"Wait here, Jeeves."
"Very good, sir. The head gardener was informing me this morning, sir,
that one of the swans had recently nested on this island."
"This is no time for natural-history gossip, Jeeves," I said, a little
severely, for the rain was coming down harder than ever and the Wooster
trouser legs were already considerably moistened.
"Very good, sir."
I pushed my way through the bushes. The going was sticky and took about
eight and elevenpence off the value of my Sure-grip tennis shoes in the
first two yards; but I persevered and presently came out in the open
and found myself in a sort of clearing facing the Octagon.
This building was run up somewhere in the last century, I have been
told, to enable the grandfather of the late owner to have some quiet
place out of ear-shot of the house where he could practise the fiddle.
From what I know of fiddlers, I should imagine that he had produced
some fairly frightful sounds there in his time; but they can have been
nothing to the ones that were coming from the roof of the place now.
The Right Hon., not having spotted the arrival of the rescue party, was
apparently trying to make his voice carry across the waste of waters to
the house; and I'm not saying it was not a good sporting effort. He had
one of those highish tenors, and his yowls seemed to screech over my
head like shells.
I thought it about time to slip him the glad news that assistance had
arrived, before he strained a vocal cord.
"Hi!" I shouted, waiting for a lull.
He poked his head over the edge.
"Hi!" he bellowed, looking in every direction but the right one, of
course.
"Hi!"
"Hi!"
"Hi!"
"Hi!"
"Oh!" he said, spotting me at last.
"What ho!" I replied, sort of clinching the thing.
I suppose the conversation can't be said to have touched a frightfully
high level up to this moment, but probably we should have got a good
deal brainier very shortly--only just then, at the very instant when I
was getting ready to say something good, there was a hissing noise like
a tire bursting in a nest of cobras, and out of the bushes to my left
there popped something so large and white and active that, thinking
quicker than I have ever done in my puff, I rose like a rocketing
pheasant and, before I knew what I was doing, had begun the climb for
life. Something slapped against the wall about an inch below my right
ankle, and any doubts I may have had about remaining below vanished.
The lad who bore 'mid snow and ice the banner with the strange device
"Excelsior!" was the model for Bertram.
"Be careful!" yipped the Right Hon.