for some thirty or forty yards through the water, then
paused and pushed aside the wall of rushes which bordered
the passage, and pulled out a boat which was floating among
them.

It was constructed of osier rods neatly woven together
into a sort of basket-work, and covered with an untanned hide
with the hairy side in. It was nearly oval in shape, and
resembled a great bowl some three feet and a half wide and a
foot longer. A broad paddle with a long handle lay in it, and
the boy, getting into it and standing erect in the middle
paddled down the strip of water which a hundred yards further
opened out into a broad half a mile long and four or five
hundred yards wide. Beyond moving slowly away as the
coracle approached them, the water-fowl paid but little heed
to its appearance.

The boy paddled to the end of the broad, whence a passage,
through which flowed a stream so sluggish that its current
could scarce be detected, led into the next sheet of water.
Across the entrance to this passage floated some bundles
of light rushes. These the boy drew out one by one. Attached
to each was a piece of cord which, being pulled upon,
brought to the surface a large cage, constructed somewhat
on the plan of a modern eel or lobster pot. They were baited
by pieces of dead fish, and from them the boy extracted half
a score of eels and as many fish of different kinds.

"Not a bad haul," he said as he lowered the cages to the
bottom again. "Now let us see what we have got in our pen."