Let it bleed a little, my lad; it will save you pain." "What! had he only got hold of my boot ?" said Jack excitedly.
"And the foot in it," said the doctor.

"See, here are the marks of the teeth." "I thought he'd bit it right off, Joe Carstairs," said Jack dolefully.
"An' I say, what a coward I am!" "Coward!" I exclaimed.

"Why ?" "To be so frightened as I was," replied Jack, with a dismal sigh.
"Well, I don't know about being a coward, Master Jack Penny," said the doctor quietly; "but I do know that if I had had my foot in that reptile's mouth I should have been in a most horrible state of fear.
There, my lad," he continued kindly, "don't think any more about it, only to be thankful for your escape." "But he ought to tell us first how he was caught like that," I said.
"Oh, there ain't much to tell," said Jack, sitting up and raising his leg, and softly rubbing his injured foot.

"I was fishing, and the fish wouldn't bite, and I got a little nearer to the river side and threw in again and fished; and the sun seemed to get hotter, and I suppose I fell asleep, for I remember dreaming that the dingoes had got among father's sheep again, and that he flicked his whip-lash round my wrist.

Then I tried to start up, but a big fish had hold of the line, and it tugged away so hard that I was overbalanced, and took a header off the bank right into the river; and when I came up, pretty tidy astonished like, and began to swim for the bank, the fish on the line, which I had twisted round my wrist, began tugging me out into the stream.