Gathering a capful, he returned at once to where his companions in misfortune were hard at work.
“Hullo!” growled Shaddy. “Soon back! What have you got, my lad? Kind o’ granadillas, eh? Well, they’re good to eat, but not much to make a breakfast of. Better wait till I’ve done a bit o’ conjuring and turned some of ’em into a fish. There, what do you say to that for a hook?”
He held up his piece of wood carving, which was about four inches long and two across, something in this shape:—
“Not much of a hook, Mr Rob, sir, but tough enough to hold a fish if we can coax him to swallow it by covering it with the fruit. We can get three of them juicy things on the shank and point. So now for the line! How are you getting on, Mr Brazier, sir?”
“Very slowly, Naylor,” said Brazier, with a sigh.
“All the more surer, sir. You help, Mr Rob, sir, and I’ll lay up some of my cotton handkercher for the snood. No; second thoughts is best. I’ll make a loose hank of it, so that the fish’s teeth may go through if he tries to bite the line, which of course he will.”
The result was that in an hour or so a silk line of about twenty yards in length was twisted up and attached to the loose cotton bottom secured to the hook. This was baited, and, after selecting a suitable spot, Shaddy climbed out upon a half-fallen tree whose trunk projected over the river, and dropped his line into a deep eddying pool, where the water ran round and round in a way which made Rob feel giddy.
There was a steep slope just here, so that the bank was not flooded, and hence the angler was able to drop his line at once into deep water, where the action of the whirling current sufficed to suck the bait right down, while Brazier and Rob looked on with the interest of those who depended upon success to give them the food from the want of which they were suffering keenly.
“Now then,” said Shaddy cheerfully, “if the bait don’t come off, if a fish takes it, if there are any here, if the hook don’t break and the line give way, I may catch our breakfast. Plenty of ifs, Mr Rob, sir! Remember the big doradoes we caught up yonder?”
“Oh, if you could catch one now!” replied the lad.