“And never bit you?”
“No; I kept on stroking its back as it went over my knees, without the least idea that it was anything dangerous. Dad said it seemed years and years before it went right over and crawled away from me into the grass. He had me out of the way in about half a second, and got a stick, and I cried like anything when he killed it, and said he was naughty!”
“If you chaps have finished swopping snake yarns,” said Jim, turning in his saddle, “there’s Anglers’ Bend.”
They had been riding steadily across the plain, until they had again come near the scrub-line which marked the course of the creek. Following the direction pointed by Jim’s finger, they saw a deep curve in the green, where the creek suddenly left the fairly straight course it had been pursuing and made two great bends something like a capital U, the points of which lay in their direction. They rode down between them until they were almost at the water’s edge.
Here the creek was very deep, and in sweeping round had cut out a wide bed, nearly three times its usual breadth. Tall trees grew almost to the verge of the banks on both sides, so that the water was almost always in shadow, while so high were the banks that few breezes were able to ripple its surface. It lay placid all the year, scarcely troubled even in winter, when the other parts of the creek rushed and tumbled in flood. There was room in the high banks of Anglers’ Bend for all the extra water, and its presence was only marked by the strength of the current that ran in the very centre of the stream.
Just now the water was not high, and seemed very far below the children, who sat looking at it from their ponies on the bank. As they watched in silence a fish leaped in the middle of the Bend. The sudden movement seemed amazing in the stillness. It flashed for an instant in a patch of sunlight, and then fell back, sending circling ripples spreading to each bank.
“Good omen, I hope,” Harry said, “though they often don’t bite when they jump, you know.”
“It’s not often they don’t bite here,” Jim said.
“Well, it looks a good enough place for anything—if we can’t catch fish here, we won’t be up to much as anglers,” Harry said.
“You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Norah?” Wally asked.