The catfish seemed to be satisfied with what he had accomplished; and still about in the same spot, made no sign of farther trickiness.
However, Ned was very careful in approaching him. A moment, and the cat came over the one gunwale as Hal came over the other.
The hook, which had caught merely in one of the lips, where it had worn quite a hole, dropped while Ned was lifting, and there lay the victim in the bottom of the boat, free too late.
“A regular ‘yaller’ mud-cat,” laughed Ned. “Say—but we were lucky not to lose him. If he’d only had sense enough he might have got loose long ago.”
“I bet he weighs twenty pounds,” declared the dripping Hal.
“He’s all mouth!” returned Ned.
The boys gazed and gloated. The catfish, gasping in the sudden change from water to air, lay, after the fashion of his kind, inert and emotionless.
He was a very ugly animal, of a dirty yellow, and while he was not large for his species, he was the largest that the boys had ever caught. Indeed, he was quite a chunk of a fish. He was shaped somewhat like a flatiron; and, as Ned had remarked, he was about all mouth.
This mouth, which in appearance was a split severing his enormous head from side to side, was fringed with long feelers. His eyes, almost white, were small and piggish.