ld sailor, coolly. "Let's get the
raft done first."

"Get the raft done first!" cried Carey, angrily. "You'll never get it
done."

"Oh, yes, I will, my lad; and it'll be one you could dance on if you
liked. Don't you be in such a precious hurry."

"Precious hurry, indeed. Do you know what it means to be sitting here
and hardly allowed to move day after day?"

"Course I do, my lad. I see you."

"But you don't know how horribly tiresome it is," cried Carey, who was
growing more and more exasperated. "Look here, haven't you promised me
time after time that you'd have a fishing-line ready for me so that I
could hold it when the tide came in and get a few fish?"

"To be sure I did," said Bostock, coolly.

"Then why don't you do it?"

"Look ye here, my lad, you are getting better, you know, and that's what
makes you so rusty."

"Anyone would get rusty, doing nothing day after day. Now then, Bob,
I'll stand no more nonsense. You get the fishing-line directly. Do you
hear?"

"Oh, yes, my lad, I hear. You spoke loud enough."

"Then why don't you go and get one?"

"'Cause I'm busy making a raft."

"That you're not. You're only fiddling about it like an old woman."

"Hor, hor!" laughed the man. "Like an old woman!"

"Will you fetch me a long fishing-line?"

"No good now, sir; tide's going out."

"Never you mind about that. I want a line."

Bostock carefully placed the auger against one end of a plank, grunted
twice over, and then began to turn the handle.

"Precious hard bit o' wood, sir."

"Are you going to fetch me that line, sir?" cried Carey.

"Bime-by, my lad."

"No, I want it now," cried Carey.

Bostock took the auger from the hole he had begun to make, and held it
as if it was a hammer with which he was going to threaten the boy.

"Look ye here, my lad," he said, "do you know what the fish is like as
comes into this lagoon?"

"Yes, of course I do; like fish," said Carey, angrily.

"Fish they is; but do you know how big some of 'em are?"

"No."

"Well, I do. There's some of 'em big enough to pull like donkeys. Now,
jest s'pose as you hooks one."

"Well, suppose I do? We'll have it out, and you shall cook it. Doctor
Kingsmead said it would be nice to have a bit of fresh fish."

"That's right enough, my lad; but let's go back to what I said. Suppose
you hook one, what then?"

"Why, I should catch it."

"Not you, sir. You'd be a bit excited, and you'd pull, and the f