"No," I replied, beginning to grow thoughtful too, "I don't. How many
are there?"
"Only four," answered George. "It will be all right, if he's awake."
"And if not?" I queried; but we dismissed that train of thought.
We shouted when we came opposite the first island, but there was no
response; so we went to the second, and tried there, and obtained the
same result.
"Oh! I remember now," said George; "it was the third one."
And we ran on hopefully to the third one, and hallooed.
No answer!
The case was becoming serious. it was now past midnight. The hotels at
Skiplake and Henley would be crammed; and we could not go round, knocking
up cottagers and householders in the middle of the night, to know if they
let apartments! George suggested walking back to Henley and assaulting a
policeman, and so getting a night's lodging in the station-house. But
then there was the thought, "Suppose he only hits us back and refuses to
lock us up!"
We could not pass the whole night fighting policemen. Besides, we did
not want to overdo the thing and get six months.
We despairingly tried what seemed in the darkness to be the fourth
island, but met with no better success. The rain was coming down fast
now, and evidently meant to last. We were wet to the skin, and cold and
miserable. We began to wonder whether there were only four islands or
more, or whether we were near the islands at all, or whether we were
anywhere within a mile of where we ought to be, or in the wrong part of
the river altogether; everything looked so strange and different in the
darkness. We began to understand the sufferings of the Babes in the
Wood.
Just when we had given up all hope - yes, I know that is always the time
that things do happen in novels and tales; but I can't help it. I
resolved, when I began to write this book, that I would be strictly
truthful in all things; and so I will be, even if I have to employ
hackneyed phrases for the purpose.
It WAS just when we had given up all hope, and I must therefore say so.
Just when we had given up all hope, then, I suddenly caught sight, a
little way below us, of a strange, weird sort of glimmer flickering among
the trees on the opposite bank. For an instant I thought of ghosts: it
was such a shadowy, mysterious light. The next moment it flashed across
me that it was our boat, and I sent up such a yell across the water that
made the night seem to shake in its bed.
We waited breathless for a minute, and then - oh! divinest music of the
darkness! - we heard the answering bark of Montmorency. We shouted back
loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers - I never could understand myself
why it should take more noise to wake seven sleepers than one - and,
after what seemed an hour, but what was really, I suppose, about five
minutes, we saw the lighted boat creeping slowly over the blackness, and
heard Harris's sleepy voice asking where we were.
There was an unaccountable strangeness about Harris. It was something
more than mere ordinary tiredness. He pulled the boat against a part of
the bank from which it was quite impossible for us to get into it, and
immediately went to sleep. It took us an immense amount of screaming and
roaring to wake him up again and put some sense into him; but we
succeeded at last, and got safely on board.
Harris had a sad expression on him, so we noticed, when we got into the
boat. He gave you the idea of a man who had been through trouble. We
asked him if anything had happened, and he said-
"Swans!"
It seemed we had moored close to a swan's nest, and, soon after George
and I had gone, the female swan came back, and kicked up a row about it.
Harris had chivied her off, and she had gone away, and fetched up her old
man. Harris said he had had quite a fight with these two swans; but
courage and skill had prevailed in the end, and he had defeated them.
Half-an-hour afterwards they returned with eighteen other swans! It must
have been a fearful battle, so far as we could understand Harris's
account of it. The swans had tried to drag him and Montmorency out of
the boat and drown them; and he had defended himself like a hero for four
hours, and had killed the lot, and they had all paddled away to die.
"How many swans did you say there were?" asked George.
"Thirty-two," replied Harris, sleepily.
"You said eighteen just now," said George.
"No, I didn't," grunted Harris; "I said twelve. Think I can't count?"
What were the real facts about these swans we never found out. We
questioned Harris on the subject in the morning, and he said, "What
swans?" and seemed to think that George and I had been dreaming.
Oh, how delightful it was to be safe in the boat, after our trials and
fears! We ate a hearty supper, George and I, and we should have had some
toddy after it, if we could have found the whisky, but we could not. We
examined Harris as to what he had done with it; but he did not seem to
know what we meant by "whisky," or what we were talking about at all.
Montmorency looked as if he knew something, but said nothing.
I slept well that night, and should have slept better if it had not been
for Harris. I have a vague recollection of having been woke up at least
a dozen times during the night by Harris wandering about the boat with
the lantern, looking for his clothes.
