The boat was an enormously clumsy affair. Tynsdale snatched at the painter when the bows touched the pier. “Get into your things, we’ll do the rest.”
“Here’s the brandy.” Kent solicitously handed me the flask. I didn’t need it, but thought I deserved a pull.
When I was dressed, I joined my friends, and we put our things into the boat. Tynsdale, who had grown up among shipping, had swung her round, so that her nose pointed downstream. We clambered in.
Kent and I were sitting in the bow when he pushed off, and started to propel us across the river in proper waterman’s style with an oar he had found in the bottom of the boat. Silently working it over the stern, he guided her round the counter of the barge, underneath the wire cable which connected the latter with the one lower down, and out into the placid stream.
Not a word was spoken after we got clear. The large bulk of the empty barge dwindled as the strip of water widened between us. The trees on the bank we had left grew smaller, a trembling line of light glimmered on the surface of the river from the winking window of the cottage. Then the other bank grew distinct and high. The boat’s nose swung upstream and touched. I am not quite sure who was ashore first, Kent or I, but I am certain I had the painter.
“Don’t let her drift,” Tynsdale whispered from his quarter-deck, when I had scrambled ashore. “Belay somewhere, if you can.” We found a post with an iron ring on top, almost embedded in the ground, and made fast. Our knapsacks were put ashore. Tynsdale left last, as befitted the captain.
“Leave her there,” he counseled. “If we let her drift and get caught, we’ll be charged with stealing her. They may not trouble to investigate if they find her here.”
Hurriedly we retired among some bushes which dotted the hollows along the river bank.
“Council of war,” I suggested in high glee. “What’s to be done now? What time, Kent?”