"
"Hillo!" shouted one in a few minutes, "here's fresh fish enough to feed
us all round. I suppose that young cat-a-mountain left it behind her
in her hurry. I wish she had left her golden chains and ouches into the
bargain."
"Well," said another, "we'll take it as fair payment, for having made
us drop down the current again to let her ladyship pass."
"Leave that fish alone," said Amyas; "it is none of yours."
"Why, sir!" quoth the finder in a tone of sulky deprecation.
"If we are to make good friends with the heathens, we had better not
begin by stealing their goods. There are plenty more fish in the river;
go and catch them, and let the Indians have their own."
The men were accustomed enough to strict and stern justice in their
dealings with the savages: but they could not help looking slyly at
each other, and hinting, when out of sight, that the captain seemed in a
mighty fuss about his new acquaintance.
However, they were expert by this time in all the Indian's fishing
methods; and so abundant was the animal life which swarmed around every
rock, that in an hour fish enough lay on the beach to feed them all;
whose forms and colors, names and families, I must leave the reader to
guess from the wondrous pages of Sir Richard Schomburgk, for I know too
little of them to speak without the fear of making mistakes.
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