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The first lieutenant was, like the captain, fond of inventing and designing things, but his speciality took the form of logs for determining the speed of craft through the water; and in the course of his experiments he had provided each of the frigate's boats with an ingenious spring arrangement which, attached to an ordinary fishing-line with a lead weight secured to its outer end, which was continuously towed astern, registered the speed of the boat with a very near approach to perfect accuracy.
The Maories have quite an original way of catching barracouta. Through one end of this they drive an inch nail bent upwards, and filed to a sharp point. The other end is fastened to about a fathom of stout fishing-line, which is in turn secured to the end of a five-foot pole. Seated in a boat with sail set, they slip along until a school of barracouta is happened upon.
The Reverend Howard Wynkoop, who for more than an hour past had been vainly dangling a fishing-line above the dancing waters of Clear Creek, now reclined dreamily on the soft turf of the high bank, his eyes fixed upon the distant sky-line.
There seemed to me to be but one way to do it, and that was by taking the length of our boat herself as a unit of measurement; not a very satisfactory method, I admitted, yet better than nothing. So thereupon we set to work. Starting at the Fukui's mainmast, we dropped the sinker of the fishing-line over the stern and paid out until it reached her deck.
"Ay, ay, sir!" said the sailor, holding up the hand which held the parcels. "And the brass anchor?" "Ay, ay, sir!" and the hand was lifted again. "And I told you to buy a coil of well-laid cable." "Ay, ay, sir! best fishing-line. In my 'at, sir." "Right then; you can take them back: they will not be wanted."
It is amply big enough to support him, and afford him a sufficiency of exercise; he need never starve with all these coconut trees to his hand; we can let him have a fishing-line or two, I suppose, to enable him to provide himself with a change of diet, and a burning-glass with which to make his fires; and there is a stream of water that I take to be fresh from which he can slake his thirst.
As soon as I got safe back, I took the young birds into the cabin, tying each of them by the leg with a piece of fishing-line, and the other end of the line I fastened to some pieces of rock which I had collected ready on the platform outside of the cabin.
"I never saw one used," replied I, "and I don't understand it." "I will soon show you. First, we must measure the width of the cabin. I shall not take away more than one third of it." My mother went into the cabin, and I followed her. With a piece of fishing-line, she took the width of the cabin, and then the height up to the rafters for the door posts.
We have only one stop on the way to Singapore, exactly midway between it and Penang, at Port Swettenham. As we pass southward the Straits narrow and we can see the hills of Sumatra on one side, and sometimes funny little villages built on piles out over the water on the other. Pretty good sport to be able to drop a fishing-line out of one's front door, isn't it?
We would have recognized it as the sanctum of two or three noisy urchins of the male gender, even had we not known it beforehand. On the dressing-table stood a top, half-a-dozen marbles, and a fishing-line; while the walls displayed various quaint devices of their own drawing.
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