"Any luck?" said I.
"No."
"Been here long?"
"Not very long, but that old man talks too much to please me."
I looked down at the old man. He looked up at me. He greeted me in the local language. In his language I replied. Whereupon he calmly said: "I have been telling that white man that from the rock on which he stands a crocodile took a woman yesterday."
I hurriedly translated. Baker did no more angling that day! He thought the old man had been saying "How do you do?" to him.
In the end we converted Baker to our way of fishing, so that he became an expert spinner and killed many a noble tiger-fish. But he had a mishap the first day he used a rod which almost decided him not to use one again. He was fishing from the bank for bream, which run large in that part of the river. He used a float for the first time. Presently his float disappeared. Baker struck upwards, using both hands. He pulled his fish out of the water, but with such force that it flew over his head and fell with a splash into a pond behind—free.
I think we just saved him from an immediate return to "angling" by pretending not to have seen his discomfiture.