FullReads

Master Simon sat and smoked, and made his own bed, and accomplished some execrable cookery in the intervals of oiling his duck-gun. Even duck-shooting becomes a weariness when a man has to manage gun and punt single-handed. One afternoon he abandoned the sport in an exceedingly bad temper, and pulled up to the jaws of Cuckoo Valley. Here he landed, and after an hour’s trudge in the marshy bottoms had the luck to knock over two couple of woodcock.

He rowed back with his spoil, and was making fast to the ferry steps, when a thought struck him. He shipped the paddles again, and pulled down to Ponteglos. The short day was closing, and already a young moon glimmered on the floods.

The woodcock were cooked to a turn; juicier birds never reclined on toast. The waitress removed the cloth and returned with a kettle; retired and returned again with a short-necked bottle, a glass and spoon, sugar, a nutmeg, and a lemon; retired with a twinkle in her eye.

“To fortify you!” said Mistress Prudence, rubbing a lump of sugar gently on the lemon-rind.

“The night air,” Master Simon murmured.

“–Against the damp house you’re going back to,” the lady corrected.

“You talk without giving it a trial.”

“As you talk, in your parlour, of deep-sea voyages.”

“As a ship’s captain you would respect me perhaps?”

“No, for you haven’t the head. But I should like your pluck. If I saw you setting off for sea in earnest, I would run out and give you a chance to steer a woman instead of a ship. You would find her safer.”

Master Simon emptied his glass, rose, and wound his great comforter about his neck. The widow saw him to the door.

“You’re a very obstinate woman,” he said.

And with this he unmoored his boat and rowed resolutely homewards. A strong wind came piping down on the back of a strong tide, and Master Simon arched his shoulders against it.

“Married man or mariner!” it piped, as he rounded the first bend.

“I know my own mind, I believe,” said Master Simon to himself. “There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it; and for salmon, ‘Flowing Source’ will beat Christchurch any day, I’ve always maintained.”

“Married man or mariner!” piped the wind in the words of Ann the cook.

Master Simon pulled his left paddle hard and rounded the second bend.

“Married man or mar–“

Crash!

His heels flew up and his head struck the bottom-boards. Then, in a moment, the boat was gone, and a rush of water sang in his ears and choked him. He saw a black shadow overhanging, and clutched at it.

Mistress Prudence stood in her doorway on the quay, as Master Simon had left her. In the room above, the waitress blew out her candle, drew up the blind, and opened her window to the moonlight.

“Selina!” the mistress called.

Selina thrust out her head.

“What’s that coming down the river?”

A black, unshapely mass was moving swiftly down towards the quay.

“I think ’tis a haystack,” Selina whispered, and then, “Lord save us all, there’s a man on it!”

“A man?” cried the widow, shrilly. “What man?”

A voice answered the question, calling for help out of the river–a voice that she knew.

“What is it?” she called back.

“I think,” quavered Master Simon, “I think ’tis the roof o’ ‘Flowing Source’!”

Mistress Prudence ran down the quay steps, cast off the first boat that lay handy, and pulled towards the dark mass sweeping seaward. As it crossed ahead of her bows, she dropped the paddles, ran to the painter, and flung it forward with all her might.

The “Pandora’s Box” Inn stands on Ponteglos Quay to this day. And all that is left of “Flowing Source” hangs on the wall of its best parlour–four dark oak timbers forming a frame around a portrait, the portrait of a woman of middle age and comfortable countenance. In the right-hand top corner of the picture, in letters of faded gold, runs the legend–VXOR BONA INSTAR NAVIS.