“We are to fish the upper—the rock pool, Polycarp; above the Island Camp—a mile or so, I believe.”
“Me know.”
“And you are to be careful not to go beyond a certain dead pine, or to get onto the water of the Island Camp. We don’t know those people, and I wish to be careful.”[to be careful.”]
“Me know. Last drop best. Have to cast a little over. No help it.”
“No, not a foot! These are a couple of Boston gentlemen, and very likely to be disagreeable as to boundaries.” Rose was thinking aloud.
Thereupon the bowman was tempted—“I did hear tell they was awful nice men.“
“Indeed!” said Rose, not fancying this reply.
“There won’t nobody know,” muttered Polycarp, with a chuckle.
“You bad old poacher,” she returned, laughing. “Here is some tobacco for you; you may smoke, but I can’t have you chewing. As to poaching, I hope it won’t be necessary.”
As she spoke, the poles clinked as one on the rocks and pebbles, and, keeping close to shore, they gradually forged up-stream, Rose lying back at lazy ease, and hardly hearing the rare words of order or warning from stern to bow. By and by, being, as I have said, an observant young person, she fell to noticing the symmetry and strong lines of her bowman’s figure, and then the thick, brown half-curl of hair under the felt hat. The action, as it repeated itself over and over, struck her fancy. She took at last to analyzing the movement, which beautifully brings out the curves of the tense muscles. She saw that poling on the right side begins with the left hand above, the right below; and that, in the recover and forward lift for a new hold on the bottom, the right hand is shifted above the left, and the pole is carried forward through the relaxed grip of the left hand, and the push begins again. At last she took out her sketch-book, and pretty soon caught a neat likeness of the man in the last moment of the forward shove, when the balancing power of the man in these unsteady vessels is the most severely tried. Her unconscious model, now warming to the work, had half forgotten the awkwardness of the position in the pleasure of this manly use of well-trained muscles. A little later and he saw Ellett, as they sat down to take their paddles to cross the quieter water before the camp, in order to win the farther shore. “Confound his impudence!” said Carington to himself, as he became aware of his friend coolly inspecting them with a field-glass from a bank on the margin.