2
The weirs at Marlow and Hedsor had been roaring open-mouthed for ten days before Thrale and Eileen began their journey; but the water had been piling up from below and the floods were working back up river. The fact that none of the weirs above Henley was closed had served to protect Marlow in some degree. There were great floods above Sonning, and from Goring to Culham the country was a vast sheet of water. This water, however, only came down comparatively slowly owing to the dammed condition of the main channel, and a greater proportion of it was absorbed. If the upper weirs had been open, Marlow would have been under water by the middle of December.
Not until the launch had been manœuvred with some difficulty through Boulter’s Lock did Thrale begin to realize the full significance of the situation.
He had had very great difficulty first in reaching and second in raising the paddles of the Taplow weir. In one place the force of the flood had broken away the structure, but even with the relief this passage had afforded the pressure of water on the paddles was so great that he had been working for more than two hours before the last valve was opened.
Eileen had been waiting for him with the launch warped up just below the lock where the force of the stream was not so great.
“I don’t know whether we shall be able to carry out this job,” remarked Thrale when he rejoined her.
“Oh, but we must,” she expostulated.
“Do you see what has happened?” he explained. “All the water is piled up below us. We shall probably find the next locks flood-high, which means that we sha’n’t be able to open them.”
“We must navigate,” said Eileen. “Steam round them; shoot the weirs.”
“Oh, well,” said Thrale, “I’m wondering how far our responsibility goes. If we don’t open the river right down to Richmond, we shall only be increasing the flood in the lower reaches, and there may be women living there. After all, Marlow isn’t the only place on the river. And there is another thing; we may never get back. It’s a risky thing we are proposing to do. No one could swim against this current. If we were upset and carried into a weir, we should be smashed to pieces in no time. Do you think the community can spare us?”
“Bother the community!” replied Eileen.
The community and its activities were already in the background of her mind. Marlow had receded into a little distant place with which she was no longer connected. The world of adventure and romance lay open before her. She wanted only to explore this turbulent river, widened now into a miniature Amazon, from which arose the islands of half-submerged houses and trees that composed the strange archipelago of Maidenhead.
“Oh, well,” said Thrale again. “We’ll try. It’s no use waiting for the stream to go down. We’d better go on now.”
“Shall I cast off?” asked Eileen.
“Steady, steady,” Thrale warned her. “The next quarter of a mile is simply a rapid. You must be ready to get the engines going full ahead the moment we start, or I sha’n’t be able to steer her. And, now, we must both cast off together or we shall be across the stream in two ticks. Just loosen the rope round the cleats and let go, and then start the engine. Let the loose end of the rope drag till we’ve time to pick it up. Are you ready? All right—cast off!”
The little launch swept out into the current with a bound the instant she was released from her moorings, and almost before the engines began to revolve she was caught in the rapids that surged down from the newly-opened weir. She was only a light draught pleasure-boat, designed to navigate the placid surface of the summer Thames, and when she entered the curling broken water below the island she threw up her nose and plunged like a nervous mare.
“Full steam ahead,” shouted Thrale at the toy wheel. Eileen nodded, crouching over her little engine; the roar of the stream had drowned Thrale’s voice, but she guessed his order.
Her eyes were bright with excitement. She had no sense of fear. She was exhilarated by the sense of rapid movement. The launch, indeed, was travelling at a remarkable pace. In the narrow channel between the islands and the town, the river must have been running at nearly ten miles an hour, and the engines were probably adding another eight. In the wide spaces of the ocean eighteen miles an hour may appear a safe and controllable speed, but this little launch was running down hill, she could not be stopped at command, and the restricted course was beset with many and dangerous obstacles.
Thrale, handling the little brass wheel forward, was conscious of uneasiness. The launch steered after a fashion, but he had little control of her. The trees on the banks appeared to be flying upstream at the pace of an express train, and ahead of him was the town bridge.
He decided instantly that they could not pass under it, and put the wheel over, intending to shoot out of the stream into the calm of the flood water over the new open bank. But as the launch turned and came across, the current took her stern and turned her half round. For a moment her lee rail was under water, and she trembled and rocked on the verge of capsize. Then her engines drove her out of the stream and she righted herself again and began to cut through the almost still, shallow flood water.
“Stop her!” roared Thrale.
“I say, what’s up?” replied Eileen, coolly, as she obeyed the order.
“No room to pass under the bridge,” said Thrale. “I suppose we’ll have to navigate, as you call it. Go dead slow, and be prepared to stop her at a moment’s notice.”
They spent over an hour in finding a passage round the approach to the bridge. They had laboriously to pole the launch through the tops of hedges, and in one place they were aground for ten minutes. But after they had returned to the stream once more they had a rapid and easy passage down to Bray. They shot the great arch of the Maidenhead railway bridge triumphantly. Eileen said it was “glorious.”
The weir at Bray proved even more difficult to negotiate than the one above, and by the time it was fully opened the dull December afternoon was closing in.
They spent that night moored to two of the elms that ring the isolated little church in the meadows by Boveney.
“At this rate,” remarked Thrale as they settled themselves for the night, “it’ll take us a week to get to Richmond. We’ve done two weirs out of thirteen, so far.”