Sophia threw herself over to the other side of the boat, and Mr Walcot started up, looking very pale.
“Sit down!” cried Mr Grey, in his loudest voice. Mr Walcot sat down as if shot; and Sophia crept back to her place, with an anxious glance at the retreating bird. Of course, the two young people were plentifully lectured about shifting their places in a boat without leave, and were asked the question, more easily put than answered, how they should have felt if they had been the means of precipitating the whole party into the water. Then there was a calling out from the other boat to know what was the matter, and an explanation; so that Sophia and Mr Walcot had to take refuge in mutual sympathy from universal censure.
“The birds always quarrel with the boats—boats of this make,” explained the boatman; “because their enemies go out in skiffs to take them. They let a lighter pass without taking any notice, while they always scour the water near a skiff; but I never heard of their flying at a pleasure party in any sort of boat.”
“Where are the black swans that a sea-captain brought to Lady Hunter?” asked Philip. “I see nothing of them.”
“The male died; choked, sir,—with a crust of bread a stranger gave him. But for that, he would have been now in sight, I don’t doubt; for he prospered very well till that day.”
“Of a crust of bread! What a death!” exclaimed Philip. “And the other?”
“She died, sir, by the visitation of God,” replied the boatman, solemnly.
It was obviously so far from the man’s intention that any one should laugh, that nobody did laugh. Maria observed to her next neighbour that, to a keeper of swans, his birds were more companionable, and quite as important, as their human charge to coroners and jurymen.
The boat got aground amongst the flags, at a point where the tow-rope had to be carried over a foot-bridge at some little distance inland. One of the men, in attempting to leap the ditch, had fallen in, and emerged dripping with mud. Ben jumped ashore to take his turn at the rope, and Enderby pushed the boat off again with an oar, with some little effort. Mr Walcot had squeezed Sophia’s parasol so hard, during the crisis, as to break its ivory ring. The accident, mortifying as it was to him, did not prevent his exclaiming in a fervour of gratitude, when the vibration of the boat was over, and they were once more afloat—
“What an exceedingly clever man Mr Enderby is!”