these things. So they go out
and after a few hours their necks get tired; whereas a group of expert
fishers in a launch can rest their backs and necks and even fall asleep
during the pauses when the fish stop biting.

Anyway all the "boys" agreed that the great advantage of a launch would
be that we could get a _man_ to take us. By that means the man could see
to getting the worms, and the man would be sure to have spare lines, and
the man could come along to our different places--we were all beside the
water--and pick us up. In fact the more we thought about the advantage
of having a "man" to take us the better we liked it. As a boy gets old
he likes to have a man around to do the work.

Anyway Frank Rolls, the man we decided to get, not only has the biggest
launch in town but what is more Frank _knows_ the lake. We called him up
at his boat-house over the phone and said we'd give him five dollars to
take us out first thing in the morning provided that he knew the shoal.
He said he knew it.

I don't know, to be quite candid about it, who mentioned whisky first.
In these days everybody has to be a little careful. I imagine we had all
been _thinking_ whisky for some time before anybody said it. But there
is a sort of convention that when men go fishing they must have whisky.
Each man makes the pretence that one thing he needs at six o'clock in
the morning is cold raw whisky. It is spoken of in terms of affection.
One man says the first thing you need if you're going fishing is a good
"snort" of whisky; another says that a good "snifter" is the very thing;
and the others agree that no man can fish properly without "a horn," or
a "bracer" or an "eye-opener." Each man really decides that he himself
won't take any. But he feels that, in a collective sense, the "boys"
need it.

So it was with us. The Colonel said he'd bring along "a bottle of
booze." Popley said, no, let _him_ bring it; Kernin said let him; and
Charlie Jones said no, he'd bring it. It turned out that the Colonel had
some very good Scotch at his house that he'd like to bring; oddly enough
Popley had some good Scotch in _his_ house too; and, queer though it is,
each of the boys had Scotch in his house. When the discussion closed
we knew that each of the five of us was intending to bring a bottle of
whisky. Each of the five of us expected the other to drink one and a
quarter bottles in the course of the morning.

I suppose we must have talked on that verand