"Alive, sir?" said the sergeant incredulously.
"Just. I'm waiting to hear her story."
The sergeant was moved to wring his hand. "Well, I don't know when I've been more glad of anything, Mr. Amberley. You're a wonder, sir, that's what you are — a blinking wonder!"
Amberley laughed. "Spare my blushes, Gubbins. What happened to you?"
An expression of disgust succeeded the sergeant's cheerful grin. "Yes, you may well ask, sir. A motorboat waiting! Oh, it was waiting all right — bone dry! When you went off sudden-like, I got hold of this here Peabody and told him to look lively. So off we sets, the two of us, up the creek to where he said he'd got this boat moored. Well that was all right; he had. What's more, he'd got a little rowboat all handy to get out to it. I don't like them rickety little boats, they weren't made for men of my size, but I knows my duty and in I got. Well, Peabody rowed out to the motorboat, and a nice work he made of it, besides passing an uncalled-for remark about fat men which I'm not accustomed to and won't put up with. However, that's neither here nor there. We got out to the motorboat and come up alongside. And I'm bothered if that fat-headed chump didn't let me get into it before he remembered he hadn't filled up with petrol. Yes, you can laugh, sir. I've no doubt there's nothing you like better than clambering out of one boat into another, with the thing bobbing up and down and kind of slipping away from under your feet all on account of a born fool that can't keep it steady for half a minute."
"I'm afraid Peabody has been having a little game with you, Sergeant."
"If I thought that," said the sergeant, fulminating, "well, I don't hardly know what I'd do, though I'd be tempted, sir. Very tempted, I'd be. Well, he went and remembered about the petrol, like I said, and out I had to get again. I don't know which was the worst, getting out of that little cockle-shell or getting back into it. However, I done it, and I told this Peabody to look slippy and row for that landing-stage. Which was the best I could do, sir, seeing as the motorboat was no use and I'd got to get across the creek somehow. I won't repeat what that Peabody said, because it don't bear repeating, but…"
"I said," interrupted a voice with relish, "I said I 'adn't been 'fired to row an 'ippd across the creek, and no more I 'ad."
The sergeant swung round and perceived Mr. Peabody in the doorway. "That'll do!" he said. "We don't want you hanging about here. And let me tell you, if I have any of your impudence it'll be the worse for you. Impeded the law, that's what you done."
Mr. Peabody withdrew, quelled by this dark implication. The sergeant turned back to Amberley. "Don't you pay any attention to him, sir."