The next moment, leaving the fish flapping and beating the bamboo bottom, Sree stepped beside Phra, where the same business was gone through, and the second fish dragged in.
They proved to be very similar in appearance to a fish but little known in England, though lingering still in some few sluggish rivers—the burbot—a fish that is best described as being something like a short, thick eel. These were together over twenty pounds in weight, and welcome from their delicate quality as food.
"Enough is as good as a feast," said Mr. Kenyon, smiling; and the order being given, the boat was once more sent gliding up stream, look-out being kept for a suitable place for landing and making a fire.
This was reached at last, and the fish, spitted on the ever-present, ever-useful bamboo, set down to roast, so that they might make a welcome addition to the next al fresco meal.
After another few miles a suitable mooring-place was found beneath an enormous tree, and a fire once more lit; this was to act as a scare to keep away noxious creatures, but, as Harry said, for some things they might have been better without.
For they soon found that the glare of the burning wood woke up and attracted the birds, which came circling round it in a strangely weird way, their dimly seen forms coming and going out of the darkness into the dome of light ribbed with the branches of the trees.
Moths and flies innumerable buzzed about through the glare, and, worst of all, the light and heat attracted the smaller reptiles, snakes and lizards creeping towards the flame for the sake of the warmth of what must have seemed to them like a new, strange sun, and many of them getting burned.
"It's very horrid, father," said Harry. "Mike says that he saw hundreds of wriggling snakes and lizards creeping up when he helped the men make up the fire as you advised, for they would have set the forest ablaze if it had been done their way."
"Hundreds, eh?" said Mr. Kenyon. "Then I suppose we may set it down as being about a dozen, Hal?"
"He is an awful fibster, father," said Harry, laughing.