, among other things, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, and to find a third part of two eggs was not only puzzling, but unpleasantly reminiscent of Mr. Colburn's Arithmetic,—a book which we did not care to have accompany us, even in spirit.
Rob solved the problem by eating both eggs then and there.
A short walk brought us to a spot on Little River where the fishing was good, and here Jimmy Toppan and I promptly unlimbered our rods. Ed Mason wandered across the meadow to look for a legendary owl, which he claimed once to have seen in a tree near the centre of the meadow.
An owl-haunted tree it certainly looked, but at that hour of the day there was little surprise that Ed saw nothing of him. The hunter soon returned to the river bank, where Jimmy and I were pulling in hornpouts at a great rate.
The others, scornful of hornpouts, had departed to a small pool, farther up the river, where nobler game was reported. Before the end of an hour they returned, bringing two very small and skinny pickerel. Now your pickerel, be he ever so meagre, is of course a nobler fish than your hornpout, and there is more glory in his capture. So Joe Carter and Rob were fain to look with loathing upon the dozen fat hornpouts which lay on the grass, and to consider that Jimmy and I had spent our time in but a trifling fashion.
Not content with vaunting the superiority of their two dusty pickerel, they reduced us to deeper humiliation by recounting their adventures. Joe Carter had lost bait, hook, and float from his fishing tackle, through the agency of the enormous turtle who had lived for many a year under the bridge at the head of the pool, and Rob Currier had fallen into the water and come out wet to the knees. So it was evident that there was nothing for Jimmy and me but to hide our diminished heads.
We said little, but suggested that as the morning was apparently far advanced, it would be well to have a swim and our midday meal. By the railroad track,—a short cut, we reached the swimming place, Four Rocks. It was probably the poorest swimming pool ever prescribed by an iron tradition. Passing trains made it necessary modestly to seek deeper water, and grazing cows threatened to devour our clothes; but here, and at no other place, did every boy learn to swim.
Tradition is a tyrant; during the believing years it is the worst of despots.