Once more they stood up in the boat, so as to obtain a better view of the movements of the man on the roof. In a few minutes they beheld the soldier prepare to raise the flag, and no sooner had he lifted it high in the air, than the guns of the frigate thundered forth a deafening “broadside.” Poor Mrs. Sandboys was standing up in the boat with her back to the frigate, and being in no way prepared for the shock, she was so startled with the suddenness and intensity of the noise, that she staggered as if stunned by it, and fell back head-foremost into the river.
It was the act of a moment for Cursty to dive after her, and presently up the two came together.
Mrs. Sandboys, in her terror, threw her arms round about her husband’s neck, so as effectually to prevent his rendering her the least assistance; and so tightly did she cling to him, that it was some considerable time before even the waterman could manage to lift either the one or the other into the boat.
In a short while, however, the men of the Humane Society were on the spot, attracted by the shrieks of the affrighted Mrs. Sandboys in the water, and the sympathizing ladies on the shore.
The wretched Mrs. Sandboys, by the time she was extricated from the flood, was, what with the fright and the water she had swallowed, almost insensible, while Cursty had been held down sufficiently long by his wife in the river to feel “far from himself.”
The moist and miserable couple were immediately carried to the Society’s Receiving House, where, having been stripped of their drenched apparel, and placed in warm beds, the attendants proceeded, some to rub them till they were nearly flayed, and others to inflate their lungs, by means of a pair of bellows being inserted up their nostrils.
Here they remained for some considerable time between the blankets of the Humane Society, and when they were sufficiently invigorated to be thought fit to leave the establishment, their dried clothes were brought to them, in order that they might prepare for their return home.
Mrs. Sandboys, when she saw the limp and ungainly state of her two-guinea chip bonnet, the artificial flowers of which looked as if they had been boiled,—for the colours had run one into the other, and dyed the once white bonnet like “Joseph’s coat of many colours,”—Mrs. Sandboys, we repeat, when she saw the wreck of her former loveliness, could not help bursting into tears, and indulging in the feminine luxury of a “good cry.” Her green satin dress, which she had bought, as they say, “expressly for the occasion,” had lost all its gloss and a good part of its colour, which had run into her petticoats, till both the satin and under clothing were about as green and attractive as a gingham umbrella. Her bronze shoes she had left in the bed of the river, there to astonish and puzzle some future geologist, when examining the fossils in the miocene formation of the tertiary deposits; her auburn front, too, had been unfortunately dried by a quick fire, so that the foundation had shrivelled up, and the natural parting had been scorched into a deep brown, while the hair looked as fuzzy and rusty as cocoa-nut fibre.
At length, having made herself look as decent as she could under the circumstances, and having been provided with a pair of list slippers at the expense of the Society, Aggy was ushered into the presence of the sharer of her sorrows and her “ducking;” and after many mutual congratulations on their lucky escape, and consolations under their afflictions, the melancholy Sandboys set out at dusk on their way back to the establishment of Mrs. Wewitz; and as they rode along in the cab, they did not forget to attribute the whole of their disasters to that wretch of a Frenchman.
Before they reached “Parthenon House,” they had formed the conclusion that Fate had irrevocably forbid their ever seeing the Great Exhibition; and come what may, they were determined immediately to return to the peace and happiness of their native mountains of Buttermere.