The Girl on the Boat
throughout of steel and india-rubber, who is being lugged away from
cash which he has been regarding in the light of a legacy. Indeed, it
would be hard to find a respect in which it does not differ. So far
from lying inert in Sam’s arms and allowing himself to be saved in a
quiet and orderly manner, Mr. Swenson betrayed all the symptoms of one
who feels that he has fallen among murderers. Mr. Swenson, much as he
disliked competition, was ready to put up with it, provided that it was
fair competition. This pulling your rival away from the loot so that
you could grab it yourself—thus shockingly had the man misinterpreted
Sam’s motives—was another thing altogether, and his stout soul would
have none of it. He began immediately to struggle with all the violence
at his disposal. His large, hairy hands came out of the water and swung
hopefully in the direction where he assumed his assailant’s face to be.
Sam was not unprepared for this display. His researches in the art of
life-saving had taught him that your drowning man frequently struggles
against his best interests. In which case, cruel to be kind, one simply
stunned the blighter. He decided to stun Mr. Swenson, though, if he had
known that gentleman more intimately and had been aware that he had the
reputation of possessing the thickest head on the water-front, he would
have realised the magnitude of the task. Friends of Mr. Swenson, in
convivial moments, had frequently endeavoured to stun him with bottles,
boots and bits of lead piping and had gone away depressed by failure.
Sam, ignorant of this, attempted to do the job with clenched fist,
which he brought down as smartly as possible on the crown of the
other’s bowler hat.
It was the worst thing he could have done. Mr. Swenson thought highly
of his hat and this brutal attack upon it confirmed his gloomiest
apprehensions. Now thoroughly convinced that the only thing to do was
to sell his life dearly, he wrenched himself round, seized his
assailant by the neck, twined his arms about his middle, and
accompanied him below the surface.
By the time he had swallowed his first pint and was beginning his
second, Sam was reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that
this was the end. The thought irritated him unspeakably. This, he felt,
was just the silly, contrary way things always happened. Why should it
be he who was perishing like this? Why not Eustace Hignett? Now there
was a fellow whom this sort of thing would just have suited.
Broken-hearted Eustace Hignett would have looked on all this as a
merciful release.
He paused in his reflections to try to disentangle the more prominent
of Mr. Swenson’s limbs from about him. By this time he was sure that he
had never met anyone he disliked so intensely as Mr. Swenson—not even
his Aunt Adeline. The man was a human octopus. Sam could count seven
distinct legs twined round him and at least as many arms. It seemed to
him that he was being done to death in his prime by a solid platoon of
Swedes. He put his whole soul into one last effort ... something seemed
to give ... he was free. Pausing only to try to kick Mr. Swenson in the
face, Sam shot to the surface. Something hard and sharp prodded him in
the head. Then something caught the collar of his coat; and, finally,
spouting like a whale, he found himself dragged upwards and over the
side of a boat.
The time which Sam had spent with Mr. Swenson below the surface had
been brief, but it had been long enough to enable the whole floating
population of the North River to converge on the scene in scows,
skiffs, launches, tugs, and other vessels. The fact that the water in
that vicinity was crested with currency had not escaped the notice of
these navigators, and they had gone to it as one man. First in the race
came the tug “Reuben S. Watson,” the skipper of which, following a
famous precedent, had taken his little daughter to bear him company. It
was to this fact that Marlowe really owed his rescue. Women often have
a vein of sentiment in them where men can only see the hard business
side of a situation; and it was the skipper’s daughter who insisted
that the family boat-hook, then in use as a harpoon for spearing dollar
bills, should be devoted to the less profitable but humaner end of
extricating the young man from a watery grave.
The skipper had grumbled a bit at first but had given way—he always
spoiled the girl—with the result that Sam found himself sitting on the
deck of the tug, engaged in the complicated process of restoring his
faculties to the normal. In a sort of dream he perceived Mr. Swenson
rise to the surface some feet away, adjust his bowler hat, and, after
one long look of dislike in his direction, swim off rapidly to
intercept a five which was floating under the stern of a near-by skiff.
Sam sat on the deck and panted. He played on the boards like a public
fountain. At the back of his mind there was a flickering thought that
he wanted to do something, a vague feeling that he had some sort of an
appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was.
Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was
so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the knack of it.
“Well, aincher wet?” said a voice.
The skipper’s daughter was standing beside him, looking down
commiseratingly. Of the rest of the family all he could see was the
broad blue seats of their trousers as they leaned hopefully over the
side in the quest for wealth.
“Yes, sir! You sure are wet! Gee! I never seen anyone so wet! I seen
wet guys but I never seen anyone so wet as you. Yessir, you’re
certainly _wet!_”
“I _am_ wet,” admitted Sam.
“Yessir, you’re wet! Wet’s the word all right. Good and wet, that’s
what you are!”
“It’s the water,” said Sam. His brain was still clouded; he wished he
could remember what that appointment was. “That’s what has made me
wet.”
“It’s sure made you wet all right,” agreed the girl. She looked at him
interestedly. “Wotcha do it for?” she asked.
“Do it for?”
“Yes, wotcha do it for? Wotcha do a Brodie for off’n that ship? I
didn’t see it myself, but pa says you come walloping down off’n the
deck like a sack of potatoes.”
Sam uttered a sharp cry. He had remembered.
“Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
“The liner.”
“She’s off down the river, I guess. She was swinging round, the last I
seen of her.”
“She’s not gone!”
“Sure she’s gone. Wotcha expect her to do? She’s gotta get over to the
other side, ain’t she? Cert’nly she’s gone.” She looked at him
interested. “Do you want to be on board her?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then, for the love of Pete, wotcha doin’ walloping off’n her like a
sack of potatoes?”
“I slipped. I was pushed or something.” Sam sprang to his feet and
looked wildly about him. “I must get back. Isn’t there any way of
getting back?”
“Well, you could ketch up with her at quarantine out in the bay. She’ll
stop to let the pilot off.”
“Can you take me to quarantine?”
The girl glanced doubtfully at the seat of the nearest pair of
trousers.
“Well, we _could_,” she said. “But pa’s kind of set in his ways, and
right now he’s fishing for dollar bills with the boat hook. He’s apt to
get sorta mad if he’s interrupted.”
“I’ll give him fifty dollars if he’ll put me on board.”
“Got it on you?” inquired the nymph coyly. She had her share of
sentiment, but she was her father’s daughter and inherited from him the
business sense.
“Here it is.” He pulled out his pocket book. The book was dripping, but
the contents were only fairly moist.
“Pa!” said the girl.
The trouser-seat remained where it was, deaf to its child’s cry.
“Pa! Cummere! Wantcha!”
The trousers did not even quiver. But this girl was a girl of decision.
There was some nautical implement resting in a rack convenient to her
hand. It was long, solid, and constructed of one of the harder forms of
wood. Deftly extracting this from its place, she smote her inattentive
parent on the only visible portion of him. He turned sharply,
exhibiting a red, bearded face.
“Pa, this gen’man wants to be took aboard the boat at quarantine. He’ll
give you fifty berries.”
The wrath died out of the skipper’s face like the slow turning down of
a lamp. The fishing had been poor, and so far he had only managed to
secure a single two-dollar bill. In a crisis like the one which had so
suddenly arisen you cannot do yourself justice with a boat-hook.
“Fifty berries!”
“Fifty seeds!” the girl assured him. “Are you on?”
“Queen,” said the skipper simply, “you said a mouthful!”
Twenty minutes later Sam was climbing up the side of the liner as it
lay towering over the tug like a mountain. His clothes hung about him
clammily. He squelched as he walked.
A kindly-looking old gentleman who was smoking a cigar by the rail
regarded him with open eyes.
“My dear sir, you’re very wet,” he said.
Sam passed him with a cold face and hurried through the door leading to
the companion way.
“Mummie, why is that man wet?” cried the clear voice of a little child.
Sam whizzed by, leaping down the stairs.
“Good Lord, sir! You’re very wet!” said a steward in the doorway of the
dining saloon.
“You _are_ wet,” said a stewardess in the passage.
Sam raced for his state-room. He bolted in and sank on the lounge. In
the lower berth Eustace Hignett was lying with closed eyes. He opened
them languidly, then stared.
“Hullo!” he said. “I say! You’re wet!”
§ 4
Sam removed his clinging garments and hurried into a new suit. He was
in no mood for conversation and Eustace Hignett’s frank curiosity
jarred upon him. Happily, at this point, a sudden shivering of the
floor and a creaking of woodwork proclaimed the fact that the vessel
was under way again, and his cousin, turning pea-green, rolled over on
his side with a hollow moan. Sam finished buttoning his waistcoat and
went out.
He was passing the inquiry bureau on the C-deck, striding along with
bent head and scowling brow, when a sudden exclamation caused him to
look up, and the scowl was wiped from his brow as with a sponge. For
there stood the girl he had met on the dock. With her was a superfluous
young man who looked like a parrot.
“Oh, _how_ are you?” asked the girl breathlessly.
“Splendid, thanks,” said Sam.
“Didn’t you get very wet?”
“I did get a little damp.”
“I thought you would,” said the young man who looked like a parrot.
“Directly I saw you go over the side I said to myself: ‘That fellow’s
going to get wet!’”
There was a pause.
“Oh!” said the girl. “May I—Mr.——?”
“Marlowe.”
“Mr. Marlowe. Mr. Bream Mortimer.”
Sam smirked at the young man. The young man smirked at Sam.
“Nearly got left behind,” said Bream Mortimer.
“Yes, nearly.”
“No joke getting left behind.”
“No.”
“Have to take the next boat. Lose a lot of time,” said Mr. Mortimer,
driving home his point.
The girl had listened to these intellectual exchanges with impatience.
She now spoke again.
“Oh, Bream!”
“Hello?”
“Do be a dear and run down to the saloon and see if it’s all right
about our places for lunch.”
“It is all right. The table steward said so.”
“Yes, but go and make certain.”
“All right.”
He hopped away and the girl turned to Sam with shining eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Marlowe, you oughtn’t to have done it! Really, you oughtn’t!
You might have been drowned! But I never saw anything so wonderful. It
was like the stories of knights who used to jump into lions’ dens after
gloves!”
“Yes?” said Sam a little vaguely. The resemblance had not struck him.
It seemed a silly hobby, and rough on the lions, too.
“It was the sort of thing Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad would have done!
But you shouldn’t have bothered, really! It’s all right, now.”
“Oh, it’s all right now?”