Chapter Fifteen.
Collecting the Gold.
“Ever see ’em ketch eels at home, Master Cyril?” said John Manning one morning.
“We used to set night lines in the lake at school,” said Cyril. “We threw the bait out ever so far, and tied the other end to a brick sunk in the water.”
“Oh yes: but I don’t mean that way, where every twopenny eel spoils four pen’orth o’ good line and hooks. I mean with an eel-trap, one of those made of osiers, so that it’s very easy to get in, but very hard to get out.”
“Yes; I saw some of those once,” cried Perry, “up by a weir. But why? There are no eels here.”
John Manning chuckled, and shook all over, as if he enjoyed what he was saying.
“Not many, sir, but quite enough. We’re the eels, and we’ve wriggled ourselves right into a trap, and there’s no getting out again.”
“It doesn’t seem as if there were,” said Cyril thoughtfully; “but we’re getting what the colonel wanted, and I don’t think the Indians have noticed it yet.”
“’Tain’t for want of looking, sir,” said the old soldier. “I go for a bit of a walk in one direction, and begin picking something, and feel a tickling about the back. ‘Some one’s eyes on me,’ I says to myself, and I go a bit farther, and feel the same tickling in front. Then one side, then t’other, and it’s always eyes watching.”