Suddenly a mottled green fish, a yard long, with a dark back and white underneath, came to the top. It lifted an enormous head right out of the water, and opened a great white mouth, and shook itself. A little perch flew high into the air. Roger’s rod straightened. For a moment the great fish lay close to the top of the water, looking wickedly at the crew of the Swallow as they looked at it. Then, with a twist of its tail that made a great twirling splash in the water, it was gone. Roger brought in the little perch. It was dead, and its sides were marked with deep gashes from the great teeth of the pike.
“I say,” said Roger, “do you think it’s really safe to bathe in this place?”
After that nobody caught any more perch. The pike had frightened them away. And when the perch were not biting, nobody but John wanted to go on fishing. At last Susan said that they had enough perch anyway, and if they were going to eat them they would all have to be cleaned. So they hauled up the stone and the anchor, and rowed back to the island.
The cleaning was a dreadful business. The mate did it, slitting up the perch with a sharp knife, and taking out their insides. The insides were burnt in the fire, and Roger took the perch down one by one to the landing-place to wash them in the lake. The mate tried to scrape the scales off the first of them, but soon gave it up. She fried them in butter in their scales, first putting a lot of salt in them. When they were cooked the skin with the scales came off quite easily, and there was the perch ready to be eaten. The mate said it was rather waste of good butter, but the captain and the crew said it was worth it.
In the afternoon they careened Swallow . They took the ballast out of her, and pulled her high on the beach, and laid her over first on one side and then on the other while they scrubbed her bottom, though she did not need it. But you never know. She might have been covered with barnacles, or draped with long green weed. Anyhow, ships ought to be