Intolerable--past enduring! Mr. Wriford jumped upwards, suspending his weight on his arms on the wall, and by the action was dispossessed of other thought than sudden recollection of exercises on the horizontal bar at school; seemed to be in the gymnasium, and saw the faces of forgotten school-fellows who were in his gym set waiting their turn. Then the Embankment again and realisation. Should he drop back to the pavement? "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" He mastered that vile, damned, craven body and threw up his right leg and scrambled and pitched himself forward; was conscious of striking his thigh violently against the wall, and at the pain and as he fell, thought: "Ha, that's one for you, damn you! I've got you this time! Got you!" And then was in the river, and then instinctively swimming, and then "Drown, damn you! Drown!" cried Mr. Wriford and stopped the action of his arms, and went down swallowing and struggling, and came up struggling and choking, and instinctively struck out again. Shouts and running feet on the Embankment. "Drown, damn you! Drown, drown!" cried Mr. Wriford; went down again, came up facing the wall, and in the lamplight and in the tumult of his senses, saw quite clearly a bedraggled-looking individual peering down at him and quite clearly heard him call: "Nah, then. Nah, then. Wot yer up to dahn there?" Shouts and running feet on the police pier not thirty yards away; sounds of feet in a boat; and then to Mr. Wriford's whirling, smashing intelligence, the sight of a boat--and what that meant. Mr. Wriford thrust his hands that he could not stop from swimming into the tops of his trousers and twisted his wrists about his braces. "Drown, damn you! Drown!" cried Mr. Wriford, and the whirling, smashing scenes and noises lost coherence and only whirled and smashed, and then a hand was clutching him, and coherence returned, and Mr. Wriford screamed: "Let me go! Let me go!" and freed an arm from the entanglement of his braces and dashed it into the face bending over him and with his fist struck the face hard. "Shove him under," said the man at the oars. "Shove him under. He'll 'ave us over else...." Mr. Wriford was lying in the boat. "Let me go," cried Mr. Wriford. "Let me go. You're hurting me." "You've hurt me, you pleader," said the man, but relaxed the knuckles that were digging into Mr. Wriford's neck. Mr. Wriford moaned: "Well, why couldn't you let me drown? Why, in God's name, couldn't you let me drown?" "Not arf grateful, you beggars ain't," said the man; and presently Mr. Wriford found himself pulled up from the bottom of the boat and handed out on to the police landing-stage to a constable with: "'Old 'im fast, Three-Four-One. Suicide, he is. 'Old 'im fast."