PAGE 8
The Wouldbegoods
by
We kept her going with the hop-poles, and we kept her steady in the same way, but we could not always keep her steady enough, and we could not always keep her in the wind’s eye. That is to say, she went where we did not want, and once she bumped her corner against the barn wall, and all the crew had to sit down suddenly to avoid falling overboard into a watery grave. Of course then the waves swept her decks, and when we got up again we said that we should have to change completely before tea.
But we pressed on undaunted, and at last our saucy craft came into port under the dairy window, and there was the milk-pan, for whose sake we had endured such hardships and privations, standing up on its edge quite quietly.
The girls did not wait for orders from the captain, as they ought to have done; but they cried out, “Oh, here it is!” and then both reached out to get it. Any one who has pursued a naval career will see that of course the raft capsized. For a moment it felt like standing on the roof of the house, and the next moment the ship stood up on end and shot the whole crew into the dark waters.
We boys can swim all right. Oswald has swum three times across the Ladywell Swimming Baths at the shallow end, and Dicky is nearly as good; but just then we did not think of this; though, of course, if the water had been deep we should have.
As soon as Oswald could get the muddy water out of his eyes he opened them on a horrid scene.
Dicky was standing up to his shoulders in the inky waters; the raft had righted itself, and was drifting gently away towards the front of the house, where the bridge is, and Doar and Alice were rising from the deep, with their hair all plastered over their faces–like Venus in the Latin verses.
There was a great noise of splashing. And besides that a feminine voice, looking out of the dairy window and screaming:
“Lord love the children!”
It was Mrs. Pettigrew. She disappeared at once, and we were sorry we were in such a situation that she would be able to get at Albert’s uncle before we could. Afterwards we were not so sorry.
Before a word could be spoken about our desperate position, Dora staggered a little in the water, and suddenly shrieked, “Oh, my foot! oh, it’s a shark! I know it is–or a crocodile!”
The others on the bank could hear her shrieking, but they could not see us properly; they did not know what was happening. Noel told me afterwards he never could care for that paint-brush.
Of course we knew it could not be a shark, but I thought of pike, which are large and very angry always, and I caught hold of Dora. She screamed without stopping. I shoved her along to where there was a ledge of brickwork, and shoved her up, till she could sit on it, then she got her foot out of the water, still screaming.
It was indeed terrible. The thing she thought was a shark came up with her foot, and it was a horrid, jagged, old meat-tin, and she had put her foot right into it. Oswald got it off, and directly he did so blood began to pour from the wounds. The tin edges had cut it in several spots. It was very pale blood, because her foot was wet, of course.
She stopped screaming, and turned green, and I thought she was going to faint, like Daisy did on the jungle day.
Oswald held her up as well as he could, but it really was one of the least agreeable moments in his life. For the raft was gone, and she couldn’t have waded back anyway, and we didn’t know how deep the moat might be in other places.