“There is Ree!” responded the sepulchral bass from above, and then as the old horse stepped out, both voices declared in duet that ’twas Methusalem bore the bells away. Jinny, waving her whip with a last backward glance at her grandfather, saw him wildly agitating his telescope, to which his coloured handkerchief was tied like a flag of victory.
IV
Methusalem waded stolidly towards the river, his cart nearly floating in places. On the drier artificial slope leading up to the bridge she drew rein, and, jumping down, walked cautiously over the two still standing arches to hail Ephraim Bidlake, now some hundred yards down the opposite bank. As she put her horn to her lips to summon him, she saw, quanted up-stream, another barge with a reinforcement of sacks, and as it must pass under the bridge she moved to the other side to send her message by it as it came along. But the posse of mud-grimed men with a last push of their submerged poles fell prostrate before her, as in some Oriental obeisance, and she heard the tops of the gault-sacks scraping against the brickwork of the arch as the boat passed under it, so high was the water. It reminded her again of her nightmare. But no heads came crack as they glided through, and running to the other side, she spoke the rising crew.
Turning, she became aware of Bundock standing, bag-bowed, on the dyke, amid a mass of sodden straw, gazing in horror at the ruins and the dead horse bashing against them, swathed in yellow weed. She advanced to the edge of the void and hailed him across some fifteen feet of eddying water.
“Ahoy, Bundock!”
“For God’s sake, Jinny!” he cried, startled. “Go back! That’ll give way.”
“Not with my weight!” she laughed. “You going across?”
“How can I?”
“There’s boats, barges, wherries, lighters, punts, and swimming,” called Jinny, “and you’ve got to do your duty to the Queen.”
“And haven’t I done it?” he said pathetically, exhibiting his soused leggings. “But there’s only three letters for Little Bradmarsh and all for the same man.”