“There’s your ferry, Bundock!” she called.
“And what’s the good of going across?” he asked. “By what I see I couldn’t possibly get to Frog Farm.”
“But I’m going there!”
“What!” He gazed towards her side of the river, the willows surging from which alone marked the former bank. Plover were flying with dismal cries over the unseen pastures.
He shook his head: “One inquest’s enough for Chipstone.”
“I’ll take your letters,” she said with a sudden thought that made her happier.
Bundock resisted the offer. His repugnance to seeing the Queen’s mail sacrilegiously carried by a member of Her Majesty’s sex was deep-seated, and it was only because he took seriously Jinny’s threat to write to his sovereign that he finally handed the three letters by a compromise to Ephraim Bidlake. Needless to say that as soon as Bundock’s pouched back was turned, that faithful henchman transferred them to Jinny.
When he took her little horse and cart on board his broad-built wherry, he imagined she only wanted to be ferried across, but she had soon spurred him to the great adventure across the “drowned” meadows. It was a question of life-saving, she said, and for the British Navy as embodied in Bidlake and Ravens, this was enough. Fortunately the females were now lodged on shore, awaiting Mrs. Bidlake’s annual event. Moreover the wherry, relieved by the other barge, had a slack moment, and with Jinny to guide them from the vantage-point of her driving-board over hidden snags in the shape of submerged stiles, sheds, mounds or bushes, the two men punted boldly over the left bank. The mast had been lowered, for apart from the danger of boughs catching in the sail, the trees made a wind-screen to the pastures.
It was odd as the barge passed between two willows on the margin of the river, to see these trees reflected doubly, at once in stream and in flood. There was no difficulty in avoiding the larger flotsam, though one of Farmer Gale’s haystacks was only staved off with Bidlake’s pole, and it was not till they had quanted to the farmhouse itself that the steering became troublesome, for there were no windows at the back, at which they were arriving, there were farm-buildings and floating stacks waiting to embarrass them at the front, the so-called Frog Cottage presented a blank black wall at one side, while the windowed side-wall, from which Martha had once beheld Bundock marching through morasses, was encumbered, not only by the wreckage of the stable and the mangled body of the coach, but by Caleb’s wild “orchard,” in whose mystically rising oak-branches and pear-tree-tops poultry, to which fear had restored wings, were seen to be roosting. But by taking a wide course over the wheat-patch so as to avoid the stacks, the barge was able to double Frog Cottage safely, to glide triumphantly into dock, and lie alongside Frog Farm. The exciting manœuvre had been accomplished in grim silence—even Ravens forgetting to sing as they bumped over the chaotic remains of the old log-dyke and raised wagon-road—and it was not till it was over that Jinny found breath to blow her horn. And as she did so, she was startled to see behind the diamond panes of the closed casement of the central bedroom—now on a level with her driving-board and almost opposite it—a head that vaguely recalled Mr. Duke’s.
But the next instant she recognized Maria, and the old black sow was pushed aside, the casement flung open and a red-haired head flung out. And if Jinny had stared incredulously at the sight of the pig, what word can convey the dilatation of Will’s eyes as they now beheld the little Carrier perched on her accustomed seat, whip in hand, as though on the solid road! It was some seconds before he even perceived the barge sustaining her cart.