In a minute he had a perch on board about half a pound weight, and shortly afterwards another, and then a third, for when perch are on the feed they take the bait directly as fast as it can be put in to them. Now Mark, though excited with his luck, was cool enough to observe one little precaution, which was to use a fresh clean worm every time, and not to drop in one that had been in the least degree mauled. This required some self-control, for several times the bait was scarcely damaged, but it was a rule that he and Bevis had found out, and they always adhered to it. For fish have likes and antipathies exactly the same as other creatures, and if one approaches a bait and turns disdainfully away it is quite probable that three or four more may check their advance, whether from imitation, or taking the opinion of the first as a guide to themselves. So Mark always had a fresh, untainted bait for them, and in a very short time he had six perch on the raft. He put them in the locker. There was then a pause, he had exhausted that school. Next he tried fishing out towards the nearest weeds, a small bunch at the utmost limit of his throw, but as half an hour elapsed and he had no nibble he tried inside the shoal to leeward. In five minutes he landed a fine one, quite two pounds and a half, whose leaps went thump, thump on the deck like Pan’s tail. Ten minutes more and he caught another, this time small, and that was his last. There were either no more fish, or they had no more credence. He sat on the locker and watched his float till the sun grew low, but it was no use. He knew it was no use long before, but still he lingered. Gold-diggers linger though they know their claim is exhausted. The mind is loth to acknowledge that the game is up. Mark knew it was up; still he waited and let his float uselessly rise and fall, till he heard the report of the matchlock from the island, and then he poled homewards to see what Bevis had shot. In ambush, under the ash-tree, and behind the fringe of fern--one frond was scorched where Mark had fired through it--Bevis watched with the gun ready on the rest. He had purposely gone a little too soon, that is, before the shadow stretched right out across the glade, because if you do not arrive till the last moment a kangaroo may be already out, and will be alarmed. Then it is necessary to wait till the others recover from their fear; for if one runs in, the sound of his hasty passage through the tunnels in the ground conveys the information to all in the bury.