[Ill.u.s.tration: SLOW-WORM.]

Jimmy's arm and side were very much swollen and inflamed, and it was quite a week before he was free from pain. The doctor said that if the olive-oil had not been used he would have suffered very much more from the bite, and the consequences might have been serious, for Jimmy had not a strong const.i.tution. He was very careful after that of putting his hand into a bird's nest without getting a look into it first.

CHAPTER XXI.

Fishing.--Jimmy's Dodge.--Bream-fishing.--Good Sport.-- Fecundity of Fish.--Balance Float.--Fish-hatching.-- Edith Rose.--A Night Sail.

It must not be supposed that the boys neglected that most fascinating of all sports, fishing. They fished in the broads and rivers whenever they had an opportunity. Pike, perch, bream, and eels--all were fish that came to their net; and now that birds' nesting was over they devoted some special days to the pursuit of the gentle art.

Some years ago, and at the time of my story, the broads were as full as they could be of coa.r.s.e fish, especially pike; but by the indiscriminate use of the net and the destruction of sp.a.w.ning fish, the poachers have so thinned the water of pike and perch, that the proprietors are preserving them, and the public are agitating for a close time at certain seasons of the year, so as to protect the breeding fish. Even at the present time, however, the bream is so abundant as to afford plenty of sport to every fisher, however poor he may be. In shape this fish is something like a pair of bellows and it is commonly met with from one to five pounds in weight. It swarms in vast shoals and when it is in the mood for biting, you may catch as many as you like--and more sometimes, for the bream is not a nice fish to handle; it is covered with thick glutinous slime, which sticks to and dries on the hands and clothes.

Bream-fishers provide themselves with a cloth, with which to handle the fish and wipe off the slime.

One morning Frank, while dressing at his open window, looked at the broad and was surprised to see it dotted with round, bright coloured objects.

"What can they be?" he said to himself in surprise. "They cannot be trimmers. They look like bladders, but who would paint bladders red, blue, green, and yellow? I am going to see."

He dressed rapidly and ran towards the water. Standing on the margin was Jimmy, his hands in his pockets and a self-satisfied smile on his face.

"What have you been doing Jimmy?" said Frank.

"Oh! I thought you would be astonished. I bought the whole stock of one of those fellows who sell India-rubber balloons, and I thought I would have a great haul of fish; so I fastened a line and hook to each balloon and set them floating before the wind. Don't you think it a grand dodge?"

"Well, you are a funny fellow. I call it a poaching trick, of which you ought to be ashamed, Master Jimmy but I suppose you are not. I expect these balloons will burst directly a big fish pulls them a little under the water. There goes one now; I saw it disappear,--and there's another, with a pop you can hear at this distance."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREAM.]

Jimmy began to look rather blue, and said, "Hadn't we better go off after them in a boat, or we shall lose all our lines? All we had are fastened to them."

"Oh, you sinner! you don't mean to say that you have used our joint-stock lines?"

"Yes, I have."

"Then we had better go out at once."

They got into the punt and rowed off after the toy balloons, which were floating swiftly before the breeze. The first they came up to had a small perch on. The next burst just as they reached it, and they saw the glimmer of a big fish in the water. There were twenty balloons set on the water, and it took them a long hour's work before they could recover all that were to be recovered. Out of twenty they only brought in ten.

The rest had burst, and the lines were lost. Of the ten which they recovered five had small perch on, which were not worth having. So Jimmy's grand scheme turned out a failure, as so many grand schemes do.

The others chaffed him very much about it, as a punishment for losing the lines, and for doing anything on his own hook without consulting the others.

After a wet week in July it was resolved to have a good day's bream fishing. The broad itself was more adapted for perch and pike, for it had a clear gravel bottom; and the river was always considered the best for bream, because its bottom was more muddy, and bream like soft muddy ground. The boys collected an immense quant.i.ty of worms, and taking on board a bag of grains for ground-bait, they sailed one Friday evening down to Ranworth and selected a likely spot in the river on the outside of a curve. They proceeded to bait the place well with grains and worms, and then went to sleep, with a comfortable certainty of sport on the morrow.

The white morning dawned and made visible a grey dappled sky, the silent marsh and the smooth river, off which the mists were slowly creeping.

Small circles marked where the small fish were rising, but all about where the ground-bait had been put the water was as still as death. The fish were at the bottom, picking up the last crumbs and greedily wishing for more.

Frank was the first to rise. "Now then, you lazy fellows, it is time to begin. There is a soft south wind and the fish are waiting. We will just run along the bank to have a dip away from our fishing-ground, and then we will begin."

After their bathe their rods were soon put together. d.i.c.k fished with paste made of new bread and coloured with vermilion. Jimmy had some wasp grubs, and Frank used worms. They tossed up for stations, and d.i.c.k was posted at the bows, Jimmy, amidships, and Frank at the stern. The hooks were baited, and the floats were soon floating quietly down the stream.

Frank had a float which gave him a longer swim than his companions. It was made as follows. The stem of the float was of quill (two joined together) eight inches long, and was thrust through a small round cork which was fixed in the middle of it. The upper end of the float was weighted with shots, so that it lay flat on the water. The weight at the hook end was so placed, that when a bite took place the float sprang upright and remained so, this calling attention to the fact of a bite at a great distance. Frank was thus able to let his float swim down the river much farther than he could have done with an ordinary one, because he could distinguish a bite farther off.

Before the floats had completed their first swim, d.i.c.k cried "I have a bite."

"So have I," said Frank.

"And so have I," added Jimmy.

"How absurd," said Frank, as they were all engaged with a fish at the same time. All three fishes were too large to land without a landing-net, and d.i.c.k held Frank's rod while he helped to land Jimmy's fish, and then Jimmy helped to land the others.

The fishes were as nearly as possible three pounds each, great slab-sided things, which gave a few vigorous rushes and then succ.u.mbed quietly to the angler.

And so the sport went on. At every swim one or the other of them had a bite, and as they did not choose to lose time by using the cloth to every fish, they were soon covered with the slime off them, which dried on their white flannels and made them in a pretty mess.

"In what immense numbers these fish must breed," said d.i.c.k.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANGLING.]

"Yes," answered Frank, "fish of this kind lay more eggs than those of the more bold and rapacious kind, such as the perch and pike. I have read that 620,000 eggs have been counted in the sp.a.w.n of a big carp. You see that so many of the young are destroyed by other fish that this is a necessary provision of nature. I once saw the artificial breeding of trout by a way which I have never told you of, and it was most interesting. It was in Cheshire, where some gentlemen had preserved a trout-stream and wished to keep up the stock. Into the large stream a small rivulet ran down a cleft in the bank like a small ravine, and in this cleft they had built their sheds. The trout-sp.a.w.n was placed in troughs which had bottoms made of gla.s.s rods side by side, close enough together to prevent the eggs falling through, but wide enough to let the water pa.s.s through freely. Over these troughs a continual stream of water was directed. The eggs were pale yellow in colour when alive, but if one of them became addled or dead it turned white, and it was then picked off by means of a gla.s.s tube, up which it was sucked by the force of capillary attraction without disturbing the other eggs. By and by you could see a little dot in the eggs. This got larger and larger until the covering burst, and the fish came out, with a little transparent bag bigger than themselves attached to their stomachs. They ate nothing until this dried up, and they lived upon what they absorbed out of it. When the fish were about an inch long they were put into small pools up the brook, where they were watched very carefully by the keeper, who set traps for rats and herons. Then as they got bigger they were put into larger pools, and finally into the river."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TROUT.]

"I did not know that water-rats ate fish," said Jimmy.

"No, water-rats don't, although many people think they do. They live only on vegetable food, and it is a pity to kill them; but the common rat, which is as often seen by the river side as the other, will eat fish, or whatever it can get."

It would be tedious to recount the capture of every fish, since one was so like another. The sport far exceeded their expectations, or anything they had previously experienced; and before six o'clock in the evening they had caught over three hundred fishes, big and little, the largest about five pounds in weight. The total weight was about twelve stone.

Norfolk bream fishers will know that I am not exaggerating.

"I am thoroughly tired of this," said d.i.c.k at length; "this is not sport, it is butchery, especially as we do not know what to do with them now we have caught them, except to give them to some farmer for manure."

"No," said Frank; "that is why I do not care much for bream fishing, or any sport where one cannot use the things one kills; but we will give the best of these fish to old Matthew c.o.x and his wife, who have nothing but the parish allowance to live on. I dare say they will be glad enough of them."

c.o.x, who was a poor old man scarce able to keep body and soul together, was glad indeed to have them, but their number puzzled him, until Mrs.

Brett suggested that he should pickle them, and gave him some vinegar for the purpose.

Contrary to Frank's expectation, the wind had not risen, but towards the afternoon died away, and with the exception of a shower, so summerlike that the gnats danced between the rain-drops, the day had been very fine and calm. When the boys left off fishing the water was as calm as at five o'clock in the morning, and there was not the slightest chance of their reaching home that night. This was awkward, as the next day was Sunday, and they had no change of raiment with them. They made the best of it, sending a note home by post to explain their absence. In the morning there was a debate as to whether they should go to church or not.

"Let us go," said Frank. "No one will know us, so it does not matter what we have on."

So to church they went, in their dirty white flannels. It was their intention to sit near the door and try to escape observation, but they found the back seats of the little church full of children, and a churchwarden ushered them all the way up the church to the front pew, which they took. Just before the service began, a lady and gentleman, and a young lady who was apparently their daughter, came into the large square pew in which our boys sat, whereupon the tanned cheeks of our heroes blushed vehemently. The young lady sat opposite Frank, and every now and then gazed at him curiously. When Frank mustered up courage to look back at her, he thought he knew the face, and as the sermon advanced he recollected that it was that of a friend of his sister Mary's, who had once stayed at his father's house. When they left the church he went up to her, and taking off his cap, said,

"I beg your pardon, but are you not Miss Rose?"

"Yes, Mr. Merivale, but I thought you would not have remembered me.

Papa, this is Mary Merivale's brother."

Mr. Rose looked rather curiously at Frank and his friends, and Frank at once answered the unspoken question by saying,