They pushed off, and Dolly insisted on taking an oar. It would warm him, he said, and he was longing to handle an oar again, anyway. Seaman Dick took the other, and they pulled out into the current, and went shooting downstream and making for the township and the bridge.
And Steve huddled up in the bows with smarting hands that were blistered and skinned with the unaccustomed work at the oars, and muscles that ached as if he had been beaten with clubs. He spoke to Dolly, and answered his questions and listened to his story of their adventures mechanically. He heard it all dully, as he heard the slow rhythmitic roll and cluck of the oars in the rowlocks and the rippling hiss and lap of the water under the bows; but clearer than all during the long pull back he could hear Ess’s words over and over again, “Don’t touch me.” He had finished a hard day’s work only to saddle and ride through the night, and the dangers of the Toss-Up, and the weary road along the river bank; he had pulled and strained at the oars till his muscles cracked; he had kept up through it all, because it was for her, and because he lived on the hope that he might find her. He had listened with beating heart for the sound of her voice through that last bitter struggle to reach the tree, and he had waited with hope and love surging through him as she dropped to his arms. But.... “Don’t touch me ... don’t touch me....”
His hopes had sprung again warm and thrilling, after that letter to her uncle and the scene with Ned Gunliffe. She had not written him, or given word or sign that she had turned to him again, but he thought that after she had seen the sort of man Ned was, she might discount what he had told her and led her to believe before. Well, there was an end to all that. Even in her extremity—even when her relief at her rescue might have blotted out her bitterness—she remembered, and would not let him as much as lay a hand on her to help her.
She roused a little presently, and asked Steve how he came to be there and how they had heard at the Ridge of their being cut off, and she thanked him for coming and for what he had done. And Steve answered coldly and briefly, thinking she only spoke the words she did out of a sense of duty, and because she ought to thank him.
And Ess again misunderstood his curtness, and so the breach widened again that had been so near to closing; and they both sat there with hearts yearning to each other and the bare boat’s length between them; only the boat’s length, and that so easily passed. But not so easy to pass was the length and breadth of the misunderstanding that separated them, as misunderstandings separate so many others—a tiny stream perhaps, that runs from the spring of some small trifle, and rises and swells till it runs as wide and destructive as the floods did that day over the Coolongolong paddocks.
CHAPTER XXIII.
With its extra load the boat was perilously deep in the water; it had picked up the other people off a patch of high ground, where they had been cut off, and were being threatened by the still rising waters; but the current carried them towards the township with little more exertion than was required to keep the boat pointing the right direction and to dodge the flotsam that at times swept dangerously near their overloaded craft.
But they came at last to the bridge and swept past the end of it, and their line was caught by the watchers on the bridge, and they were hauled into safety and helped stumbling with weariness up the slope to the township, and hot food and drinks pressed on them, and the hospitality of the whole township flung wide to them.
Trooper Dan and Mrs. Dan were waiting with the others to see the landing, and Mrs. Dan ran to Steve. “Man alive, Steve,” she said, “you’re like a walkin’ corpse. You’re just fair beat. You must come to us and stay a day or two, Steve. There’s a bed all ready for you.”