Mindful of the caution, Bob worked carefully, and after a time succeeded in bringing the fish up to the boat, when Ethan deftly thrust the landing-net underneath it and threw it into the boat, and with a blow of a stout hickory club speedily put an end to the struggle.
“I ’most always does that,” he explained. “I don’t s’pose a fish knows anything about it, but I don’t like to see ’em go ker-flop, ker-flop! so I puts ’em out o’ their misery. Besides, they’re better eatin’ when ye treat ’em that way.”
“This one is a little fellow,” said Bob, regretfully, as he gazed at the fish, which now had been thrown into the fish-box. “The other must have been ten times as large as this one. That was a monster!”
“The big ones ’most always gets away,” replied Ethan, smilingly. “An’ they grow mighty fast, too, sometimes. The farther away they git the bigger they be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothin’; but that I’ve knowed a man when he was out with me to lose a half-pound bass, an’ by the time he got back to the camp or the hotel, that ’ere bass weighed a plump five pound. It’s marvellous like, the way they grow sometimes.”
“Where’s the other boat?” said Jock.
“I dunno. We’ll let ’em look after themselves a bit. We’ll try it here again afore we leave. It’s your turn next to get one.”
Eager to continue the sport, the boys once more let out their lines, as Ethan began to row slowly over the shoal again.