“Didn’t aspire to your college boat, eh?” said Philip, who ever since they started had been mentally anathematising this cockney ’Arry, whose alternate star-scraping and crab-catching efforts had kept him in a lively state of irritation and bad time.
“Won’t some of you young ladies favour us with a song?” suggested the General. “Nothing like melody on the water.”
“Rather,” said Philip. “It’ll send us along at twice the pace—inspire us, don’t you know. Make us keep time—if anything will,” he added, significantly.
There was some little demur among the girls, who were shy of singing without accompaniment. Then they started the Canadian boat-song, and the effect of the clear voices floating out over the mirror-like water was pretty enough, for the said voices certainly did “keep tune,” even though the oars—thanks to the star-scraping proclivities of the maladroit Scott—failed with exasperating frequency to “keep time.” And the scene was a lovely and a peaceful one, inspiring, too, if you came to contrast the utter insignificance of that cockleshell boat floating there on the blue expanse of lake, with the sombre grandeur of the great mountains—many a jagged and fantastic peak starting into view above and behind the abrupt forest-clad slopes sheering up from the water’s edge as the distance widened between them and the Savoy shore. Then, dominating the flat Rhone Valley, the towering Dent de Morcles, and further in the background the snowy head of the Mont Velan peeping round the volcano-like crest of the pyramid-shaped Mont Catogne, and above the green slopes around Les Avants, the rocky hump of the Naye shone red in the beams of the westering sun.
But in spite of the calm and peaceful stillness lying alike upon the water and the encircling mountains, Jules Berthod seemed not altogether at ease. There was a heavy loom of cloud over the purple Jura, which to the mind of the experienced boatman had no business to be there. At the same time a kind of lurid opacity crept over the hitherto radiant sun.
“Crr-rré nom! Si on allait nous flanquer un coup de vent, par exemple!” he muttered between his teeth as he sent more than one uneasy glance to the westward.
There was one upon whom that glance was not lost—who had also begun to read the face of the sky. That one was Fordham.
“What do you say to my taking your place, Mr Scott?” he said. “We must be nearly half-way across by now. If anything, rather more.”
Scott, who had had enough of it, jumped at this proposal, and sank down with a sigh of relief into the cushioned seat among the ladies.
“When are we to take our turn?” asked the youngest Miss Ottley.