Rob Harlows Adventures | Page 5

seen more than one that must have been longer, though it's hard to measure a twisting, twirling thing with your eye when it's worming its way through mud and water and long grass."
"Water-snakes, eh?" said Rob, who was beginning to be impressed by the man's truth.
"Ay, water-snakes. They're anti-bilious sort of things, as some folks calls 'em--can't live out of the water and dies in."
He laughed merrily as he said this.
"That's true enough, my lad, for they wants both land and water. I've seen 'em crawl into a pool and curl themselves up quite comfortable at the bottom and lie for hours together. You could see 'em with the water clear as cryschial. Other times they seem to like to be in the sun. But wait a bit, and I'll show 'em to you, ugly beggars, although they're not so very dangerous after all. Always seemed as scared of me as I was of--hist! don't move. Just cast your eye round a bit to starboard and look along the shore."
Rob turned his eye quickly, and saw a couple of almost naked Indians standing on an open patch beneath the trees, each holding a long, thin lance in his hand. They were watching the water beneath the bank very attentively, as if in search of something, just where quite a field of lilies covered the river, leaving only a narrow band clear, close to the bank.
"Don't take no notice of 'em," said Shaddy; "they're going fishing."
"Wish them better luck than I've had," said Rob. "Fishing! Those are their rods, then; I thought they were spears."
"So they are, my lad," whispered Shaddy. "They're off. No fish there."
As he spoke the two living-bronze figures disappeared among the trees as silently as they had come.
"Of course there are no fish," said Rob wearily as he drew in his baitless line, the strong gimp hook being quite bare. "Hullo, here comes Joe!"
CHAPTER TWO.
CATCHING A DORADO.
For at that minute a slight sound from the schooner made him cast his eyes in that direction and see a lithe-looking lad of about his own age sliding down a rope into a little boat alongside, and then, casting off the painter, the boat drifted with the current to that in which Rob was seated.
"Had your nap?" said Rob.
"Yes," replied the lad in good English, but with a slight Italian accent, as he fastened the little dinghy and stepped on board. "How many have you caught?"
Rob winced, and Shaddy chuckled, while Giovanni Ossolo, son of the captain of the Italian river schooner Tessa, looked sharply from one to the other, as if annoyed that the rough fellow should laugh at him.
"Shall I show him all you've caught, sir?" said Shaddy.
"Haven't had a touch, Joe," said Rob, an intimacy of a month on the river having shortened the other's florid Italian name as above.
The Italian lad showed his teeth.
"You don't know how to fish," he said.
"You'd better try yourself," said Rob. "You people talk about the fish in the Parana, but I've seen more alligators than sprats."
"Shall I catch one?" said the new-comer.
"Yes; let's see you."
The lad nodded and showed his white teeth.
"Give me an orange," he said.
Rob rose and stepped softly to the awning, thrust his hand into a basket beneath the shelter, and took out three, returning to give one to the young Italian and one to Shaddy, reserving the last for himself and beginning to peel it at once.
Giovanni, alias Joe--who had passed nearly the whole of his life on his father's schooner, which formed one of the little fleet of Italian vessels trading between Monte Video and Assuncion, the traffic being largely carried on by the Italian colony settled in the neighbourhood of the former city--took his orange, peeled it cleverly with his thin brown fingers, tossed the skin overboard for it to be nosed about directly by a shoal of tiny fish, and then pulled it in half, picked up the gimp hook and shook his head, laid the hook back on the thwart, and pulled the orange apart once more, leaving two carpels, one side of which he skinned so as to bare the juicy pulp.
"The hook is too small," said the boy quietly.
"Why, it's a jack hook, such as we catch big pike with at home. But you're not going to bait with that?"
"Yes," said the lad, carefully thrusting the hook through the orange after passing it in by a piece of the skin which, for the first time, Rob saw he had left.
"I never heard of a bait like that."
"Oh, I dunno, my lad," said Shaddy. "I've caught carp with green peas and gooseberries at home."
"Orange the best bait for a dorado," said the Italian softly, as he placed the point of the hook to his satisfaction.
"Dorado? That ought to be Spanish for