“Oh, something not unusual,” said Lavendar grimly, “that I’m a fool, and the sea-tide has ebbed, as tides have been known to do before. I’m afraid a man doesn’t watch tides when he has a companion like you! Now we’re left high, but not at all dry, as you see, till the tide turns.”
By a swift stroke or two he managed to propel their craft as far as the rock. They scrambled up on it, and then he tried to haul the boat around the miniature islet; but the more he hauled, the quicker the water seemed to run away, and the deeper the wretched thing stuck in the mud. He jumped in again, and made an effort to push her off with an oar; meanwhile Robinette nearly fell off the rock in her efforts to get the head of the boat around towards the current again, and making a frantic plunge into the ooze, sank above her ankles in an instant. Lavendar caught hold of her and helped her to scramble back into the boat. “It’s all right; only my skirt wet, and one shoe gone!” she panted. “Now, what are we to do?” She spread out her hands in dismay, and looked down at her draggled mud-stained skirt, her little feet, one shoeless and both covered with mud and slime. “What an object I shall be to meet Aunt de Tracy’s eye, when, if ever, it does light on me again! Meanwhile 163 it seems as if we might be here for some hours. The boat is just settling herself into the mud bank, like a rather tired fat old woman into an armchair, and pray, Mr. Lavendar, what do you propose to do? as Talleyrand said to the lady who told him she couldn’t bear it.”
Lavendar looked about them; the main bed of the river was fifty yards away; between it and them was now only an expanse of mud.
“It’s perfectly hopeless,” he said, “the best thing we can do is to beget some philosophy.”
“Which at any moment we would exchange for a foot of water,” she interpolated.
“We must just sit here and wait for the tide. Shall it be in the boat or on the rock?”
“I don’t see much difference, do you? Except that the passing boats, if there are any, might think it was a matter of choice to sit on a damp rock for two hours, but no one could think we wanted to sit in a boat in the mud.”
They landed on the rock for the second time. “For my part it’s no great punishment,” said Lavendar, when they settled themselves, “since the place is big enough for two and you’re one of them!”