"No," he said, and opened his eyes. She raised hers, and both perceived one reason for the darkness—the boat had sunk nine feet or so. The dark, dripping walls of the lock towered above them. While he had fought his pain and she her sympathy the lock had been slowly emptying itself. They were at the bottom, or almost, and up those smooth walls there was no climbing out.
"Push the boat against the lower gate," he said; and as she obeyed he added, "I must try to climb up somehow. I'll pitch the crowbar up on shore first. Where is it?"
"I left it on the lock gate," she said. "Wasn't that right?"
"It doesn't matter," he told her; but even as he spoke the sluice, which the weight of the water had held in place after the pin had been removed, now, as the waters above and below it grew level with each other, fell into its place with a splash and an echoing boom, and with the shock the crowbar fell from its resting-place on the tarred ledge and disappeared in the water below.
"Lucky it didn't fall on us," he said, and laughed. "It's no use my climbing out now, Princess. I couldn't open the gate, anyhow. We're caught like two poor little rabbits in a trap—or three, if you count Charles—and here we must stay till some one comes along with a crowbar. I dare say there'll be a barge by and by. D'you mind very much?"
"Not a bit," she assured him, cheerfully. "It's all my fault, anyhow, and, besides, I enjoy it. Let me tie your hand up, and then you must smoke till rescue comes."
"Aren't you cold?" he asked, for indeed the air was chill in that watery inclosure.
"Not a bit. I have my cloak," she said, and snuggled into it. "But you'll be cold. Have half—it's a student's cloak, eight yards around."
He accepted the offer, and they sat with the cloak wrapped around them both, with Charles snuggling under the lower folds of it.