“Well, I don’t know about being a coward, Master Jack Penny,” said the doctor quietly; “but I do know that if I had had my foot in that reptile’s mouth I should have been in a most horrible state of fear. There, my lad,” he continued kindly, “don’t think any more about it, only to be thankful for your escape.”
“But he ought to tell us first how he was caught like that,” I said.
“Oh, there ain’t much to tell,” said Jack, sitting up and raising his leg, and softly rubbing his injured foot. “I was fishing, and the fish wouldn’t bite, and I got a little nearer to the river side and threw in again and fished; and the sun seemed to get hotter, and I suppose I fell asleep, for I remember dreaming that the dingoes had got among father’s sheep again, and that he flicked his whip-lash round my wrist. Then I tried to start up, but a big fish had hold of the line, and it tugged away so hard that I was overbalanced, and took a header off the bank right into the river; and when I came up, pretty tidy astonished like, and began to swim for the bank, the fish on the line, which I had twisted round my wrist, began tugging me out into the stream. It took me out ever so far before I could get the line off my wrist; and then I swam easily back, feeling awful popped like at having lost the fish and the line; and I was just wondering what you would say, when all at once there was a regular rush in the water, and something shut on my foot, giving me such an awful nip that I yelled out as I caught hold of that branch, and held on, shivering all the while with fear, for I forgot about the crocodiles, and thought it must be a shark.”
“Well!” I said, excitedly; for he stopped.
“Well, what?” said Jack.
“What next? What did you do?” I said.
“Hollered!” replied Jack laconically. “So would you if you had been me.”
“Yes,” I said, “of course; but what took place next?”
“Oh, nothing; only that I held tight and he held tight, and as often as he tugged at me it jumped the bough up and down like a see-saw, and it was very horrid.”
“Most horrible!” said the doctor.