"Then jerk, sharp and strong," her brother said.
Elsie made ready; steadied her eager brain; planted her feet firmly; braced her muscles by her will; and then, with a shriek, threw up her rod, "as high as the sky," Puss said. There was a fleeting vision of a dripping white-bellied fish going skyward; and then a faint thud was heard.
"She's thrown it a half-mile, or less, in the bushes," said Luke.
"And there's her hook in the top of that tree," said John. "What gumps girls are when you take them out-of-doors!"
All went into the bushes to look for the astonished fish. They looked, and looked, and looked; listened for its beating and flopping against the ground.
After a while, Luke said he thought it must be one of the climbing fish described by Agassiz, and that it had gone up a tree.
"I mos' found it twice't; but it was a frog an' a lizar', 'stead uv the fish," said Jacob Isaac.
To this day, it remains a mystery where Elsie's fish went to.
Jacob Isaac climbed the tree to rescue Elsie's hook and line, while the other boys went down the stream to find a cat-fish hole that they had heard of.
"Don't pull at the line that way," Puss said to the thrasher in the tree-top; "you'll break it. There, the hook is caught on that twig. You must go out on the limb and unhitch it."