154 The Carnatic Carp. CHAP. xi. 



under the rocks at the edge of the run. No one who had not been at 

 it from a boy could possibly have done it. Kuti's own elder brother, 

 who, like himself, has been on the river from childhood, who also has 

 the name of Kuti, and is also a good boatman, even he had thought 

 better of this one rapid, had taken his boat out at the top, carried it 

 round by shore, and put it in below the run. I think he was the wiser 

 man of the two ; still Kuti minor is a broth of a boy. It is a pity he 

 only talks Tamil. It suits me well enough, and we hold long conversa- 

 tions as we work away together, the one at the rod, the other at the 

 paddle, and when a good fish rises and is missed, he takes it quite to 

 heart, and cannot repress an involuntary sound of regret ; still it is a 

 pity he cannot talk English for the sake of other anglers. 



A certain sporting major used to so delight in this basket-boat 

 fishing that he came more than once all the way from Calcutta to the 

 Madras Bawanny for it. The following episodes, as written at the time 

 for the Asian, will show that it has its little exhilarating excitements, as 

 well as serve to lighten my page. 



R. was coming down a rapid, from a higher to a lower pool, in the 

 usual coracle, with a rat of a boy for boatman, a boy with baccy-pipe 

 legs and arms, a point to be remembered, and a general magnitude, 

 such that any ordinary man would have had no very great difficulty in 

 dandling in his arms. Against his better judgment R. was tempted to 

 flick a fly into certain cosy looking eddies as he whisked past. As 

 might be expected the fly was caught in a bush behind. " The line is 

 caught, to the shore immediately," was the word. Gallant efforts did 

 the lad make to get the boat out of the mahrrapid into the side eddies, 

 as if for very life vigorously did he seek the shelter of a certain rock. 

 All but he reached it. One effort more, and the last shelter is lost or 

 won. The lad leaned over and strained to reach the rock with his 

 hand. It was just half an inch too much, and over tipped the coracle. 

 In went the little rat headforemost, over went R. backwards, but 

 wriggling in his fall managed to make his exit legs downwards, keeping 

 hold of the boat with the left hand, and the salmon rod with the right. 

 By the time he had struggled to a firm footing, up came a cocoanut 

 head, and the little drowned rat reappearing, clutched instanter at R.'s 

 left cuff, and with an awestruck visage, full of the grave import of the 

 occasion, said in impressing solemn tone : " My Lord, if I had not 

 caught you, you would have been gone" Meanwhile R. was holding 



