"Three shillings and ninepence! Man, that's a lot! Will you put it in the savings bank?"
"No, I will not," said Rob. "I'm not satisfied with the net, Neil. We must have better ropes all the way round; and sinkers, too."
IV.
One afternoon, about ten days afterward, they set out as usual. They had earned more than enough to pay their landlady, the tailor, and the schoolmaster; and every farthing beyond these expenses they had spent on the net.
Well, on this afternoon, Duncan and Nicol were pulling away to one of the small, quiet bays, and Rob was idly looking around him, when he saw something on the surface of the sea at some distance off that excited a sudden interest. It was what the fishermen call "broken water,"—a seething produced by a shoal of fish.
"Look, look, Neil!" he cried. "It's either mackerel or herring: shall we try for them?"
The greatest excitement now prevailed on board. The younger brothers pulled their hardest for that rough patch on the water.
They came nearer and nearer that strange hissing of the water. They kept rather away from it; and Rob quietly dropped the guy pole over, paying out the net rapidly, so that it should not be dragged after the boat.
Then the three lads pulled hard, and in a circle, so that at last they were sending the bow of the boat straight toward the floating guy pole. The other guy pole was near the stern of the boat, the rope made fast to one of the thwarts. In a few minutes Rob had caught this first guy pole: they were now possessed of the two ends of the net.
But the water had grown suddenly quiet. Had the fish dived, and escaped them? There was not the motion of a fin anywhere, and yet the net seemed heavy to haul.