Pooke whistled through his teeth.
The girl laboured hard at the oar; Pooke worked more easily. He had not realised at first how uncertain was the passage. The tide went swirling down to the sea with the wind behind it, driving it as a besom.
“I say, Kate Quarm--no, Miss Catherine Quarm. Hang it! how stiff and grand we be! Do you know why I have been to Exeter?”
“I do not, Jan.”
“There, you called me Jan. You’ll be ’titling me Tottle, next. That gives me a right to call you Kitty.”
“Once, but no more; and Kitty only.”
“I’ve been to Exeter to be rigged out for sister Sue’s weddin’. My word! it has cost four guineas to make a gentleman of me.”
“Can they do that for four guineas?”
“Now don’t sneer. Listen. They’d took my measure afore, and they put me in my new suit, brass buttons and everything complete, and a new tie and collars standing to my ears--and a box-hat curling at the sides like the waves of the ocean--and then they told me to walk this way, please sir! So I walked, and what should I see but a gentleman stately as a dook coming towards me, and I took off my hat and said, Your servant, sir! and would have stepped aside. Will you believe me, Kate! it was just myself in a great cheval glass, as they call it. You’ll be at the wedding, won’t you?--if only to see me in my new suit. I do believe you’ll fall down and worship me, and I shall smile down at you and say, Holloa! is that my good friend Kitty Alone? And you’ll say, Your very humble servant, sir!”
“That I shall never do, Mr. Pennyfare,” laughed Kate, and then, becoming grave, immediately said, “Do pull instead of talking nonsense. We are drifting; look over your shoulder.”
“So we are. There is Coombe Cellars light, right away up stream.”
“The wind and stream are against us. Pull hard.”
Jan Pooke now recognised that he must use his best exertions.
“Hang it!” said he, watching the light; “I don’t want to be carried out to sea.”
“Nor do I. That would be a dear penn’orth.”
Pooke pulled vigorously; looked over his shoulder again and said, “Kate, give up your place to me. I’m worth more than you and me together with one oar apiece.”
She moved the rowlock pins, and Jan took her place with two oars; but the time occupied in effecting the change entailed loss of way, and the boat swept fast down the estuary.
“This is more than a joke,” said Pooke; “we are down opposite Shaldon. I can see the Teignmouth lights. We shall never get across like this.”
“We must.”
“The tide tears between the end of the Den and the farther shore like a mill-race.”
“We must cross or run aground.”
“Kate, can you see the breakers over the bar?”
“No, but I can hear them. They are nothing now, as wind and tide are running off shore. When the tide turns then there will be a roar.”
“I believe we are being carried out. Thunder! I’m not going to be swept into Kingdom Come without having put on box-hat and new suit, and cut a figure here.”
The wind poured down the trough of the Teign valley with such force, that in one blast it seemed to catch the boat and drive it, as it might take up a leaf and send it flying over the surface of a hard road.
The waves were dancing, foaming, uttering their voices about the rocks of the Ness, mumbling and muttering on the bar. If the boat in the darkness were to get into the throat of the current, it would be sucked and carried into the turbulent sea; it might, however, get on the bar and be buffeted and broken by the waves.
“Take an oar,” said Pooke; “we must bring her head round. If we can run behind the Den, we shall be in still water.”
“Or mud,” said Kate, seating herself to pull. “Anything but to be carried out to sea.”
The two young people struggled desperately. They were straining against wind and tide, heading about to get into shallow water, and out of the tearing current.
After a while Kate gasped, “I’m finished!”
Her hair was blown round her head in the gale; with the rapidity of her pulsation, lights flashed before her eyes and waves roared in her ears.
“Don’t give up. Pull away!”
Mechanically she obeyed. In another minute the strain was less, and then--the boat was aground.
“If this be the Den, all right,” said Pooke. “We can get ashore and walk to Teignmouth.” He felt with the oar, standing up in the boat. It sank in mud. “Here’s a pretty pass,” said he. “I thought it bad enough to be stuck in the tunnel when the Atmospheric broke down, but it is worse to be fast in the mud. From the tunnel we could extricate ourselves at once, but here--in this mud, we are fast till flow of tide. Kitty,--I mean Kate,--make up your mind to accept my company for some hours. I can’t help you out, and I can’t get out myself. What is more, no one on shore, even if we could call to them, would be able to assist us. Till the tide turns, we are held as tight as rats in a gin.”
“I wonder,” said the girl, recovering her breath, “what makes the tides ebb and flow.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” said John Pooke; “it is enough for me that they have lodged us here on a mud bank in a March night with an icy east wind blowing. By George! I’ve a mind to have out a summons against the Atmospheric Company.”
“Why so?”
“For putting us in this blessed fix. The train came to a standstill in the tunnel by the Parson and Clerk rock, between Dawlish and Teignmouth. We had to tumble out of the carriages and shove her along into daylight. That is how my band-box got loose; as I got out of the carriage the string gave way and down went the box in the tunnel, and opened, and the hat came out. There was an east wind blowing like the blast of a blacksmith’s bellows through the tunnel, and it caught my new hat and carried it along, as if it were the atmospheric train it had to propel. I had to run after it and catch it, all in the half-dark, and all the while the guard and passengers were yelling at me to help and shove along the train; but I wasn’t going to do that till I had recovered my hat. I must think of sister Sue’s wedding, and the figure I shall cut there, before I consider how to get the train out of a tunnel.”
In spite of discomfort and cold, Kate was constrained to laugh.
“If you or I am the worse for this night in the cold, and if my box-hat has had the nap scratched off, and my new suit gets stained with sea-water, I’ll summons the company, I will. What have you got to keep you warm, Kate?”
“A shawl.”
“Let me feel it.”
Pooke groped in the dark and caught hold of what the girl had cast over her head and shoulders.
“It’s thin enough for a June evening,” said he. “It may keep off dews, but it will not keep out frost. Please goodness, we shall have neither hail nor rain; that would be putting an edge on to our misery.”
Both lapsed into silence. The prospect was cheerless. After about five minutes Kate said, “I wonder why there are twelve hours and a half between tides, and not twelve hours.”
“I am sure I cannot tell,” answered Pooke listlessly; he had his head in his hand.
“You see,” remarked Kate, “if the tides were twelve hours exactly apart, there would always be flow at the same hour.”
“I suppose so.” Pooke spoke languidly, as if going to sleep.
“But that extra half-hour, or something like it, throws them out and