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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.sured 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.

"I know that now," she said. "I ought to have known before. I hate a fool, too."

X

OAK WEIR LOCK

"IF it weren't for your finger--" said she.

"My finger is the just reward of idiocy and doesn't deserve any kind thought from you."

"If it weren't for that, I should rather enjoy it," she said. "There's plenty to eat left in the basket. Shall I get it out and let's have supper before it's quite dark? I do really think it's fun. Don't you?"

"That's right," said he, with a show of bitterness, "make the best of it out of pity for the insane idiot who landed you in this fix. Be bright, be womanly, never let me guess that a cold, damp lock and a 'few bits of broken vittles' are not really better than a decent supper and a roof over your head. A fig for the elegancies of civilization and the comforts of home! Go on being tactful. I adore it."

"I meant what I said," she answered, with gentle insistence. "I do rather like it. I'll whine about my dinner and my looking-gla.s.s, if you like, but I'll get the supper first. Isn't it glorious to think that there's no one at home--where the comforts and the elegancies are--no one to be anxious about us because we're late, and scold us when we get home? Liberty," she ended, reflectively, "is a very beautiful thing. I suppose no one is likely to come along this way till the shepherd comes in the morning?"

"We'll hope for better luck," said he. "I say, you'll never trust me to take care of you again after this silly business--"

"I don't know," she said, deliberately, "that I ever asked you to take care of me. Did I? You were to help me--yes, and you have helped me--but I don't think I want to be taken care of, any more than another man would want it. I was in a difficulty and you helped me. If you were in a difficulty and I helped you, you wouldn't expect me to take care of you forever, would you?"

"I don't know," he said. "If you hadn't been extraordinarily sensible I should still be there with my hand in the thumbscrew."

"Did you think," she asked, sweetly, "that all women were inevitably silly?"

Charles raised his head and growled.

"There," said she, "you see, even Charles repudiates the idea."

If this was so, Charles instantly repudiated the idea with more growls and the added violence of barks. She m.u.f.fled him in the cloak and listened. A footstep on the towing-path.

"Hullo!" she called, and Edward added, "Hi, you there!" and Charles, wriggling forcefully among the folds of the cloak, barked again.

"That ought to fetch them, whoever they are," said Edward, and stood up.

Even as he did so a voice said, urgently and quite close above them.

"'Ush, can't yer!" and a head and shoulders leaning over the edge of the lock came as a dark silhouette against the clear dark blue of the starry sky. For it was now as dark as a July night is--and that, as we know, is never really dark at all. '"Ush!" repeated the voice. "Shut up, I tell yer!" and, surprisingly and unmistakably, it was to the two in the boat that he was speaking. "Make that dawg o' yours choke hisself--stow it, can't yer! Yer don't want to be lagged, do yer? Yer aren't got 'arf a chants once any one knows you're 'ere. Don't you know you're wanted? The police'll be along some time in the night, and then you're done for."

"I think," said Edward, with extreme politeness, "that you are, perhaps, mistaking us for acquaintances, whereas we are strangers to you. But if you could be so kind as to open the gates and lend us a crowbar to get through the other locks you would not be the loser."

"I know yer, right enough," said the man. "Yer ain't no strangers to me.

It was me as 'ired yer the boat up at the Anchor. The boss 'e sent me out to look for yer. Only 'e doesn't know I know about your being wanted. Least said soonest mended's what I allus say. Where's yer crow got to?"

"In the water," said Edward; "dropped off the lock gate."

"Clumsy!" said the man, giving the word its full vocative value.

"Whereabouts?"

"Just over there," said Edward.

"Then yer tuck up yer shirt-sleeve and run yer 'and down and pa.s.s that there crow up to me. There ain't not above two foot o' water in 'er, if there's that."

To your Medway man the lock is as unalterably feminine as his ship to a sailor.

It was she who plunged her arm in the water, and, sure enough, there was the crowbar lying quietly and tamely beside them--"like a pet poodle,"

as she said.

"Give me ahold of that there crow," said the man. He lay face downward and reached down an arm. Edward stood on the thwart and reached up. The crowbar changed hands, and the head and shoulders of the deliverer disappeared.

"I don't see what he wants the bar for," said Edward. "The lock's empty.