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 a golden carp," said Rob.

"That'