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First in the Field: A Story of New South Wales, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 21. A Day's Fishing |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. A DAY'S FISHING Nic felt uncomfortable. There was something fascinating about being in company with a man who knew so much of the wild nature of his country; but then the man was a convict--he had been warned against him--and a companion that the doctor would not approve. But still, somehow or other, the boy was constantly finding himself in Leather's company, for the man was as much drawn to Nic as he was to the convict. The consequence was that they were often together out in the wilder parts of the doctor's great estate. One day, after a hint from his father, consequent upon his saying that he was going to explore the gully by the waterfall, he had taken the old fishing-rod and line from where it hung upon two hooks in the kitchen--a rod the doctor had used in old trout and salmon-fishing days, and had brought over on the chance of wanting, but had never found time to use. "That gully is very beautiful higher up, Nic, and I have seen plenty of fish in the deep parts, gliding about among the tree roots and old trunks that have been washed down in the floods and got wedged in. I should certainly take the rod. The men tell me they are capital eating, but I have never tried." "We had a dish one day, father, when you were out," said Janet. "How did you get them?" asked the doctor. "Samson brought them in--a basketful," cried Hilda. "Then you had better ask old Sam what he baited with, and take your bait accordingly." "Yes, father," said the boy. "Take the biggest basket, Nic," said Hilda mischievously. "Ah, you think I shan't catch any," said her brother, nodding his head; "but you'll see." The rod was dusty, but good and strong, and in the bag the doctor pointed out there were plenty of good new hooks and lines; so leaving them ready, Nic went down the garden to where he expected to find old Sam. Sure enough there he was hoeing away, and he stopped and wiped his perspiring face upon his arm as the boy came up. "That's right, sir," he cried. "Glad to see you here. I want you to take a bit more hinterest in my garden. See they taters: ain't they getting on? Look at my peas and beans too. I calls they a sight, I do. Make some o' they gardeners in Old England skretch their wigs and wish they could grow things like 'em." "Beautiful, Sam; but--" "There's cauliflowers too, sir: ain't they splendid?" "Couldn't be better, Sam; but--" "Try my peas, sir." _Pop_! "There's a pod. Dozen fine uns, just as if they was a row o' green teeth laughing at you." "Deliciously tender, Sam; but--" "It's the sun, Master Nic; it's the sun," said the old man, who was too much wrapped up in his subject to heed the boy's remarks. "Sun's a scarce article at home, but here you gets it all day long, and it's the clouds is scarce. Why, you know summer at home, where the skies seem all like so much sopping wet flannel being squeezed; and not a sign o' sunshine for six weeks. What's to grow then?" "Nothing, I suppose, Sam; but--" "Of course you wants the water, sir. More sun you gets more water you wants, and that's why I tiddles it all along through the garden from up above yonder, just ketching it above where it comes over the waterfall." "Yes, waterfall, Sam," cried Nic heartily. "I say, didn't you catch a lot of fish up there somewhere and bring home one day when my father was out?" "To be sure I did," said the old man, now beginning to lend an ear. "That's right. I want to catch some too." "You'd ketch 'em then, my lad. There's lots on 'em." "Tell me how you caught them. What did you use for bait?" "Shovel," said the old man, grinning. "What?" "And peckaxe." "I don't understand you." "Why, it's plain enough, sir. It was when I was turning a hole into a sort o' ressywar to supply the garden--irrigglygate it, the master said, but I calls it watering." "But I was talking about the fish, Sam." "I know, sir; so was I. 'How did you ketch 'em?' says you. 'Shovel,' says I. I was making a place beyond the waterfall, and they swimmed in a hole there, where they'd got and couldn't get out again. So I makes a dyke with the peck and turns the water off and then ladles the fish out with the shovel. Two basketsful there was. One I took indoors for the ladies, and t'other we ate; and Brooky put away so many they made him queer for some days. But they didn't hurt me." "But I wanted to fish for them with a rod and line." "Oh-h-oh!" cried the old man. "You won't get many that-a-way. P'r'aps it would be best for you though. It's nation hard work pecking and digging, making dams and gullies among the rocks when the sun's hot." "But I want some bait." "Ay, you'll want some bait. We used to ketch eels at home with a big wum. There's lots here--whackers, some on 'em. Shall I get you a few?" "Yes, do, please." "So I will, Master Nic--barrowload if you like. You get me an old canister. There'll be some nice fat uns down aside where I grows my cowcumbers. Ah! I never thought, when I got digging 'em out o' the side of the cowcumber beds at home, I should ever get making on 'em out here, t'other side o' the world." Nic fetched a bag instead of a canister, and soon after stood ready to start. "You go same way as I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and I s'pose you knows best." "Well, I shall try with it, Sam," said Nic, laughing. "Ay, sir, do, and good luck to you. Now I'll get back to my hoeing." Nic shouldered his rod, and with his basket in his hand he left the garden, went round by the wooden building set apart for the men, and then struck across the open ground for the gully, where he soon came upon the tree-bridge he had crossed that moonlight night in company with old Sam; and he could not help hesitating for a few moments as he looked down into the narrow, dark rift, along which the water was rushing far below, while the noise of the waterfall was hollow, reverberating, and strange. Nic took a long breath, and looked at the tree, which had been felled so that it tumbled right across the rift, and then worked with an adze so as to make a level surface about as wide as an ordinary plank, the lower branches being left on at the sides of the trunk and beneath. He drew another deep breath, and noted that if he fell, unless he caught at one of these hanging branches, checked himself and managed to climb back, he must drop all that tremendous depth into the black-looking pool of water below. He drew a third deep breath, and thought that if he had known what the place was like, old Sam would never have got him across, that first night of his coming. Then he took another long, deeper breath than ever, and said to himself: "If that were a plank laid flat upon the ground I could hop along it upon one leg, so it is only cowardice to hesitate." The next minute he was across, and walking along the other side of the ferny gully, to stop by the waterfall and admire the beauty of the glassy water as it glided over the rocks and fell down into the thick mist, which rose like a cloud toward the overhanging mosses and ferns. But though the place was attractive enough to have kept him there for hours, and he wondered why he had not come to have a good look at it sooner, he felt that if he meant to catch any fish that day he must be stirring. There was a well-trodden path along by the river, which beyond the waterfall ran on in a continuation of the gully but here the walls opened out rapidly, till a few hundred yards above it became a lovely little sunny valley, with rocky masses piled near the bed of the little river, made beautiful by the abundant growth. The ferns were much bigger than any he had yet seen, and the path wound in and out in many a zigzag, now toward the sloping sides of the ravine, now toward the sparkling, torrent-like stream, over which drooped many a bough, as if for the sunshine to rain through in a silver shower upon the water beneath, which flashed gloriously where the bright rays fell. "I don't wonder at father choosing this place," thought Nic. "It grows more beautiful every way one goes." He must have wandered and climbed in and out for a couple of miles before he grasped why it was that the path was so well beaten. A moist spot in a shady part, where the river was just upon his right, showed this, for the narrow track was printed all over by the hoofs of sheep, and he knew now that the footpath was their work, made when in hot weather they had selected the moist shades for grazing; while at a turn a few hundred yards farther on he had an indorsement of his surmise, for the slopes of the valley had grown less abrupt, and as far as he could see one side was dotted with creamy-white fleeces. And now in the more level ground the torrent had become a swift, bright stream, bubbling and rippling here, swirling round in eddies there, and again becoming dark and deep-looking. He gazed down into the transparent water, but his research was not rewarded by the sight of dark, gliding forms with sinuous, waving tails. Still, though no scaly prizes offered themselves for capture, there were plenty of other objects to attract him. Every now and then some beautiful butterfly flitted across the water, and twice had he paused to gaze with pleasant vexation at a lovely streak of wavy blue, as a kingfisher darted from its perch to fly up the stream. "Well, I do call this tiresome," he cried, taking his fishing-rod from one shoulder to change it to the other. "If this had been my gun, you wouldn't have shown yourselves." This was addressed to a little flock of small green birds which flew whistling and chattering more than chirping up the slope toward the level land above. "I dare say those are the little green parrots Leather talked about." Twice more he had capital chances to obtain specimens,--one being at some half-dozen birds, which seemed to be all pink except their snowy heads; the next time at a couple more in a tree. These did not fly till he was close enough to see that they were bright with bronze and green and red. "Why, they must be pigeons," he said, as they darted off. "Well, I suppose one may see birds of any colour now." At last! He had reached an ideal spot, where one side of the river was dammed by a tangled mass of tree trunks which must have been brought down by some flood, to get jammed, and then gradually be stripped by the action of the water, till only the stems and larger branches were left; while on his side there was a dark, tempting-looking pool of water, which he approached cautiously, after laying down his rod, and then crawling toward it, gradually looked over the sharp, rocky edge of the river into the sunlit depths, to see dark bodies in slow motion some feet below sailing here and there to capture the tit-bits brought down by the stream. Nic's eyes glistened as he drew back as cautiously as he had approached. "This looks like real fishing," he said to himself, as he thought of the unsatisfactory sport he had had at home at the various ponds in the neighbourhood of the Friary, when a farmer gave them leave to go. "Wouldn't some of the boys like to be here. I shouldn't be surprised if this place has never been fished before. My word! they ought to bite." Such uneducated fish certainly ought to have bitten; but though Nic approached the side again cautiously, keeping well back out of sight, and after carefully covering his hook with a worm, dropped it without a splash in a likely place, and then in a more likely one, and again and again into other spots which seemed each of them more likely than the last, not a bite did he get! He was patient, too. He put on fresh baits, tried all over the pool, dropped in his worm so that it might be washed from the stream into the still, dark water, and sink among the fish. Still there was not the sign of a bite. "They must all have gone away," thought Nic, just as there was a burst of sharp screams from a flock of cockatoos, which, like the other birds, seemed wilder here in the moist shades than he had found them high up on the park-like downs near the great mountain gorge. He crept upon his chest cautiously once more to get his eyes just over the sharp rock edge of the pool, to look down into the depths, fully convinced that he would not see a fish; but to his surprise there was quite a shoal of a goodly size slowly sailing about, and after a few moments he was able to make out that they were close by the bait, which lay at the bottom, moving slowly, while one of the largest fish was certainly looking at it. "Bother!" muttered Nic, as he looked round about and thought of old Sam's style of fishing. "Well, one can't catch these with a shovel and a pickaxe. No one could bale out this pool." "Having bad luck, sir?" said a deep voice; and Nic started up to find Leather standing close behind. _ |
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