its head. Slowly he lifted it up out of the water, and there it hung, in all its glory, only an arm'' length from us. Then it gulped the lucky charm with its huge mouth, slipped off the hook (that was lucky!) and dived into the water again.

"Oh no!" Jimmy gasped, "I've lost my luck!" We kneeled on the edge of the wharf, looking at the bubbles where the fish had been.

There was no sign of the fish.

Only a scattering of little white half-bubbles drifted on the surface.

………………………………………

When Jimmy explained to the man at the stall what had happened, the man was realty annoyed.

"That must have been a real lucky charm!" he gasped, "And to think its been in my family for years!" he said, "And now you've gone and fed it to a bloomin fish!"

"I didn't mean to!" said Jimmy, "I was going to get it back when I had the fish!"

"If only I'd known!" cried the man in despair.

"Oh I dunno," I said, "Being lucky all the time isn't all that great!"

"But I could have been rich!" said the man, "I could have snapped my fingers and had anything I wanted!"

"You could do some fishing?" I suggested. "That's it!" the man cried, "I'll catch the fish and get my lucky charm back!"

He started to pack up his stall, so Jimmy and I apologized for the trouble we'd caused and got going.

About a month later we heard a funny item on the news. Some man had been trying to catch a fish, down at the harbor. He'd been trying for three weeks now, and using every method imaginable - nets, scuba gear, sonar - and he actually caught the fish a few times too! But every time he got it onto the wharf, it managed to skip away from him. The daily event was attracting tourists, and his picture had been on TV and in the newspapers.

Headlines went like: "Amazing escaping fish trick" or "Uncatchable fish : daily nightmare for fisherman", and the best of all was "Hollywood buys rights to fish story" with an item about the movie to come. It was expected to be a blockbuster. They said it would net them millions!