It was a wild duck, and was speedily on board.

Stepping the mast and hoisting the sail, we drifted before the faint
breath of air that now just curled the surface, steering straight across
the open for the stony barren islands at the mouth of the bay. The chart
drawn in pencil--what labour it cost us!--said that there, a few yards
from the steep shore, was a shoal with deep water round it. For some
reason there always seemed a slight movement or current--a set of the
water there, as if it flowed into the little bay.

In swimming we often came suddenly out of a cold into a stratum of warm
water (at the surface); and perhaps the difference in the temperature
may have caused the drift, for the bay was in shadow half the day. Now,
wherever there is motion there will fish assemble; so as the punt
approached the shoal the sail was doused, and at twenty yards' distance
I _put_ the anchor into the water--not dropping it, to avoid the
splash--and let it slip gently to the bottom.

Then, paying out the cable, we drifted to the edge of the shoal without
the least disturbance, and there brought up. Orion had his bait
ready--he threw his line right to windward, so that the float might drag
the worm naturally with the wind and slight current towards the shoal.

The tiny blue buoy dances up and down on the miniature waves; beyond it
a dazzling path of gold stretches away to the distant osier-islands--a
path down which we came without seeing it till we looked back. The
wavelets strike with a faint 'sock-sock' against the bluff overhanging
bow, and then roll on to the lee-shore close at hand.

It rises steep; then a broad green ledge; and after that, still steeper,