And that made her laugh; for she had not the least idea of the darkness of my meaning.
"Now, you may fish upon your own account," she told me; "you see how you must draw the net along beneath the ledges, with the hinder part of the rim kept higher, to brush the rock so that they can't get back over it; and go well in under all the fringes of the weeds; and then up with the other rim, and fetch it out briskly. Now, you fish a little; while I look on, and applaud you, if honesty and facts permit. You shall have this large pool all to yourself, and it is the best among all the rocks. And you can manage Roly's net, which is half again the size of mine, you see. Now, I particularly want two dozen prawns, and they are not at all plentiful on this coast. I have only got seven yet, with all these shrimps. But everybody says that you are so lucky; and I shall believe it, if you catch one prawn; they are much quicker to get away than shrimps, and so it requires more skill to catch them. Well, I declare! You have got at least a dozen. I never saw so many in one haul before. Let me take them out, or they will be sure to jump away from you. Oh, what a very spiteful creature!"
A very large prawn, with no sense of the beautiful—at least as existing in the race that boils him—had rasped her most exquisite forefinger (which looked in the water as pellucid as himself) with the vile long crock-saw, which he carried on his head. And what made it the more meritorious on her part, she held fast to him still, and dropped him into the bag.
"How wonderfully brave you are!" I cried; "it is bleeding, two or three large drops. Put it into your mouth, and suck out the poison. Oh, how I should like to do it for you! Don't be so intrepid! You never can tell. He may have been living with a water-snake. I could tell you such stories, if it would stop bleeding. Let me tear up my handkerchief, and bind it."
"No, it is nothing at all; and if they were poisonous, how should we eat them? I split a piece of popweed, and put it on like a thimble, and that stops the bleeding immediately. It is not the first time they have given me a rasp. My dear mother likes me to wear gloves, whenever I go shrimping; but I always pull them off. I like to feel things, with my own hands. There, what a fuss about nothing! Now go on. How wonderfully fortune favours you! I have heard it so often, and now I can see it. Try that corner, there is always something there. Roly caught a fine silver mullet there, last summer; and I caught a little fish, we didn't knew the name of."
"Let me try to smile nicely," I said to myself; "I always get the best luck when I smile. Cause and effect are always hugging one another. To doubt one's luck, is to doubt it nearly always. I want to impress her with my good luck, for what impression is more favourable? Faint heart never won fairy prawns. That corner looks full of miraculous draught."
"Oh, please to let go—let go, Miss Twentifold! He may pull me in, but he mustn't pull in you."
For seeing me engaged with a mighty adversary, my lovely companion rushed forward, and put fair hands on the pole of the net, because my light figure was thrown off its balance, by an unexpected weight and force.
"Whatever it is, you shall have all the glory," she answered, as she obeyed me; "only I was afraid you were tumbling in."
"So I will, if it is needful. I don't mean to let him go," I exclaimed, as I set my heels firmly in a ledge. "Here he comes! What in the world have we caught?"