AN EVENTFUL AFTERNOON
"On! oh! oh!--gurgle! gurgle! _blob_! Help! Give us a hand--"
Down Master Fred went again, and, his mouth being open, he swallowed
more of the murky water of the creek than was good for him. He came up,
coughing and blowing.
Bobby, although forced to laugh, extended the butt of his own fish pole
and Fred seized it. In half a minute he was on the bank, panting and
"blowing bubbles," as Bobby said.
"You can laugh--"
"I hope so," returned Bobby, turning to give his attention to his own
hook and line. "Oh!"
Something was the matter down under that stump; the water was agitated.
The taut line pulled in Bobby's hands.
"Oh! A bite!" cried he, picking up his pole. "Oh, Fred! I've hooked
that old trout!"
Master Martin was too much taken up with his own affairs just then to
pay much attention. Bobby, all of a tremble (for he had never caught a
trout over a finger long), began to "play" the fish cautiously. It
seemed to be sulking down in its hole under the old stump. Bobby pulled
on the line gently.
Meanwhile Fred, getting his breath, began to remove his saturated
garments.
"I guess," he grunted, "we might as well go in swimming right now. Gee!
I'm wet. And these things will have to dry before I start home. Oh!"
Bobby's line "gave" suddenly. Bobby uttered a yell, for he thought the
trout had jumped.
Whatever was on his hook shot to the surface of the brown pool. Bobby
went over backward on the grass. The point of his pole stood straight
up, and the hook was snapped out of the water.
There was a long, black, _squirmy_ thing on the hook. As Bobby
squealed, the eel flopped right down into his face!
"Aw! ouch! take him off!" shouted Bobby, and flung away his pole.
In a second the eel was so tangled in the fishline that one might have
thought it and the line had been tied into a hard knot! Fred was
rolling with laughter on the bank, his wet shirt half over his head.
"Scubbity-_yow_!" he shrieked. "Now you got it. You laughed at _me_,
Bobby Blake. See how you get it yourself."
Bobby began to laugh, too. He could see that the joke was, after all,
on him.
"And that's your big trout--ho, ho!" shouted Fred. "An old eel. Kill
him with a club, Bobby. You'll never get him untangled if you don't."
"And he'll wiggle _then_ till the sun goes down. Just like a snake,"
declared Bobby, repeating a boyish superstition held infallible by the
boys of Clinton.
"Oh, dear!" sighed Fred, at last pulling the wet shirt off. "I'm aching
for laughing. What a mess that line's in."
"And how about your own!" demanded Bobby, on a broad grin again, and
pointing into the branches of the tree where Fred had flung his shiner.
"We're a pair of fine fishermen--I don't think!" admitted Fred, in some
disgust.
He got off the remainder of his wet clothing, and slipped on his trunks.
"You might as well do the same, Bobby," he advised, while he laid his
clothing over the low bushes back from the bank of the creek, where the
sun could get at them nicely. "Look at your shirt. All slime from that
old eel."
"I wish he'd keep still a minute," said Bobby, with some impatience.
"_What_ were eels ever made for?"
"They're good eating, some folks think. But I'd just as lief eat
snakes."
"Some savages eat snakes," said Bobby, trying to keep one foot on the
tail-end of the eel, and unwinding the fishline.
But the next moment the squirmy creature wound itself up in the line
again into a harder knot than before.
"Looks just like the worm he swallowed," chuckled Fred. "There! he's
got the hook out of his mouth. Fling him back, Bobby!"
Bobby did so, pitching eel and line into the water. There was a flop or
two and the wriggling fish got free. Then Bobby hauled in his line and
began to rebait the hook.
"I guess I'll try fishing somewhere else," he said. "I won't try here.
If there ever _was_ a trout under that stump, he's scared away."
"There never was a trout where an old eel made his nest," scoffed Fred,
struggling with his own line.
"That eel didn't belong here," announced Bobby, with confidence. "What
do you bet I don't catch a trout to-day?"
"Never mind. I've landed _one_ fish," chuckled Fred.
"Fish! what's it doing roosting in that tree, then!" demanded Bobby,
giggling. "It's a bird."
Fred managed to untangle his own line, and in doing so he shook the
shiner out of the branches.
"Catch it!" he shouted. "There it goes!"
"Plop!" the fish went right into the pool, and with a wiggle of its tail
disappeared.
"We're a couple of healthy fishermen," scoffed Bobby. "We land them,
and then lose them."
"Le's go farther down stream. We've made so much noise here that we
couldn't catch anything but deaf fish--that's sure."
Bobby was quite agreed to this, and Fred in his bathing trunks, leaving
his wet clothing to dry on the bushes, led the way along the creek bank.
Bobby followed with the can of worms.
They found another quiet place and this time both took pains to cast
their lines where no overhanging branches would interfere with the tips
of their poles. The creek was well stocked with sunfish, yellow perch,
shiners, and small brook trout. Once--"in a dog's age," Fred's Uncle Jim
said--somebody landed a big trout out of one of the deeper holes in the
stream.
The boys fished for an hour, and both landed perch and shiners.
"If we get enough of them we can have a fish supper," declared Fred.
"At home?"
"Sure. We can clean them--"
"Who'll cook them? Our Meena won't," declared Bobby, with confidence.
"And I don't suppose our girl will, either. Besides, we'd have to catch
a bushel to give the crowd at our house a taste, even," for there were
five young Martins at Fred's house, besides himself, ranging from the
baby who could just toddle around, to Fred's fourteen year old sister,
Mary. There was another girl older than Fred, who was the oldest boy.
"Just wish Michael Mulcahey would light a fire in his stove and pan them
for us," said Bobby, wistfully. "'Member, he did once!"
"Yes. But we haven't caught enough yet."
"Hush!" murmured Bobby. "I got another bite."
In a minute he had landed a nice, big sunfish. He cut a birch twig then,
with a hook on the end of it, and strung his three fish. Fred did the
same for his two, and the fish were let down into the cool water, and
were thus kept alive.
They moved farther down the creek after a bit, and tried another pool.
The strings of fish grew steadily. It looked, really, as though they
would have enough for supper--and it takes a right good number of such
little fish to make a meal for two hungry boys.
Not that they wanted food again so soon. During the afternoon they ate
the rest of the lunch and some apples to stave off actual hunger!
"I bet you get sunburned again," said Bobby.
"No, I won't. I'm in the shade all the time."
"The wind will burn as well as the sun."
"But I'm not in and out of the water all the time, like I was that day
at Sanders' Pond. Just the same," added Fred, "I'm going into the creek
now. There's a dandy place for fish just across there."
"There's some stepping stones below. I'll go over with you," declared
Bobby, winding up his line.
Fred was not afraid of splashing himself. He ran across the stones laid
in the bed of the creek. Bobby came more cautiously, but he did not see
the wide grin on Fred's face as he stood on the far side and watched his
chum.
Bobby stepped on the rock in the middle of the stream. Just as it bore
his full weight, and he had his right foot in the air, stepping to the
next dry-topped rock, the one under him rolled!
The red-haired boy had felt that stone "joggle" when he came across but
he had leaped lightly from it. Bobby was caught unaware.
He yelled, and tried to jump, but the stepping stone, under which the
action of the water had excavated the sand, turned clear over.
"Splash!" went Bobby into the water.
He stood upright, but he was in a pool over his knees, and the agitated
water splashed higher. His knickerbockers were as wet as Fred's clothes
had been when he waded out.
"Oh, oh, oh!" shouted Fred, writhing on the grass. "Aren't you clumsy?
Now you'll have to take off _your_ clothes to dry, Bobby."
"You might have told a fellow that rock was loose," grumbled Bobby.
"And you might have told _me_ that I was stepping off into the old creek
when I was jerking at my line," retorted Fred. "I got it worse than you
did."
Bobby removed his trousers and wrung them out. Then he put them on
again. "They'll dry as good on me, as off," he said. "Now, come on.
Let's go up along and see if we can't get some more fish."
They whipped the creek for half a mile up stream, and were successful
beyond their hopes. Both boys had a nice string of pan-fish when they
came to the deep swimming hole, which was only a few yards below the
corner of Plunkit's farm Sphere the apple tree stood.
The sun was then sliding down toward the western horizon. Bobby's
trousers were pretty well dried. He put on his bathing trunks, and
followed Fred into the pool.
Both boys were good swimmers. There was a fine rock to dive from and a
soft, sandy bottom. No danger here, and for an hour the chums had a most
delightful time.
Then Bobby brought his own clothes across to the side of the creek where
they had begun to fish. Fred brought the fishing-tackle and the two
strings of fish. Then he trotted down the bank to get his own clothes
and their shoes and stockings.
Bobby was half dressed when he heard his chum shouting. "Bobby!
Bobby!" shrieked the red-haired boy.
Fearing that his chum was in trouble, Bobby started for the sound of
Fred's voice, on a hard run.
"I'm coming, Fred! Hold on!" he shouted, as loudly as he could.
In a few moments he came out into the open place where Fred had
carefully arranged his clothing on the low bushes. There wasn't a
garment there, and Fred came out of the brush, his face very red and
angry.
"What's the matter?" asked Bobby.
"Matter enough!" returned his chum. "Don't you _see_?"
"Not--not your clothes gone?" gasped Bobby.
"Yes they are. Every stitch. And your shoes, too. What do you think
of _that_?"
"Why--why--Somebody's taken them?"
"Of course somebody has. And it's your fault," said Fred, very much
provoked. "If you had helped me pitch in and lick that Ap Plunkit, he
wouldn't have dared do this."
"Maybe--maybe he'd have licked us," stammered Bobby.
"He'll--he'll just have to lick me when I meet up with him next time, or
else he'll take the biggest licking _he_ ever took," threatened the
wrathful Master Martin, wiping a couple of angry tears out of his eyes
with a scratched knuckle.