Tom, Dick and Harry Part 44

"And that's how Jarman's cigar got on to it."

"Yes--but--"

"And that's how it blew up, wasn't it? You haven't the cheek to say that wasn't the way it blew up?"

"Of course it was; only--"

"Therefore, if you hadn't stuck it there it wouldn't have blown up. You can't deny that?"

"I don't say that. What I say--"

"Therefore, it was you who blew it up; and it's you've got to pay for the fireworks, Q.E.D.; and if you don't shut up, young Sarah, you'll get your face washed."

I felt I was the victim of a very one-sided argument, but the popular verdict was so manifestly in favour of the secretary, that I was constrained to allow the point to pa.s.s.

"--reason why," resumed Langrish. "There was a bit of a row, and the doctor and some of the chaps were had up before the beak. We got on all serene till a howling chimpanzee whose name is Sarah--"

"There you are again," said I. "I'll pay you now."

"What are you talking about? I never mentioned you--did I, you chaps?"

"Rather not," chimed in the Philosophers a.s.sembled.

"Of course," said Langrish, "if whenever you hear of a howling chimpanzee you think you're being referred to, we can't help it, can we?"

The cheers which greeted this unanswerable proposition convinced me I had given myself away for once.

"--howling chimpanzee, whose name's Sarah, put in his oar and spoilt the whole thing."

"If it hadn't been for me," protested I, "you'd none of you have been there at all."

"The magistrate," proceeded Langrish, not heeding the interruption, "treated him with the contempt he deserved, and gave him a caution which he'll remember to the end of his days."

"I don't remember it now," I growled.

"Turn him out for interrupting," shouted the secretary.

"You'd better not try," snarled I, preparing to contest my seat. But Langrish, eager to continue, went on,--

"The rest of us pulled Tempest through easy. If Trim hadn't dropped his 'h's,' and--"

Here there was a real row. Trim rose majestic and outraged, and hurled himself on the secretary; and for a quarter of an hour at least, any casual pa.s.ser-by glancing at the apparently empty barge in mid-stream, would have come to the conclusion that it was swaying from side to side rather more violently than the force of the current seemed to warrant.

Trimble's "h's" took a long time to avenge, and by the time it was done most of us were pretty much the colour of the coal-dust in which we had searched for them.

Langrish was about to proceed with his luckless minutes when Warminster, who had happened to peep above board for the sake of fresh air, exclaimed,--

"Hullo, we're adrift!"

Instantly all hands were on board, and we discovered that our gallant barge, probably during the last argument, had slipped her boathook at the stern, and that the rope which held our prow had evidently been slipped for us by a couple of youths wearing the town-boy ribbon, whom we could descry at that moment strolling innocently up the towing-path, apparently heedless of our existence.

The great lumbering barge was going down stream side on, about half-way between either bank, at the breakneck speed of a mile an hour. We had lost our boathook, and had nothing whatever to navigate our craft with.

Worst of all, at the end of the long reach, coming to meet us, we could see another barge, towed by a horse, which could certainly never pa.s.s up in safety.

We were in for it, and had evidently nothing to do but peer, with our grimy faces over the gunwale, at our impending doom. About a hundred yards off the men in charge of the opposition barge became aware of our presence, and a hurried interchange of polite observations took place between the skipper at the helm and the driver on the tow-path, the result of which was that their tow-rope was cast off and hauled ash.o.r.e; and man and horse, accompanied by a dangerous-looking dog, advanced at a quick pace to meet us.

The rope was hurriedly gathered up in a coil and thrown across our bows, and we were invited to hitch the loop at the end over the hook on our front thwart. The horse was then put in motion, and the downward career of our ark suffered an abrupt check, as we found ourselves rudely lugged in towards the bank.

The situation was an awkward one, for not only was the skipper of the opposition barge landed, and awaiting us with an uncomplimentary eagerness on the bank, but the driver, whip in hand, was standing beside him, and the dog, showing his teeth, beside him.

"Kotched yer, are we?" said the former, with a deplorable profuseness of unnecessary verbiage, as he jumped on board. "We tho't as much. Lend me that there whip, Bill."

"You tip 'em over, Tom; I'll make 'em jump."

Escape was impossible. Our exits were in the hands of the enemy. We made one feeble attempt to temporise.

"We're sorry," said I, in my capacity as spokesman. "We didn't know it was your boat, really."

"You knows it now," said the proprietor. "Over you go, or I'll 'elp yer."

What I was it a case of being pitched overboard? We looked round desperately for hope, but there was none. We might by a concerted action have tackled one man, but the other on the bank, with the whip and the dog, was a formidable second line to carry. It needed all our philosophy to sustain us in the emergency.

"Come, wake up," shouted the man. "'Ere, Tike, come!"

Whereupon, to our terror, the dog leapt up on to the barge, and jumped yapping in our midst.

"T'other side, if _you_ please," said the bargee, as I prepared dismally to take my header on the near side. "Wake 'im up, Tike!"

I needed no waking up; and giving myself up for lost, bounded to the other side of the barge, and made a floundering jump overboard. Luckily for us the Low Heathens could swim to a man, and if all that we were in for was to swim round that hideous barge and get ash.o.r.e, we should have been easily out of it. But we had yet to reckon with the man and the whip, who in his turn made every preparation to reckon with us.

I was the first to taste his mettle. He had me twice before I could get clear, and I seem to feel it as I write. One by one the luckless and dripping Philosophers ran the gauntlet of that fatal debarkation, which was by no means alleviated by the opprobrious hilarity of our two castigators and the delighted yappings of Tike.

At last it was all over, and, dripping and smarting, we collected our shattered forces a quarter of a mile down the towing-path, and hastily agreed that as a meeting-place for Philosophers a barge was not a desirable place. It was further agreed, that if we could catch the day boys who were the source of all our woes (for if our barge had not been let adrift, we could have sheered off in time), we would do to them as we had been done by.

By good or ill luck, we had scarcely arrived at this important decision when a defiant shout from a little hill among the trees close by apprised us that we were not the only occupants of the river bank; and worse still, that whoever the strangers were, they must have been witnesses of our recent misfortunes--a certainty which made us feel anything but friendly.

"Who are they?" said Langrish.

"Suppose it's those Urbans," said c.o.xhead. "I heard they were going to excavate somewhere this way."

"I vote we go and see," said Trimble, who was evidently smarting not a little.

So we went and saw, and it was even as c.o.xhead had surmised; for as we approached, shouts of--

"Who got licked with a whip?"

"What's the price of beauty?"