3
Thrale’s estimate proved excessive. They reached Richmond on the fourth day out from Marlow, having opened another nine weirs—the one at Old Windsor had been swept away, and the one below Richmond Bridge Thrale opened that afternoon.
During those four days they had seen few signs of life. They had moved, keeping to the main stream for the most part, in the midst of a wide expanse of water; exploring a desolate and wasted country.
Once they had been hailed by three women, who looked out at them from a house in Windsor, and shouted something they did not catch; and a woman had been standing on Staines Bridge as they careered intrepidly through the centre arch—they had no time even to distinguish her dress. But with these exceptions they might have come through the land of an extinct civilization, devoid of life; a land in which deserted houses and church towers stood up from the silver sheet of a vast lake, that was threaded by this one impetuous torrent of swelling river.
Richmond, also, was deserted. The emigrants had passed on over the river or southwards to Petersham and so into Surrey.
“Well!” said Eileen, wiping her oil-blackened hands on a bunch of cotton waste, “that job’s done. We’ve fairly drawn the plug of the cistern now. And how are we going to get back?”
“We’ll find a couple of bicycles somewhere here,” said Thrale.
It had been a clear day, and there was a suggestion of frost in the air. The sun was setting very red and full behind the bare trees across the river. Save for the gurgle and hiss of the eddying flood, everything was very still. The little launch which had served them so well, and bore the marks of its great adventure in broken rails and bruised sides, was run aground by the side of the bridge. Thrale was standing in the road, but Eileen still sat by her engine.
“I hate to leave the launch,” she said, after a long pause.