The moonlight fell full on his body, dripping and glistening from the waist downwards with the salt water, and threw the straining muscles which line the spine, and those chords behind the shoulder-blade which painters love, into strong light and shadow, as he pulled against the weight of the dragging net. Already the water came only to his knees, and the catch was imminent, when suddenly from the net there came a rustle and a splash like myriad little pebbles being thrown into the sea, and he turned round just in time to see the whole shoal, which glistened like a silver sheet, rise and drop into the water outside. "The little Turks," he said, angrily, "they are all gone." "Better to pull the net in and look," said Nicholas; "a part only may have leaped." Mitsos shook his head. "When they go like that it is all of them," he said. Mitsos was quite right. There was a stray fish or two still in the net, but so few that they were hardly worth picking out. "That will do for to-night, won't it?" he said. "We have fished all the best places." Nicholas assenting, he lay down and rolled over in the warm, dry sand once or twice, and then standing up brushed the wet stuff off his body. Then spreading the net out on the rocks higher up on the beach, Mitsos went off to fetch his shirt. Nicholas employed himself in picking up a few stray fish, and put them into the creel. Then rolling up the net they walked back to the boat. CHAPTER III THE STORY OF A BRIGAND The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blew freshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They would have to make two long tacks to get home--the first, right across to the island in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head of it; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos went to the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas. "It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said. "Yes, we will have the stories now." Nicholas paused a moment. "Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life of which I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have only told you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you a story for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty years ago, when I was a brigand." Mitsos stared. "A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?" "Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with a price set on his head--it is there now for you to take if you like--a man without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than live in the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying one might be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk. The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told you before; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand, that will be new to you--a story, as I have said, not for a boy, but for a man.