It is not recorded what exactly the snipe were doing that day. The Young Doctor had it that they were "taking a day off," the A.P. that they had struck the wrong part of the country. But the melancholy fact remains that two hours later they sat down to share their sandwiches with empty bags and clean barrels. A faint shout from out of the distance started them again into activity. "He’s fallen in," suggested the Young Doctor with cheerful promptitude. "Sat on the hook, more likely." There was grim relish in the A.P.’s tone. Neither was prepared for the spectacle that met their astonished eyes when they reached the river. Standing on a partly submerged sand-bank, in the middle of the stream, dripping wet and "full of strange oaths," was the Junior Watchkeeper. The point of his rod was agitated like the staff of a Morse signaller’s flag, while a smother of foam and occasional glimpses of a silver belly twenty yards up-stream testified that the age of miracles had not yet passed. "Play him, you fool!" yelled the A.P. "Can’t," wailed the Junior Watch-keeper, battling with the rod. "The reel’s jammed!" "Look out, then!" shouted the Young Doctor, and the safety-catch of his gun snapped. "Let me have a shot——" But the Junior Watch-keeper had abandoned his rod. Seizing the stout line in his fingers, his feet braced in the yielding sand, shamelessly he hauled the lordly fish, fighting, to his feet. "Come on," he spluttered, "bear a hand, you blokes!" The "blokes" rushed into the shallows, and together they floundered amid a tangle of line and showers of spray, grabbing for its gills. Eventually it was flung ashore, and the _coup de grâce_ administered with the butt-end of the A.P.’s gun. "Thirty pounds, if it’s an ounce," gasped the Junior Watch-keeper, wringing the water out of his trousers. They stood and surveyed it in amazed silence, struck dumb with the wonder of the thing. Contrasted with the salmon as they knew it—decorated with sprigs of fennel on a fishmonger’s slab—it looked an uncouth creature, with an underhung jaw and a curiously arched back. The A.P. prodded it suspiciously with the toe of his boot. "’S’pose it’s all right—eh? Clean run, an’ all the rest of it?" "Course it is," replied the Junior Watchkeeper indignantly. He knew no more about its condition than the other two, but his was all the pride of capture. He relieved the tedium of the return journey with tales of wondrous salmon that lurked in pools beneath the bank; unmoved they listened to outrageous yarns of still larger salmon that swam in open-mouthed pursuit of the home-made spinner, jostling each other by reason of their numbers. The Junior Watch-keeper had set out that morning an honourable man, who had never angled for anything larger than a stickleback in his life. He returned at noon hugging a thirty-pound salmon, his mouth speaking vanity and lies. "An’ I nearly shot the damn thing," sighed the Young Doctor at the close of the recital.