er 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