and hungry, we waded onto the island and devoured 

 our pocket lunches. We selected a swift running 

 place to drink from, which we did by lying flat on our 

 stomachs and dipping our noses into the water. Our 

 bucket we emptied, and taking our reels and lines 

 from the rods, the latter were unjointed and put in 

 their coverings. Procuring a six foot sapling, the 

 string of nearly twenty pounds of fish we tied to it. 

 My son took one end of the spaling and I the other, and 

 thus carrying our catch between us we journeyed 

 through underbrush under the broad spreading trees 

 across the island in search of our companion whom we 

 had left on the rock in the morning. Emerging 

 through the thickly wooded highland with some dif- 

 ficulty, we crossed over a deep fall on the trunk of 

 a dead tree to reach the mammoth rocks, which made 

 a natural dam two-thirds of the way across t he 

 Shenandoah River. Through crevices here and there 

 the water rushed into the basins below with the 

 appearance of a great boiling stream from so many 

 hot^ water pipes. Doubled up on the rocks, his rod 

 resting on the forks of a willow stick planted in the 

 sand, his line set for a bass, Uncle Scott awaited the 

 clicking of the reel. We startled him by our quiet 

 and unheralded arrival, only broken by my son hallow- 

 ing "What luck?." Leisurely he looked around and 

 replied, "Bad luck, only one fish and no lunch, 'cause 

 you fellows carried it with you." So we had. The 

 extra bite for our friend we had carried off with 

 us in the morning. When Uncle Scott sighted the 

 fine string of fish we carried he was startled. Though 

 not given to excitement or enthusiasm under any 

 conditions, he marveled at the catch, asked all kinds 

 of questions, and sorrowed because he had not gone 



57 



