The driver, who from the moment of the mishap had remained comatose, shook his reins feebly and we jogged forward. But this was his last effort. At the next sharp bend in the road he lurched suddenly, swayed for a moment, and toppled to earth with a thud. The horse came to a halt.
Mr. Jope was out in a moment. He glanced up and down the road.
"Tumble out, youngster! There's no one in sight."
"Is—is he hurt?"
"Blest if I know." He stooped over the prostrate body. "Hurt?" he asked, and after a moment reported, "No, I reckon not: talkin' in his sleep, more like—for the only word I can make out is 'Jezebel.' That don't help us much, do it?" He scanned the road again. "There's only one thing to do. I can't drive ye: I never steered yet with the tiller lines in front—it al'ays seemed to me un-Christian. We must take to the fields. I used to know these parts, and by the bearings we can't be half a mile above the ferry. Here, through that gate to the left!"
We left the man lying and his horse cropping the hedgerow a few paces ahead; and struck off to the left, down across a field of young corn interspersed with poppies. The broad estuary shone at our feet, with its beaches uncovered—for the tide was low—and across its crowded shipping I marked and recognised (for Mr. Trapp had often described them to me) a line of dismal prison-hulks, now disused, moored head to stern off a mudbank on the farther shore.
"Plain sailing, my lad," panted Mr. Jope, as the cornfield threw up its heat in our faces. "See, yonder's Saltash!" He pointed up the river to a small town which seemed to run toppling down a steep hill and spread itself like a landslip at the base. "I got a sister living there, if we can only fetch across; a very powerful woman; widowed, and sells fish."
We took an oblique line down the hillside, and descended, some two or three hundred yards below the ferry, upon a foreshore firm for the most part and strewn with flat stones, but melting into mud by the water's edge. A small trading ketch lay there, careened as the tide had left her; but at no great angle, thanks to her flat-bottomed build. A line of tattered flags, with no wind to stir them, led down from the truck of either mast, and as we drew near I called Mr. Jope's attention to an immense bunch of foxgloves and pink valerian on her bowsprit end.
"Looks like a wedding, don't it?" said he; and turning up his clean white trousers he strolled down to the water's edge for a closer look. "Scandalous," he added, examining her timbers.
"What's scandalous?"