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Just in front of my window, on the other side of the stream, a band of gypsies have ensconced themselves, putting up bamboo frameworks covered over with split-bamboo mats and pieces of cloth. There are only three of these little structures, so low that you cannot stand upright inside. Their life is lived in the open, and they only creep under these shelters at night, to sleep huddled together.
The ferry crosses to and fro, the passers-by with umbrellas up wend their way along the tow-path, women are washing rice on the split-bamboo trays which they dip in the water, the ryots are coming to the market with bundles of jute on their heads. Two men are chopping away at a log of wood with regular, ringing blows. The village carpenter is repairing an upturned dinghy under a big aswatha tree.
It was certainly a pretty piece of sport, when Mr. Bangs would take his light, split-bamboo fly-rod and send fifty feet of line, straightening out its turns through the air, and dropping a tiny fly on the water as easily as though it had fallen there in actual flight. Even Harvey, and Tom and Bob, who had done some little fly fishing, found Mr.
Murphy, the famous old Avalon fisherman and tackle-maker, had made me a double split-bamboo rod, and I had brought the much-talked-of B-Ocean reel. This is Boschen's invention one he was years in perfecting. It held fifteen hundred feet of No. 24 line. And I will say now that it is a grand reel, the best on the market.
The path to the door was guarded by a low fence of split-bamboo baskets that had once contained sugar from Batavia; a coffee bag from the wreck of a Dutch barque served for door-mat; a rum-cask with a history caught rain-water from the eaves; and a lapdog's pagoda a dainty affair, striped in scarlet and yellow, the jetsom of some passenger ship had been deftly adapted by Old Zeb, and stood in line with three straw bee-skips under the eastern wall.
He ordered from Hook and Catchett a lady's angling-outfit of the most enticing description, a split-bamboo rod, light as a girl's wish, and strong as a matron's will; an oxidized silver reel, with a monogram on one side, and a sapphire set in the handle for good luck; a book of flies, of all sizes and colours, with the correct names inscribed in gilt letters on each page.
I remember a pair of good trout that rose together just as we were going through a boiling rapid; and it tried the strength of my split-bamboo rod to bring those fish to the net against the current and the motion of the boat.
"No!" answered Babalatchi, at his elbow. "A man with a red skin and hard eyes," he went on, musingly, "whose hand is strong, and whose heart is foolish and weak. A white man indeed . . . But still a man." They were now at the foot of the short ladder which led to the split-bamboo platform surrounding Babalatchi's habitation.
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