"They will escape us," said Dick.
"No, there is a deep bay just where they are rowing," said Jimmy.
As the water deepened the yacht started forwards, and in another minute they were on the runaways. Crash went their bows against the boat: she was at once capsized, and her occupants were struggling in the water. One of them scrambled on board the Swan, and rushed aft with an oar upraised to strike, but Frank laid the helm over as he put the yacht about, and the boom struck the fellow on the head and knocked him overboard.
Meanwhile Dick had with the boat-hook tried to catch hold of the boat. In this he failed, but he got hold of something far more important, and that was a large fine-mesh net, which the poachers had no doubt intended to use after robbing the night-line. With such nets the damage done to fishing is enormous. Shoals of fishes as small as minnows, and useless for anything except manure, are massacred with them, and it is by the constant use of such nets that the fishing on the broads falls now so far short of what it used to be. Night-lines set for eels are not poaching or destructive. The quantity of eels is so great, that, as long as the young ones are spared, either night-lines or nets of the proper kind may be used.
The yacht swept on, leaving the men up to their waists in the water, and swearing horribly. Frank felt a wild impulse to return and fight them, for he was of a fighting blood, such as a soldier should have, but he thought, "If we go back there are sure to be some hard blows, and I have no right to take Dick or Jimmy into a scrimmage and perhaps get them severely hurt, for they are not so strong as I am," so he refrained, and they sailed back to the boat-house, and waited until the dawn. Their adversaries dared not attack them, but went off out of sight and hearing.
In the morning they took up the line, and were well-rewarded for their previous trouble. The eels they took pretty well loaded the donkey-cart which old Cox had borrowed, and he took them to Norwich and made a good profit out of them.
Having amused themselves once with the night-lines the boys did not care to use them again, for it was infra dig. to catch fish for profit. However the profits were good to other people, so they gave the line to old Cox, and told him that he must get some one to set it, and go shares with him.
The next day Frank walked down to the village public-house and stuck up the following notice in the bar,—
"If the person to whom the nets I have belong, will call at my house and claim them, he shall have the nets and a good thrashing."
Frank was five feet eleven inches high, and well built in addition, and he had always a look on his face which said "I mean what I say;" and the nets were never claimed.