For the dripping Peckover was still holding tenaciously on to the side
of the punt, with a fixity of purpose which no mere considerations of
stage effect seemed likely to dispose him to relax. Added to this,
there was more of his body above the surface of the water than appeared
quite consistent with the idea of imminent and deadly peril; this was
accounted for by the fact that he was standing, miserably enough, on
the bottom of the lake.
"Get down! Let go of the punt! D'ye hear?" commanded Gage, in an
exasperated undertone. "What's the good of hanging on there like a
fool? Get down, will you? Duck that idiotic mug of yours under water,
or how am I to go after you?"
"I--d--d--daren't," chattered Peckover: "my feet are slipping or
sinking or something; it's dashed deep mud at the bottom."
"I wish your head was in it instead of your feet," retorted his
prospective heroic rescuer, all the while making a fine show of bustle,
for which, however, as viewed from the shore there was no obvious need.
"Will you get down, before I knock you under?"
As he spoke Gage was surreptitiously jabbing at Peckover's fingers,
and, incidentally, at his face with the butt-end of his rod. This
somewhat drastic method of enforcing his orders and ensuring the
vraisemblance of the performance was perhaps justified by the manifest
absurdity and uselessness of his taking a showy and heroic dive in
order to rescue a man who was, to the spectator's eye, holding
comfortably on to a substantial punt with his breathing organs high out
of the water. As matters--that is to say, Peckover--stood, danger was
the last thing that would suggest itself to the casual onlooker. The
note at the moment was farcical; it was urgently necessary to change it
to the tragic, even at the expense of loosening a few of Peckover's
front teeth.
That unhappy dissembler, finding the episode of having a brass-capped
butt in forcible contact with the more sensitive and damageable parts
of his physiognomy more than he had bargained for, spluttered forth an
objurgatory remonstrance, and, to cut short the objectionable
attentions, let go, disappearing forthwith under the side of the punt.
Whereupon Gage, uttering a wild and wholly unnecessary shout, poised
himself for a few moments with one foot on the gunwale, and then,
having attracted the attention he desired, took a tremendous dive into
the water. With such vigour did he go down that he forced his head and
arms into a thick bed of weeds, which demanded for a time his
breathless attention. On extricating himself from the difficulty, and
coming to the surface, he was much concerned to find that Peckover was
nowhere to be seen. Instantly he took another superfluous dive, and as
he came up, knocked his head against the bottom of the punt. Half
dizzy with the blow, he now saw Peckover watching his efforts from the
other side of the craft whither he had worked his way round while the
diving was in progress.
"What are you doing round there, you idiot?" he gasped. "Get right
down into the water at once and shout for help till I come along and
catch hold of you."
With the word, he struck out manfully and swam round to the other side
of the punt, only to find on arriving there that Peckover had
disappeared. Whereupon he dived again, only to come up empty-handed
once more, and to see the anxious face watching him, alertly
apprehensive, over the farther gunwale.
"What fool's game is this?" he hissed.
"None of your larks," returned Peckover in a tone of resolute desire
for self-preservation. The cold water, the weeds and the mud were
beginning to tell upon him; all sense of a practical joke had
evaporated.
Gage looked round. On the right the farmer and the butcher, on the
left the two women had come down to the margin of the lake and were
watching the proceedings in a silence which betokened some doubt in
their minds as to how they ought to take it.
"Will you get under water and let me come to the rescue?" Gage demanded
with exasperation.
"Not good enough," Peckover replied, and thereupon he began a spirited
effort to climb back into the punt.
"Fool!" Gage shut his mouth with a snap, and took a vicious dive under
the punt as the shortest cut to his objective.
As he rose, Peckover was half on board. Without further expostulation
Gage seized the leg which still hung in the water and furiously tried
to drag it down. Peckover resisted, kicking, and a very pretty
struggle ensued, which taking place, as might be supposed, between a
millionaire and a peer of the Realm, must have given rise to singular
reflections and conjectures in the minds of the onlookers.
Eventually the turn of the position favoured Gage. The conditions
under which Peckover fought rendered the struggle additionally painful;
by degrees he lost ground and finally was dragged back exhausted into
the water.
"You stupid ass, I've a good mind to shove you under and keep you
there," Gage growled.
His victim could only gasp and shiver.
"What must we look like from the shore?" Gage demanded savagely.
Peckover made no reply, but from his manner it might have been gathered
that his mental attitude on the subject was one of complete
indifference.
"Haven't we had enough of this tommy-rot?" at last he ventured to
suggest.
Gage was maintaining a fine show of keeping afloat in the
four-foot-six. "I think we have," he returned. "I'm getting chilly,
so we had better come to business. Now, will you keep down in the
water when you've quite done advertising the fact that it isn't up to
our shoulders?"
All the response Peckover made was--"Look at the punt!"
Keeping the corner of an eye warily on his companion, Gage turned and
looked. The distance between them and the punt instead of a few feet
was now some twenty yards. The cause of this alteration was obvious.
Their struggles had caused the cord which made fast the craft to one of
the poles to become untied and the other pole to work loose. There was
some wind, under which the punt was now moving at a fair pace over the
lake, dragging one pole with it.
"All right," said Gage, "I'll soon catch it and bring it back."
But Peckover clutched him with the tenacity of despair. "No, you
don't," he exclaimed, anxiously resolute. "You don't leave me here.
How am I to get ashore if you don't come back?"
"Walk," answered Gage, trying to free himself.
"Yes, I dare say," Peckover retorted. "You don't catch me trying it.
It's not the same depth all over. We're on a bit of a bank here."
"Look at the blamed thing going off," Gage cried. "Let go! She'll be
a quarter of a mile away directly."
But Peckover was not to be shaken off. "You don't go and leave me
here," he insisted wildly, "for any old punt."
The situation was an interesting one, and as such, no doubt the four
spectators acknowledged it. Their comments, however, had not so far
been directed to the performers.
"What are you going to do?" Peckover asked, still gripping the plunging
Gage.
"Going for a swim," he answered unfeelingly, at the same time making
spirited but futile efforts to dive.
"No, you don't," Peckover returned, restraining his companion's
attempts with all the energy that the chill and unusual element allowed
him.
Gage, kicking and struggling, was at length obliged to desist, after
having furnished a several minutes' novel and exhilarating exhibition
to the puzzled spectators. Short of actual murderous violence, it was
not possible for him to free himself from the tenacious Peckover. It
was difficult, he had to own, to do much in the way of natation with a
desperate person hanging like grim death on to his legs, moreover,
Peckover's embrace had a tendency to send Gage's head under water and
to keep it there. So, exasperated and vindictive as he felt, he had to
compromise.
"Well," he said, veiling his displeasure and sense of defeat with a
cheerless grin, "am I going to save your life or not--before we catch
our death of cold?"
"You've got to," was the dogged reply. "Five thousand a year is too
good to say good-bye to in the middle of a pond."
"It is all your silly rot that has stuck us here," Gage returned. "If
you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance
would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."
"Well, get it over now," retorted Peckover, "as quick as you like, and
no tricks."
"All right; come on," said Gage ill-humouredly. "Let's hope those
fools won't see through the fake."
"This way," said Peckover, starting off breast-high in the water,
towards the nearest shore, and still holding tightly to his companion.
"You are not going to walk?" Gage exclaimed aghast.
"I'm going to do what I can do best, and I can't swim," Peckover
replied, with a determination which was apparent even through his
shivering. "We'll have to try this life-saving joke in some other
form. It's getting a bit stale this way."
Slowly their progress towards the shore, impeded by mud and thick
weeds, began. They had not noticed that the farmer, actuated by
humanitarian motives or with an eye to reduction of rent, had run off
to an old boat-house, and was now hurrying back with an oar and a coil
of rope.
"All right, my lord!" shouted the butcher, as taking credit for his
friend's action. The two men, shivering and struggling unromantically
through the jungle of weeds, smiled unpleasantly at the cry.
Suddenly Peckover became aware that the water was up to his chin.
"It's getting deeper," he gasped, trying to hold his companion back.
"Let it," Gage retorted sulkily. "We've got to get to shore, dead or
alive."
With an energy which suggested his preference for the latter mode of
arrival Peckover threw his arms around Gage and tried to draw him back.
"Try another way," he panted.
"You can. I'm going straight on. You should learn to swim," was the
unkind response. "If you don't let go, not another penny of my money
shall you see," Gage added, beginning to have doubts about his own
ultimate safety in those dreadful weeds.
"You're not going to leave me here to drown?" Peckover remonstrated,
shaking with terror.
"You can go back."
"What's the good of that?"
"I'll fetch a boat."
Water had become so utterly distasteful to Peckover that even the
comparative shallows had no longer the slightest attraction for him.
"What am I to do?" he shrieked. "Gage, you must save me!"
"Don't feel up to it now; too cold," was the unfeeling reply.
Peckover now found that the extra six inches in the depth of the water
made all the difference when it came to a struggle. The margin below
the breathing point was too small to permit of a sustained effort.
Gage struck out, and Peckover, choosing what a momentary consideration
suggested as the lesser of the two evils, let go his hold and stayed
behind where at least his mouth was above water.
What the four people on the bank now saw was this. The supposed Lord
Quorn leaving his companion, and energetically striking out for the
shore, while the head which was all that was visible of the pretended
millionaire remained a weird and ghastly object on the green expanse of
water. To add to the interest of the scene, Peckover, finding the mud
on which he stood, had a tendency to give way beneath him, was forced,
as he gradually sank, to keep jumping, with the object of maintaining
his head well above water. That the situation had grown critical was
now fairly apparent, and it became borne in upon the farmer and his
friend that heroic measures were indicated.
Directed by the butcher, who assumed an important (and dry)
superintendence of the operations, the farmer now waded to the tops of
his gaiters into the lake, and flung out the oar with the rope attached
towards the wildly struggling Gage.
"There you are, my lord. Lay 'old!" shouted the butcher. "Then you
can go back for the gentleman. You'll 'ave to get a little farther
out, Mr. Purvis; the rope's a bit short."
"Wish you'd come and lend a hand yourself, Mr. Fanning, instead o'
telling me what any fool can see," Mr. Purvis called back testily, as
the water lapped over the rim of his gaiters.
"You're all right, Mr. Purvis," Mr. Fanning cried encouragingly,
ignoring the invitation. "Pull the oar in and throw it out again to
his lordship."
"Thought you could swim, Fanning," observed Mr. Purvis, wrestling
uncomfortably with the difficulties of the situation.
"Never," Mr. Fanning protested promptly and mendaciously. "Wish I
could. Now, out with it! Take care of his lordship's 'ead."
Once more the oar hurtled through the air, and fell this time within a
yard of Gage's blanched face. Making a desperate and supreme effort,
he seized it, and, once sure of the timely support, clung to it panting
and exhausted. As he rested there, his feet naturally sank till they
met with an obstruction. Moving them about to clear himself, Gage
found that they had touched the bottom; he forthwith stood up and
disclosed the fact that he had been swimming for his life in three feet
of water.
"Look to the other gentleman, Mr. Purvis," directed Mr. Fanning from
his post of high and dry observation.
Mr. Purvis and Gage accordingly directed dubious glances at the bobbing
head of the unhappy Peckover.
"If your lordship would swim out with the oar to the gentleman," Purvis
suggested, "I can pull you both in."
"I dare say," returned Gage with chattering teeth. "I'm not going
back, the fun doesn't pay for the trouble. You wade out as far as you
can and throw the oar to him, and let your friend hold the rope. Hi!"
he called, to the complacent Mr. Fanning, "come here and catch hold.
Hurry up or there'll be an inquest."
The dictatorial Mr. Fanning's expansive face, together with his
self-centred spirits, fell at the invitation. "Sorry I can't swim, my
lord," he objected, advancing along the margin with dry and lagging
steps.
"No one wants you to," retorted Gage as he heavily emerged, dripping
and pitiful from the water. "Go in, and hold the rope," he commanded,
"or my friend will be drowned."
And indeed Peckover's sharp cries, uttered so as to fill the
opportunities when his mouth was above water, gave colour to the
statement.
Mr. Fanning, perhaps by the nature of his trade, rendered somewhat
indifferent to the question of life and death where he was not
personally concerned, had been congratulating himself on being well out
of the affair; and now the order coming as it did from so important a
personage and customer as Lord Quorn, was neither pleasant nor to be
disregarded. Personal discomfort was a thing to be endured by him only
in other people, and now as he waded reluctantly into the water he
resolved to avenge his outraged feelings and damp extremities by an
extra penny a pound all round on his future deliveries at Staplewick
Towers.
"Now throw me the end of the rope, Mr. Purvis," he commanded when the
water reached half-way up his calves.
"You must come right out, Mr. Fanning," was the peremptory reply, "or
we shall never reach the gentleman."
Accordingly Mr. Fanning, standing between a cross fire of admonishment
and objurgation, was fain to advance till waist-deep.
Encouraged by the recently indicated shallowness of the water, Mr.
Purvis now went boldly forward, as much with the idea of exhibiting
superior prowess compared with Mr. Fanning, as of ingratiating himself
with the lord of Staplewick. The resoluteness of the proceeding,
however, had the effect of demonstrating its own superfluity, for as
Mr. Purvis pushed forward he sank no deeper in the water and was able
to approach waist-deep within the oar's length of Peckover who, it
appeared, had unfortunately come upon a hole and, in his fright, stayed
there. Clutching the end of the oar he was pulled out into safety,
not, however, without a great show of superfluous energy on the part of
Mr. Purvis, who wished to make the most of his effort and have the
greatest possible return for his ruined breeches and gaiters; and so
the three, rescuers and rescued, stumbled with mixed feelings to the
shore.