_ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. HOW BOB ROBERTS WENT A-FISHING
Bob Roberts liked having the monkey, but there was a sore side to the matter; it was unpleasant to hear that the first lieutenant had said that one monkey was enough in the ship, and they did not want two.
"It's as good as telling me to my face that I'm a monkey," said Bob to himself. "Now look here, I shall just go and ask him to lend me the dinghy to sit in and fish, and old Dick to manage it; and if he says no, I shall just tell him that his remark about the monkey was precious ungentlemanly."
So Bob went up to the first lieutenant and preferred his request, fully anticipating a refusal, but to his surprise the officer in question was all that was urbane and pleasant.
"Fishing from the dinghy, eh, Roberts?" he said, smiling.
"Yes, sir, I thought I might catch a basket if I fished from the dinghy. I lose so many hauling them up the side into the chains."
"To be sure--yes--of course," said the lieutenant. "On one condition, Roberts, you can have it."
"What's that, sir?"
"Two conditions, I should say," replied the lieutenant. "The boat is to be properly cleaned afterwards, and we are to have a dish of fresh fish for the gun-room dinner."
"Certainly, sir," said Bob, laughing, "if I catch them."
"You must catch them," said the lieutenant. "Ah, I remember the days when I used to be fond of going up the Thames fishing, and--there, be off with you as soon as you like."
The first lieutenant smiled as he felt that he had been about to prose over his old days; and Bob having obtained leave for Dick to be his companion, and to manage the boat if he should elect to go up or down the river, instead of lying astern hitched on to a ring-bolt, was soon over the side, with plenty of hooks and lines and bait.
"This here's a rum sorter game, Mr Roberts, sir," said old Dick, as soon as he had fastened the boat's painter to a ring in the stem part of the great steamer. "I'm afraid I shan't be strong enough for the job."
Dick glanced at the great muscles in his sun-browned arms with a smile of pride, and then stared at the middy, who turned upon him sharply.
"Now look here, old Dicky," he said, "you've come here to manage the dinghy for me, and not to preach and drive away all the fishes. So just light your pipe and sit still and hold your tongue, and if I find you are not strong enough to do that, I'll hail the steamer, and ask them to send me down another hand."
Old Dick chuckled and grinned, and without more ado took out and filled a short black pipe, which he lit with a burning glass, and then sat contentedly sucking at it, while Bob, who had provided himself with a bamboo about ten feet long--a natural fishing-rod in one piece--fitted on a thin line, baited his hook, and began to fish in the deep stream.
The sun poured down his rays like a shower of burning silver, and in spite of the puggaree with which he had provided himself, Bob found the heat almost too much for him, and looked enviously at old Dick, who lay back in the bows of the little cockle-shell of a boat, with his knees in, his chin pointing upwards, and his arms resting on the sides, literally basking in the hot glow.
The line kept floating down with the stream, and Bob kept pulling it up and dropping it in again close to the boat, but there was no sharp tug at the bait; and after half an hour of this work a peculiar drowsy feeling began to come over the middy, the bright flashing river ran on, and the palms and attap-thatched houses on the shore began to run on too, and all looked misty and strange, till the rod was about to fall from his hand, his nodding head to rest itself upon his chest, and the first lieutenant's basket of fish to vanish into the realm of imagination--when there was a tremendous tug, and Bob started into wakefulness, with his bamboo bending nearly double, and some large fish making the line hiss through the water as it darted here and there.
The contest was short and furious. Any doubts in the middy's mind as to the existence of fish in the river were gone, for he had hooked a monster. Now it was rushing up towards the surface, now diving down so deeply that the top of Bob's bamboo dipped in the water, and then it was sailing up and down stream, anywhere in fact, but never giving the excited lad a chance of seeing what it was like.
"Had I better go in arter him, sir?" said Dick, grinning.
"I don't know, Dick. I think--oh, I say, look at that!"
_That_ was Bob's line hanging limply from his straight bamboo, for there was a furious rush, a dull twang, and the fish had gone.
"He was a big 'un, sir," said Dick, refilling his pipe. "Never mind. Try another, sir; better luck next time."
Bob sighed as he fitted on a fresh lead and hook, and was soon fishing once more, thoroughly awake now; and to his great delight he felt a sharp tug at his line, and striking, found that he had hooked a fish of a manageable size, which he soon hauled into the boat, and recognised as the _ikan sambilang_, a fish frequently sold to them by the Malays, and esteemed quite a delicacy.
"It's a rum-looking one," said Dick, examining the captive as Bob put on a fresh bait. "It's just like one of the eel pouts as we boys used to ketch down in the drains in Yorkshire."
"In the drains, Dick?"
"Oh, I don't mean your drains. I mean land drains as take the water off a country. We used to catch lots on 'em, thick, short, fat fellows, but they hadn't got a lot of long beards like these here. What, another already!"
"Yes, and a big one too," said Bob, excitedly, as he lugged out, after a sharp tussle, a handsome fish, with glistening scales, and a sharp back fin, bearing some resemblance to a perch.
"That's the way, sir," said Dick, smoking contentedly in the bows. "I like fishing arter all."
Bob smiled, and went on catching the little barbed fish, rapidly, and every now and then a good-sized fellow of a different kind. Two or three of the men came and leaned over the side to watch them for a few minutes, but the heat seemed too much for their interest to be kept up, and they soon disappeared.
There was a little audience on the further bank, though, which watched Bob's fishing without ceasing, though unseen by the young fisherman. This audience consisted of three half-nude Malays, lying in a sampan hidden amidst the reeds of the river's side, and these men seemed greatly interested in all that was going on, till, as the evening drew near, Bob, who had captured at least sixty fish of various sizes, sat at last completely overcome by the heat, and following Dick's example, for that worthy had gone off fast asleep, and Bob's bamboo dipped in the water, the line unbaited, and offering no temptations to the hungry perch. That was the time for which the Malays in the sampan had been waiting, and one of them glided over the side like a short thick snake, reached the shore, and then making his way up stream for some little distance, he softly plunged in, with nothing but a kris in his lingouti, or string round the waist used by the natives to support their loin cloths, and after swimming boldly out for some distance, turned over, and floated with just his nose above the water.
The stream did all he required, for the Malay had calculated his distance to a nicety, so that he was borne unseen right to the steamer's bows, and then floated along her side, and round the stem, where a few strokes brought him into the eddy.
Dick and the fisherman slept on soundly, so that they did not see a brown hand holding a keen kris raised from the water to divide the boat's painter, neither did they see that the same hand held on by the cut rope, and that the dinghy was floating, with its strange companion, swiftly down the stream.
At the end of five minutes it had been swept round a bend, and was out of sight of the steamer.
So likewise was the sampan from which the Malay had come, while one of its occupants steered it into the dinghy's course, and the other crouched in the forward part with a keen-headed limbing or spear. _