Dick glanced at the great muscles in his sun-browned arms with a smile of pride, and then stared at the middy, who turned upon him sharply. "Now look here, old Dicky," he said, "you've come here to manage the dinghy for me, and not to preach and drive away all the fishes. So just light your pipe and sit still and hold your tongue, and if I find you are not strong enough to do that, I'll hail the steamer, and ask them to send me down another hand." Old Dick chuckled and grinned, and without more ado took out and filled a short black pipe, which he lit with a burning glass, and then sat contentedly sucking at it, while Bob, who had provided himself with a bamboo about ten feet long--a natural fishing-rod in one piece--fitted on a thin line, baited his hook, and began to fish in the deep stream. The sun poured down his rays like a shower of burning silver, and in spite of the puggaree with which he had provided himself, Bob found the heat almost too much for him, and looked enviously at old Dick, who lay back in the bows of the little cockle-shell of a boat, with his knees in, his chin pointing upwards, and his arms resting on the sides, literally basking in the hot glow. The line kept floating down with the stream, and Bob kept pulling it up and dropping it in again close to the boat, but there was no sharp tug at the bait; and after half an hour of this work a peculiar drowsy feeling began to come over the middy, the bright flashing river ran on, and the palms and attap-thatched houses on the shore began to run on too, and all looked misty and strange, till the rod was about to fall from his hand, his nodding head to rest itself upon his chest, and the first lieutenant's basket of fish to vanish into the realm of imagination--when there was a tremendous tug, and Bob started into wakefulness, with his bamboo bending nearly double, and some large fish making the line hiss through the water as it darted here and there. The contest was short and furious. Any doubts in the middy's mind as to the existence of fish in the river were gone, for he had hooked a monster. Now it was rushing up towards the surface, now diving down so deeply that the top of Bob's bamboo dipped in the water, and then it was sailing up and down stream, anywhere in fact, but never giving the excited lad a chance of seeing what it was like. "Had I better go in arter him, sir?" said Dick, grinning. "I don't know, Dick. I think--oh, I say, look at that!" _That_ was Bob's line hanging limply from his straight bamboo, for there was a furious rush, a dull twang, and the fish had gone. "He was a big 'un, sir," said Dick, refilling his pipe. "Never mind. Try another, sir; better luck next time."