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At this entry, a great porter kept constant watch and ward; and when he gave the visitor high leave to pass, he rang a second great bell, responsive to whose note a great footman appeared in due time at the great halldoor, with such great tags upon his liveried shoulder that he was perpetually entangling and hooking himself among the chairs and tables, and led a life of torment which could scarcely have been surpassed, if he had been a blue-bottle in a world of cobwebs.
When they attempted to hold it with the boat-hook, it eluded the touch, turning round and round, or bobbing under the water, and coming up again, as if in sport: but accident saved them any further trouble; for the bowman, reproached by the boat's crew for not hooking the body, got angry, and darting the spike of the boat-hook into the abdomen, the pent-up gas escaped with a loud whiz, and the corpse instantly sank like a stone.
He made what he could of a pretty girl who had the air of not meaning to lose a moment from flirtation, and was luring her fellow-passengers from under her sailor hat. She had already attached one of them; and she was hooking out for more.
To render this ruse of real service, a smart breeze should be blowing, because under these conditions the pursuer has not only to lower a boat to pick up the floating black, but she has also to heave-to and wait for her boat; and however smartly the operations of lowering, picking up, and hooking on again may be performed, they still absorb quite an appreciable amount of time, during which the fugitive craft increases her lead more or less according to her speed.
If it was a perch, it would give a bob, and then a series of sharp quick bobs, the last of which would be right under, while if it was a tench, it would glide slowly away. But the float did nothing but float, and nothing in the way of bobbing, while the shabby boy on the other side kept on striking, and every now and then hooking a fish.
Could any of them have been more astute, more eager, more bent on hooking the desirable parti for their girls than she had shown herself just now?
Andy scaled the course of the seam with the agility of a monkey, hooking the rings with his fingers and pulling himself up. The canvas quivered, shook and gave, but he did not heed that. He came to the open gap around the centre pole, seized the bound edge of the canvas, and gazed down. Ten feet across was old Benares, just getting ready for some evolutions.
At Butternut Lane she got out and made her way to the old white house midway of the square. A little boy was perched on the gate post, swinging a pair of fat legs and trying to whistle. There was no lack of effort on his part, but the whistle for some reason refused to come. He tried hooking a small finger inside the corners of his mouth; he tried it with teeth together and teeth apart.
"Yes, she's a good un to go along," said Bob. "Wouldn't sell her, I s'pose!" said the man. "What should we sell her for?" said Bob, hooking and landing a fish coolly enough. "I d'know. Thought you might want to part with her," said the man. "I wouldn't mind giving fifteen shillings for a boat like that." "Yah!" cried Bob mockingly. "Why, she's worth thirty at least."
We were all strangers to the corpse. A horseman, who looked like a drover just returned from a big trip, dropped into our dusty wake and followed us a few hundred yards, dragging his packhorse behind him, but a friend made wild and demonstrative signals from a hotel veranda hooking at the air in front with his right hand and jobbing his left thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bar so the drover hauled off and didn't catch up to us any more.
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