"Oh! A bite!" cried he, picking up his pole. "Oh, Fred! I've hooked that old trout!"
Master Martin was too much taken up with his own affairs just then to pay much attention. Bobby, all of a tremble (for he had never caught a trout over a finger long), began to "play" the fish cautiously. It seemed to be sulking down in its hole under the old stump. Bobby pulled on the line gently.
Meanwhile Fred, getting his breath, began to remove his saturated garments.
"I guess," he grunted, "we might as well go in swimming right now. Gee! I'm wet. And these things will have to dry before I start home. Oh!"
Bobby's line "gave" suddenly. Bobby uttered a yell, for he thought the trout had jumped.
Whatever was on his hook shot to the surface of the brown pool. Bobby went over backward on the grass. The point of his pole stood straight up, and the hook was snapped out of the water.
There was a long, black, squirmy thing on the hook. As Bobby squealed, the eel flopped right down into his face!
"Aw! ouch! take him off!" shouted Bobby, and flung away his pole.
In a second the eel was so tangled in the fishline that one might have thought it and the line had been tied into a hard knot! Fred was rolling with laughter on the bank, his wet shirt half over his head.
"Scubbity-yow!" he shrieked. "Now you got it. You laughed at me, Bobby Blake. See how you get it yourself."