As she had cried it, so in agony she listened for the response.
It came; but Arthur Miles could not distinguish the word, nor tell if
Tilda had heard better. She had caught his hand, and they were running
together as fast as their small legs could carry them.
The chase was hopeless from the first. The tug, in midstream, gave no sign of drawing to shore. Somehow—but exactly how the boy could never tell—they were racing after her down the immense length of the green meadow.
It seemed endless, did this meadow. But it ended at last, by a grassy shore where the two rivers met, cutting off and ending all hope. And here, for the first and only time on their voyage, all Tilda's courage forsook her.
"Bill! Oh, Bill!" she wailed, standing at the water's edge and stretching forth her hands across the relentless flood.
But the dog, barking desperately beside her, drowned her voice, and no answer came.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE S.S. EVAN EVANS
"Then three times round went our gallant ship."—OLD SONG.
The time is next morning, and the first grey hour of daylight. The scene, an unlovely tidal basin crowded with small shipping— schooners and brigantines dingy with coal-dust, tramp steamers, tugs, Severn trows; a ship lock and beyond it the river, now grown into a broad flood all grey and milky in the dawn.
Tilda and Arthur Miles sat on the edge of the basin, with Godolphus between them, and stared down on the deck of the Severn Belle tug, waiting for some sign of life to declare itself on board. By leave of a kindly cranesman, they had spent the night in a galvanised iron shed where he stored his cinders, and the warmth in the cinders had kept them comfortable. But the dawn was chilly, and now they had only their excitement to keep them warm. For some reason best known to himself the dog did not share in this excitement, and only the firm embrace of Tilda's arm around his chest and shoulders held him from wandering. Now and again he protested against this restraint.