British -- Oceania -- Fiction; Missionaries -- Fiction
Then Cathie built a small raft, and in due course Aunt Jannet Harvey
was seated on it with many startled exclamations, and wafted herself
uncouthly out into the lagoon. She was provided with two fishing lines
and a supply of bait, and a rope to the shore lest she should disappear
entirely from human ken, and she had instructions to catch all the fish
she could for the amplification of the larder.
And Blair, when he had made sure of her safety, and turned to go up the
valley to cross the hills, could hardly contain himself at sight of her
face, in which determination to catch struggled desperately with horror
at thought of pulling the hooks out of what she caught.
"This is a change from Kensington, Aunt Jannet, isn't it? You're quite
sure you won't tumble overboard?" had been his jovial parting word.
"I'll t--try not, Kenneth. D--do you think it hurts them much to have
the hooks pulled out?"
"If you leave them for a few minutes they'll die quite comfortably.
Then it won't hurt them. Anyway, you see we need them."
So Aunt Jannet pursed her lips valiantly, and cast in the lines he had
baited for her, and watched him and Captain Cathie with one eye, while
the other waited on her lines in fear and expectation.
They waved her an adieu at the turn of the valley, and in her attempt
to reply to it she frightened away a swarm of eager nibblers and nearly
fell overboard herself.
"Yes," she said to herself, "it's a great change from Kensington. But
if that child Jean can stand it, I can. And she seems as happy as a
lark. That's partly Kenni-Kenni, of course. Oh dear, I've caught
something! Whatever am I to do now?"
She looked wildly round for assistance, but the men were climbing the
hill, laden with provisions for the brown folk. So she tightened her
lips and hauled in her line, and at last drew her first fish on to the
raft. And then, after a pitiful look at its changing colours, she
turned her head away as far as she could, suppressed a strong
inclination to throw her victim back into the water, and waited for the
poor thing to die comfortably.
When Jean and Kenni-Kenni came down to inquire how she was getting on,
she was quite herself again.
"I've got a dozen or so," she cried. "I hope they are all fit to eat.
It's really quite interesting when you get used to it. If you like to
try your hand at it, Jean, haul me in and I'll take care of Kenni-Kenni
for a bit."
The men were back before nightfall, very tired, but rich in timber, and
in high spirits at the recovery of more tools, and all with appetites
that disposed of Aunt Jannet's fish in a very much shorter time than it
had taken that good lady to catch them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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