I said nothing, but looked anxiously into the trickle, but all I could see were five or six tortoises paddling about. Eton days when I kept these beasts in a biscuit box in the wash-stand, hidden from the eagle eyes of m’tutor, returned to me, but I somehow did not connect them with rods and hooks.
My companion seemed to read my thoughts. “The fish are further on,” he said simply; “come!”
I followed him along the bank and eventually we came to a deep, muddy pool about twenty feet square. The Arab squatted down, knotted a cork into the middle of the rope, baited my hook and handed me the pole. I took it and felt inclined to laugh. It reminded me of that stupid Christmas game where one fishes for useless presents out of a tub. However, I lowered the worm into the opaque water and waited. Two minutes had hardly passed when down went the cork. Instinctively I struck. Memories of sudden thrills by tumbling streams, the hiss of a line running out, the bend of the rod, flashed before me. But they were only visions, for I had struck so violently, and the string or cable at the end of my pole was so strong, that I jerked the fish right out of the pool and on to the bank.
My fisherman instantly rescued it from the hook and I took it up to examine it. I expected to find the mud-fish which I had often come across in certain Indian rivers; but not at all. In shape it resembled a perch, but though the fins were red, there were none of the sharp points on the back, and the color was more that of a carp. Its weight was about two ounces.
I continued fishing. We visited some three or four pools, and in two hours I caught nearly one hundred of these fish. The majority were like the first, but there were a dozen or so of over a quarter of a pound, and two must have weighed a good twelve ounces.
Finally surfeited with this somewhat crane-like occupation, I trudged back.
Clouds were banking up over there toward the north, and the Arab watched them with interest.
“Two days, rain now, sidi,” he exclaimed, “will double our crops and afford pasturage for the flocks for the rest of the summer.”
I reached the house of the Caïd Aïssa to find my friends all sitting in a circle on a priceless Djebel Amour carpet, and looking hungrily out of the door where four Arabs turned a sheep spitted on a long pole before a brushwood fire. The sheep was becoming a glorious golden color as the chief turnspit poured fat on its roasting sides. After my long walk the smell of this cooking meat roused my appetite.
I slipped off my shoes and went and sat down on a cushion beside the bash agha. I told him all about my fishing exploits, but he didn’t seem to take the least interest in my tale. He merely turned to me and said: “These foolish young men have brought you out to lunch here and they have forgotten to bring knives or forks or plates, so you will have to eat like us.”