That the frog hunt was celebrated was owing to the Lizzie.  He should have been in John’s boat, as one of John’s guides, but at the last moment, there was a confusion of tongues and Lizzie was shipped aboard my canoe.  In the excitement of the chase Josef, stern man, had faced about to manipulate his landing-net; Aristophe also slewed around and, sitting on the gunwale, became stern paddler.  I was in the middle screwed anyhow, watching the frog fishing and enjoying the enjoyment of the men.  Poor chaps, it was the only bit of personal play they got out of our month of play.  Aristophe, the Tin Lizzie, was quite mad with the excitement even from his very second fiddle standpoint of paddler to Josef’s frogging.  His enormous gray eyes snapped, his teeth showed white and gold around his pipe—­which he nearly bit off—­and he even used language.

“Tiens!  Encore un!” hissed the Lizzie in a blood-curdling whisper as a new pair of pop eyes lifted from the edge of a rotten log.

And Josef, who had always seen the frog first, fired a guttural sentence, full of contempt, full of friendliness, for he sized up the Lizzie, his virtues and his limitations, accurately.  And then the boat was pushed and pulled in the shallow water till Josef and the net were within range.  With, that came the slow approach of the net to the smile, the swift tap on the eatable legs, and headlong into his finish leaped M. Crapaud.  Which is rot his correct name, Josef tells me, in these parts, but M. Guarron.  And that, being translated, means Mr. Very-Big-Bull-Frog.

Business had prospered to fourteen or fifteen head of frogs, and we calculated that the other boat might have a dozen when, facing towards Aristophe, I saw his dull, fresh face suddenly change.  My pulse missed a beat at that expression.  It was adequate to an earthquake or sudden death.  How the fatuous doll-like features could have been made to register that stare of a soul in horror I can’t guess.  But they did.  The whites of his eyes showed an eighth of an inch above the irises and his black eyebrows were shot up to the roots of his glossy black hair.  In the gleaming white and gold of his teeth the pipe was still gripped.  And while I gazed, astonished, his unfitting deep voice issued from that mask of fear: 

“Tiens!  Encore un!” And I screwed about and saw that the Lizzie was running the boat on top of an enormous frog which he had not spied till the last second.  With that Josef exploded throaty language and leaning sidewise made a dive at the frog.  Aristophe, unbalanced with emotion and Josef’s swift movement shot from his poise at the end of the little craft, and landed, in a foot of water, flat on his buck, and the frog seized that second to jump on his stomach.