As to swimming, Kenneth seemed to take to it quite naturally, and many a little adventure he had in the water.
Once when swimming he was bitten on the knee by a horrible fish called on the shores of the Atlantic the miller’s thumb. It is a kind of skate or ray of immense size, with a fearfully large mouth filled with sharp teeth.
On this particular day the sun had been very bright and the water warm and clear, and Kenneth swam a long distance from the shore. When he returned he was very faint, and his knee was bleeding; he fell and lost consciousness almost immediately after he reached the pebbly beach. Duncan ran to his assistance, and soon got him round; then he bound up his knee.
“Was it a shark?” Kenneth had inquired.
“Oh! horrible! no, Kennie, no, for had a shark seized you, his teeth are so arranged and so hook-like that he couldn’t have let you go again had he wanted to ever so much.”
Another day, when Duncan and he were hauling in a hand line with an immensely great cod at the end of it, suddenly, for some unexplained reason or other, the line slipped, and almost at the same moment Kenneth fell overboard.
A codfish of say twenty pounds pulls with fearful force.
Kenneth was dragged under the water.
It was a trying time then for old Duncan’s nerves. Would the poor boy be dead before he got the great fish checked and in charge again?