By this time Jacky was standing on the brink of the stage, all impatient to cast his line into the water. The bait, encumbered by some nobs of lead, fell with a jerk into the sea.
"You had better take a seat, young master," said the experienced mariner; "sometimes you get bites by the dozen, at others nothing comes near you for hours. It's all a toss up. And the fish, too, they are fanciful. Your dabs and your codlings are demons for rock worms. But the mullet and whiting want something a bit more tasty."
"If that is the case," said Jacky, who had been from time to time watching his bait, "do you not think you could find something more tempting than this attenuated worm, which, so far as I can judge, has already been diminished in the water of half its stature."
"Well, yes, Sir; I could put on a spiteful cat. If a fish will touch anything, he will touch spiteful cat."
Then with admirable skill the mariner selected a bait, and in a twinkling had the hook refurnished.
"I shall be glad to be successful," said Jacky, "as I notice that my cherished companion, Georgie, has obtained the healing weed, and is rapidly returning from the Castle's moat. He will be pleased to find that while he has been in pain I have been enjoying a delightful sport, with no little reward attached to it. If I were sufficiently fortunate to capture a salmon, no doubt I would find a ready market for it in London, and thus acquire a sum of money sufficient to meet all my present necessities, and even to pay back a portion of the sums that have, during a period extending over years, been so kindly advanced to me."
Unwilling to waste my time, and finding the occupation of watching Jacky's fruitless efforts to rob the mighty deep of its piscatorial inhabitants somewhat tedious, I had jotted down these few notes. It was at this moment that Jacky, who had been ineffectually attempting to charge his hook, suddenly gave me the bait to hold. I had thus at length an opportunity of making the close acquaintance of "spiteful cat." The immediate result of the introduction was the abrupt and painful termination of my literary labours.
"Mine again."—The Liverpool Courier tells a curious story of a female miner in "one of the chief Welsh gold mines." She is, we are informed, "a girl fair to look upon, a colonial, bright, common-sensible, wayward, musical, a linguist, altogether talented, and something of a new woman, yet not. She is linguist enough to attempt the Welsh language, perhaps that she may thereby mine the more." Admirable descriptive diction this! The lady gold-seeker must be not only a miner, but a Minerva, and if only she succeeds in discovering a few nuggets she will be able (as a wag might suggest) to purchase a pallas to live in.