The drizzle had merged into a steady downpour as they reached the house. In the framing of the lighted doorway Le Sage came out to meet them, smoking a pipe.
“Hullo. You’ve prolonged a pretty wet walk,” he said. “Magtig! but you look like four jolly drowned rats.”
“And that’s what two of us jolly near were, father,” said Lalanté, in clear ringing tones. And then she explained what had happened. Le Sage stared at her as if he were listening to something altogether incredible.
“Good God! Lalanté. And you can hear the river from here, a mile and a half away, bellowing as if it was at the very door. Why, it hasn’t been down like this since the big flood of ’74. And you went in it, Warren, and—got out of it! Well, well. They give Victoria Crosses and so on, but—oh damn it! you deserve a couple of dozen of ’em.”
His voice had a tremble in it as he gripped the other’s hand. The whole thing was more eloquent than a mere speech would have been. He was deeply moved—moved to the core, but Le Sage was not a man of words.
“Oh, that’s all right, Le Sage,” said Warren. “Only as I was telling Charlie, it’s lucky he had the discretion to go in above stream instead of down, or the devil himself would hardly have managed to get him out. Come now, let’s have something warming and then I’ll go and change, though I’ll have to borrow some of your togs for that same purpose.”
“Right. Here you are, and mix it stiff,” said Le Sage, diving into a sideboard and extracting a decanter. “Good Lord! And you got into the Kunaga in a flood like this, and got out again! Why, it’s a record.”
This was Le Sage’s recognition of the fact that this man had saved his child’s life at enormous risk to his own. But Warren thoroughly understood and appreciated it; and was more elate than ever, inwardly.
“Go along, you children, and change at once,” pronounced Lalanté with decision. “And be quick about it, and give yourselves a glowing rub down with a rough towel I don’t know that we two who haven’t been in the river are much drier than the other two who have,” she added with a laugh, as she disappeared.