After dinner Master Richard went and ordered two of the men to bring a great tub from the laundry, while Aline went upstairs and changed her things, putting on a pair of boy’s trunks. She then threw a cloak about her and came down. The tub was rolled round till it was opposite the window and then Aline insisted that the serving men should go away. A board, hastily thinned down at one end, made a sort of rude paddle and, with shrieks of derision from Audry, the others held the tub and Aline cautiously got in and squatted tailorwise on the bottom. They all laughed so much that they nearly upset the tub at the outset. Aline then started on her perilous voyage, but, the tub being circular, every time she took a stroke with the paddle, it simply spun round and round. Those on the bank held their sides with laughter, but the more they laughed the more confused Aline became. She tried taking a stroke first one way and then the other. This was not quite so bad, but the tub revolved backwards and forwards like a balance wheel. “Try little short strokes pulling the paddle towards you,” shouted Ian, when the laughter had a little subsided. This answered somewhat better and the tub slowly made its way across, but with many vagaries and strange gyrations. At last she reached the wall right under the great projecting corbel of the window, and, very cautiously putting down her arm, she felt the chain. “Hurrah!” she shouted, “I have it”; but she spoke too soon. As she pulled the chain, the tub over-balanced and Aline tumbled head first into the moat. Audry collapsed altogether at this and rolled over on to the grass. Ian, however, for the moment took it seriously and was going to jump in, but Audry seized one of his ankles to stop him and laughed still more till the tears ran down her cheeks. “You’ll kill me, you two,” she said, as Aline’s head appeared above the water with long green weeds hanging in her hair. Aline swam to the chain and found that the ball was very heavy. She then righted the tub. “Get in, get in quickly,” shouted Audry mischievously, and Aline, without thinking, made the attempt with the result that the tub lifted and turned over on her like an extinguisher. Audry was convulsed. “You little mischief,” said Ian, and picked her up and held her out over the water at arm’s length; but she only laughed the more. Aline meanwhile again righted the tub and then shouted to the others to bring an axe. Audry refused to go. She said she must wait for the end of the performance. So Master Richard ran and called one of the men, who brought the things required. While he was gone Aline, with difficulty, got the ball into the tub. She then swam across for the axe and, taking it over, she cut the chain, threw the axe in with the ball and, pushing the tub before her, swam back to the other side.