"O foolish dog of a fisher," said Chellaya pretending to be very angry, "can you not understand? Suppose one who was not a fisher and was well on in years wished to fish—for a vow or even for play—could such a one learn to cast the net?"
The old fisherman screwed up his wrinkled face and looked up at Chellaya doubtfully.
"Lord," he said, "I cannot tell. For how could such a thing be? To the fisher his net, as the saying is. Such things are learnt when one is young, as one learns to walk."
Chellaya looked out over the old man's head to the lagoon. Another fisherman was stealing along in the water ready for the cast. Ah, swish out flew the net. No, nothing—yes, O joy, a gleam of silver in the meshes. Chellaya made up his mind suddenly.
"Now, look here, fellow,—tell me this; could you teach me to cast a net?"
The old man covered his mouth with his hand, for it is not seemly that a fisher should smile in the presence of a Brahman.
"The lord is laughing at me," he said respectfully.
"I am not laughing, fellow. I have made a vow to Muniyappa that if he would take away the curse which he laid upon my son's child I would cast a net nightly in the lagoon. Now my son's child is well. Therefore if you will take me tomorrow night to a spot where no one will see us and bring me a net and teach me to cast it, I will give you five measures of rice. And if you speak a word of this to anyone, I will call down upon your head and your child's head ten thousand curses of Muniyappa."
It is dangerous to risk being cursed by a Brahman, so the fisherman agreed and next evening took Chellaya to a bay in the lagoon and showed him how to cast the net. For an hour Chellaya waded about in the shallow water experiencing a dreadful pleasure. Every moment he glanced over his shoulder to the land to make sure that nobody was in sight; every moment came the pang that he was the first Brahman to pollute his caste by fishing; and every moment came the keen joy of hope that this time the net would swish out and fall in a gentle circle upon a silver fish.
Chellaya caught nothing that night, but he had gone too far to turn back. He gave the fisherman two rupees for the net, and hid it under a rock, and every night he went away to the solitary creek, made a little pile of his white Brahman clothes on the sand, and stepped into the shallow water with his net. There he fished until the sun sank. And sometimes now he caught fish which very reluctantly he had to throw back into the water, for he was afraid to carry them back to his wife.