Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/323

 over the coming separation, and then came in after us. Arthur Hastings, Jim and the skiff were on time, as they always were, and in half an hour more we had taken Roy Sheldon on board and were moving gayly down the river. We camped for the night at the old perch hole, where the skiff had ridden out that furious storm a year before, and the boys had fish for supper. Joe had been told that perch would rise to a red ibis, but he and I could not prove the truth of the assertion. Although Arthur and Roy pulled out the fish as fast as they could bait their hooks, Joe never got a bite. The reason was, the water was too deep. His uncle afterward told him that six feet is about as far as any fish can be relied upon to rise to a fly; and sometimes they are too lazy to come from that depth.

On the afternoon on the fourth day we left the river and turned into a little creek, whose current was so swift that the boys were obliged to use extra exertion in order to make headway against it. About an hour after the sun went down we came to anchor in the mouth of a brook, and there I made amends for my failure