Kathleen could row, and she put the oars in the rowlocks, and sat down to scull. At the same moment Gerard sprang from the bank into the stream, and began swimming towards the boat. Kathleen strained at the oars, and little by little the distance between them increased, although Gerard was a strong swimmer.
But there are sand-spits on the Grey, and on one of these the boat stranded. With a loud shout, Gerard welcomed the fact, while he made stronger exertions to gain the boat. Kathleen seized an oar, and stood up, attempting to free the boat from the obstruction. The boat began to yield to her exertions, but Gerard came nearer and nearer. Just as she had set the boat free his hands were on the gunwale of the boat, but she raised the oar and brought it down smartly across his knuckles. With a fresh curse he let go, and a moment later the boat was drifting further and further from him.
It is a dangerous passage, even for a skilled oarsman, through the Gorge of the Grey River. In times of flood no man who laid claims to sanity would attempt the feat; but, even when the river is low and flows quietly if swiftly, there are rocks and snags that obstruct the passage. To strike one of these would mean a total wreck.
On either side of the river the masses of grey rock ascend steep and slippery from the surface of the water. The stream is deep to the very edges of the cliff, offering but little foothold to one who would climb from the water to firm land. Here and there the caves break the even surface of the rocks, and in yet other places great masses jut out in fantastic shapes above the water. It is always dark and cool in the Gorge, for the sun never penetrates there excepting in stray beams; a pleasant place of a hot summer's day, with an expert oarsman and coxswain to make a safe passage, but full of peril to a young girl alone in a skiff.
Kathleen O'Connor was, however, so glad to be freed from Gerard, not so much because she feared physical violence as on account of the uncanny influence he had over her, that she faced the passage of the Gorge almost with equanimity. She recognised the danger, for more than one narrow escape from drowning was chronicled in connection with the place, and she crouched in the bow of the boat with an oar in her hand, watching anxiously for rock and snags. Now and then she used the blade of her oar as a paddle to prevent the boat from turning broadside to the current. In this manner she was carried safely through the Gorge.
Kathleen O'Connor's passage down the Grey is recorded as the first occasion on which a woman accomplished the feat alone. Others have done it since then from bravado and a desire for notoriety. Kathleen was compelled to be the pioneer among women by fear. The following day she had a paragraph to herself in both papers, and Grey Town was led to believe that she had made the passage merely from a love of adventure. This story was never contradicted, but, like many other tales of adventure, it is untrue.
At last she found herself safe in the wider expanse of water below the Gorge, an object of interest and admiration to the fishers and boating men who frequent that part of the Grey. Of them Kathleen took little notice. She scrambled back to the sculler's seat, and after a short pull found herself beside the boat shed.
Tomkins, who kept the boat shed, was smoking his pipe on the landing stage when Kathleen drifted out from the Gorge. Shading his eyes with a big, rough hand, he stood watching her in amazement.
"It's Miss O'Connor," he muttered to a man beside him, "and she's come through alone. She's the last woman I'd have expected to do such a thing!"