“And how are we to cook it? We have not much more wood?”
“We’ll dry it in the sun, if we can’t manage any other way. Now throw out just to the left of that rock.”
Roylance was already aiming in that direction, the bait falling a couple of yards to the left; and if it had been aimed right into a fish’s mouth, the answering tug, which betokened the getting home of the hook, could not have been more rapid. Then followed a minute’s exciting play, a tremendous jerk, and the hook came back baitless and fishless.
“Never mind, sir; try again. Strikes me it’s sharks is lying out there, waiting to get hold of all we ketches, ’cause the weather’s too hot for ’em to do it themselves. There you are, sir; as shiny silver a bait as any one could have.”
There was another cast, and in less than a minute a fresh fish was hooked, and this escaped the savage jaws waiting to seize it, and was hauled in.
“There, that’s the biggest yet,” cried Syd. “Fifteen pounder, I know.”
“You try now,” said Roylance, and for the next half-hour, with varying success, they fished on, for there was to be quite a feast that evening, the men hailing with delight so capital a change from their salt meat diet; while there was supreme satisfaction in Sydney’s heart, for he had solved one of the difficulties he had to face—the sea would supply them with ample food.
“If we could only find water, and get some drift-wood, we could hold on till my father comes back.”
As he said these last words, he saw a peculiar look of doubt in his companion’s eyes—a look which sent a chill of dread through him for a few minutes.
“No,” he said, “I will not think that; he’ll come yet, and all will be right.”