CHAPTER XXVIII
THINGS good and evil balance themselves in a remarkable manner; and almost universally. The steel bow attached to the arbalestrier's back, and carried above his head, had sunk him. That very steel bow, owing to that very position, could not escape Gerard's hands, one of which grasped it, and the other went between the bow and the cord; which was as good. The next moment, Denys, by means of his cross-bow, was hoisted with so eager a jerk that half his body bobbed up out of water.
"Now, grip me not! grip me not!" cried Gerard, in mortal terror of that fatal mistake.
"Pas si bête," gurgled Denys.
Seeing the sort of stuff he had to deal with, Gerard was hopeful and calm directly. "On thy back," said he sharply, and seizing the arbalest and taking a stroke forward he aided the desired movement. "Hand on my shoulder! slap the water with the other hand! No—with a downward motion: so. Do nothing more than I bid thee." Gerard had got hold of Denys's long hair, and twisting it hard, caught the end between his side teeth, and with the strong muscles of his youthful neck easily kept up the soldier's head, and struck out lustily across the current. A moment he had hesitated which side to make for, little knowing the awful importance of that simple decision; then, seeing the west bank a trifle nearest, he made towards it, instead of swimming to jail like a good boy, and so furnishing one a novel incident. Owing to the force of the current they slanted considerably, and, when they had covered near a hundred yards, Denys murmured uneasily, "How much more of it?"
"Courage," mumbled Gerard. "Whatever a duck knows, a Dutchman knows; art safe as in bed."
The next moment, to their surprise, they found themselves in shallow water; and so waded ashore. Once on terra firma, they looked at one another from head to foot as if eyes could devour, then by one impulse flung each an arm round the other's neck, and panted there with hearts too full to speak. And at this sacred moment life was sweet as heaven to both; sweetest perhaps to the poor exiled lover, who had just saved his friend. Oh, joy to whose height what poet has yet soared, or ever tried to soar? To save a human life: and that life a loved one. Such moments are worth living for, ay threescore years and ten. And then, calmer, they took hands, and so walked along the bank hand-in-hand like a pair of sweethearts, scarce knowing or caring whither they went.
The boat people were all safe on the late concave now convex craft, Herr Turnip-face, the "Inverter of things," being in the middle. All this fracas seemed not to have essentially deranged his habits. At least he was greeting when he shot our friends into the Rhine, and greeting when they got out again.
"Shall we wait till they right the boat?"