England -- Fiction; Honeymoons -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Voyages and travels -- Fiction
"You must put it in the water," she said. "You can't reach it here. Come
into the boat."
He obeyed her. She came and sat by him in the stern--sat there quite
silently. No "I'm so sorry!" or "Can't I do anything?" Her hand was on
Charles's collar. His eyes were closed. His finger was badly crushed;
the blood stained the water, and presently she saw it. She kept her eyes
fixed on the spreading splash of red.
"You haven't fainted, have you?" she said at last. "It's getting very
dark."
"No," he said, and opened his eyes. She raised hers, and both perceived
one reason for the darkness--the boat had sunk nine feet or so. The
dark, dripping walls of the lock towered above them. While he had fought
his pain and she her sympathy the lock had been slowly emptying itself.
They were at the bottom, or almost, and up those smooth walls there was
no climbing out.
"Push the boat against the lower gate," he said; and as she obeyed he
added, "I must try to climb up somehow. I'll pitch the crowbar up on
shore first. Where is it?"
"I left it on the lock gate," she said. "Wasn't that right?"
"It doesn't matter," he told her; but even as he spoke the sluice, which
the weight of the water had held in place after the pin had been
removed, now, as the waters above and below it grew level with each
other, fell into its place with a splash and an echoing boom, and with
the shock the crowbar fell from its resting-place on the tarred ledge
and disappeared in the water below.
"Lucky it didn't fall on us," he said, and laughed. "It's no use my
climbing out now, Princess. I couldn't open the gate, anyhow. We're
caught like two poor little rabbits in a trap--or three, if you count
Charles--and here we must stay till some one comes along with a crowbar.
I dare say there'll be a barge by and by. D'you mind very much?"
"Not a bit," she assured him, cheerfully. "It's all my fault, anyhow,
and, besides, I enjoy it. Let me tie your hand up, and then you must
smoke till rescue comes."
"Aren't you cold?" he asked, for indeed the air was chill in that watery
inclosure.
"Not a bit. I have my cloak," she said, and snuggled into it. "But
you'll be cold. Have half--it's a student's cloak, eight yards around."
He accepted the offer, and they sat with the cloak wrapped around them
both, with Charles snuggling under the lower folds of it.
"If you hear a footstep or a whistle or anything, shout," he said. "I do
wish I hadn't let you in for this. I hate a fool."
"I don't mind a bit, except about your finger. The bone isn't broken, is
it?"
"No," he said; "I've just made a fuss about nothing. I hate a fool, as I
said before."
She thought of the wet patch on the tarred wood and the red patch in the
water, and he felt her shiver.
"It's very decent of you," said she, "not to scold me about leaving the
crowbar there."
"A good Medway boatman should never be separated from his crowbar," he
said, monitorily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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