He took great care not to touch these nests, to which their proprietors would not fail to return.

It was around these that he meant to stretch his lines, not snares, but real fishing-lines.

He took Herbert to some distance from the nests, and there prepared his singular apparatus with all the care which a disciple of Izaak Walton would have used.

Herbert watched the work with great interest, though rather doubting its success.

The lines were made of fine creepers, fastened one to the other, of the length of fifteen or twenty feet.