“But tell me: would that thing have dragged me in?”
“To be sure he would. Why, it’s only two days since he pulled a girl into the water. She’d only gone down to wash a sarong.”
“Is it a big one?” asked Ned, after gazing in a horrified way at his companion.
“Oh yes! a whacker—fifty or sixty feet long.”
“Nonsense!”
“Well then, fifteen or twenty. I know it’s a big one. One of our men—Dilloo, I think it was—saw him one day ashore. Look here, old chap, tell you what. We’ll get some of the fellows to lend us a rope with a loose end, and a hook, and we’ll set a night-line for the beggar, and catch him. What do you say?”
“I should like to, if we stay here.”
“Oh, you’ll stay here,” said the lad, laughing. “Like fishing?”
“Passionately.”
“So do I. Caught two dozen yesterday after I met you. I say, you and your uncle are bird and butterfly cocks, aren’t you?”