four in the afternoon
We took four large bream-hooks , bent them on to a piece of fishing-line , baited each hook with a good-sized piece of octopus -LRB- our mullet bait -RRB- , 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 .