Just then the fish showed symptoms of revival. Olly could stand this no longer. He made a desperate grasp and caught it by the gills just as the hook came away. The act destroyed what little balance he had retained, and he went with a sharp short yell into the pool.
Paul looked up in time to see his friend’s legs disappear. He ran to the spot in considerable alarm, supposing that the boy might have taken a fit, and not knowing whether he could swim. He was relieved, however, to find that Olly on reappearing struck out manfully with one hand for a shallow place at the lower end of the pool, while with the other he pressed some object tightly to his bosom.
“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed Paul, as he assisted his friend out of the water, “that you went in for that splendid trout and caught it with your hands!”
“You saw me dive,” replied the boy, throwing the fish down with affected indifference, and stooping to wring the water from his garments as well as to hide his face; “and you don’t suppose, surely, that I caught it with my feet. Come, look at the depth I had to go down to catch him!”
Seizing his prize, Olly led his friend to the spot where he had fallen in, and pointed with a look of triumph to the clear, deep pool. At the moment a smile of intelligence lit up Paul’s features, and he pointed to the extemporised fly-hook which still dangled from the bank.
Bursting into a hearty fit of laughter, the successful fisher ran up to the encampment, swinging the trout round his head, to the surprise and great satisfaction of his father, who had already got the fire alight and the rabbit skinned.
Need it be said that the meal which followed was a hearty one, though there was no variety save roast rabbit, roast trout, and roast pork, with the last of the cakes as pudding?
“A first-rate dinner!” exclaimed Paul, after swallowing a draft of sparkling water from the stream.
“Not bad,” admitted Captain Trench, “if we only had something stronger than water to wash it down.”
Paul made no reply to this remark, but he secretly rejoiced in the necessity which delivered his friend from the only foe that had power to overcome him.