“Perfectly all right.”
And again they were still. The launch twanged and hooted, somebody was singing. Then as if the night smashed, suddenly there was a great shout, a confusion of shouting, warring on the water, then the horrid noise of paddles reversed and churned violently.
Gerald sat up, and Gudrun looked at him in fear.
“Somebody in the water,” he said, angrily, and desperately, looking keenly across the dusk. “Can you row up?”
“Where, to the launch?” asked Gudrun, in nervous panic.
“Yes.”
“You’ll tell me if I don’t steer straight,” she said, in nervous apprehension.
“You keep pretty level,” he said, and the canoe hastened forward.
The shouting and the noise continued, sounding horrid through the dusk, over the surface of the water.
“Wasn’t this bound to happen?” said Gudrun, with heavy hateful irony. But he hardly heard, and she glanced over her shoulder to see her way. The half-dark waters were sprinkled with lovely bubbles of swaying lights, the launch did not look far off. She was rocking her lights in the early night. Gudrun rowed as hard as she could. But now that it was a serious matter, she seemed uncertain and clumsy in her stroke, it was difficult to paddle swiftly. She glanced at his face. He was looking fixedly into the darkness, very keen and alert and single in himself, instrumental. Her heart sank, she seemed to die a death. “Of course,” she said to herself, “nobody will be drowned. Of course they won’t. It would be too extravagant and sensational.” But her heart was cold, because of his sharp impersonal face. It was as if he belonged naturally to dread and catastrophe, as if he were himself again.