and suspended the line between two saplings, about three inches above the leaf-strewn ground.  Then, feeling confident of the success of our murderous device, we finished the billy of tea and went back to our fishing.  We caught a couple of dozen or more of fine mullet, each one weighing not less than 1-1/2 lbs.; and then the incoming tide with its sweeping seas drove us from the ledge of rocks to the beach, where we changed our bamboo rods for hand-lines with sinkers, and flung them, baited with chunks of mullet, out into the breaking surf for sea-bream.  By four in the afternoon we had caught more fish than we could well carry home, five miles away; and after stringing the mullet and bream through the gills with a strip of supple-jack cane, we went up the beach to our camp for the billy can and basket.

And then we saw a sight that struck terror into our guilty souls—­a Danse Macabre of three writhing black and yellow, long-tailed “goanners,” twisting, turning and lashing their sinuous and scaly tails in agony as they sought to free their widely-opened jaws from the cruel hooks.  One had two hooks in his mouth.  He was the quietest of the lot, as he had less purchase than the other two upon the ground, and with one hook in his lower and one in his upper jaw, glared upwards at us in his torture and smote his sides with his long, thin tail.

“Oh, you wicked, wicked boy!” said my partner in guilt—­at once shifting the responsibility of the whole affair upon me—­“you ought to be ashamed of yourself for doing such a thing!  You know well enough that we should never hurt a poor, harmless iguana.  Oh, do take those horrible hooks out of the poor things’ mouths and let them go, you wicked, cruel boy!”

With my heart in my mouth I crept round through the scrub, knife in hand.

“Go on, you horrible, horrible, coward!” screamed my sister; “one would think that the poor things were alligators or sharks.  Oh, my goodness, if you’re so frightened, I’ll come and do it myself.”  With that she clambered up into the branches of a pandanus-tree and looked at me excitedly, mingled with considerable contempt and much fear.

Being quite wise enough not to attempt to take the hooks out of the “goanners’” mouths, I cut the two ends of the line to which they hung.  They instantly sought refuge on the tree trunks around them; but as each “goanner” selected his individual tree, and as they were still connected to each other by the line and the hooks in their jaws, their attempts to reach a higher plane was a failure.  So they fell to upon one another savagely.

“Come away, you wicked, thoughtless boy,” said my sister, weepingly.  “I shall never come out with you again; you cruel thing.”

Then, overcoming my fear, I valiantly advanced, and gingerly extending my arm, cut the tangled-up fishing line in a dozen places; and with my bamboo fishing-rod disintegrated the combatants.  They stood for a few seconds, panting and open-mouthed, and then, with the hooks still fast in their jaws, scurried away into the scrub.