“Explain yourself!”
“We’ll keep on down the river to Rock Weir. There we can leave the boat, and walk across the neck to Llangorren. It isn’t over a mile, though it’s five times that by the course of the stream. At the Weir we can engage some water fellow to take back the Gwendoline to her moorings. Meanwhile, we’ll make all haste, slip into the grounds unobserved, get to the boat-dock in good time, and give Joseph the cue to hold his tongue about what’s happened. Another half-crown will tie it firm and fast, I know.”
“I suppose there’s no help for it,” says the companion, assenting, “and we must do as you say.”
“Of course, we must. As you see, without thinking of it, we’ve drifted into a very cascade and are now a long way down it. Only a regular waterman could pull up again. Ah! ’twould take the toughest of them, I should say. So—nolens volens—we’ll have to go on to Rock Weir, which can’t be more than a mile now. You may feather your oars, and float a bit. But, by the way, I must look more carefully to the steering. Now, that I remember, there are some awkward bars and eddies about here, and we can’t be far from them. I think they’re just below the next bend.”
So saying, she sets herself square in the stern sheets, and closes her fingers firmly upon the tiller-cords.
They glide on, but now in silence; the little flurry, with the prospect of peril ahead, making speech inopportune.
Soon they are round the bend spoken of, discovering to their view a fresh reach of the river; when again the steerer becomes neglectful of her duty, the expression upon her features, late a little troubled, suddenly changing to cheerfulness, almost joy. Nor is it that the dangerous places have been passed; they are still ahead, and at some distance below. But there is something else ahead to account for the quick transformation—a row-boat drawn up by the river’s edge, with men upon the bank beside.
Over Gwen Wynn’s countenance comes another change, sudden as before, and as before, its expression reversed. She has mistaken the boat; it is not that of the handsome fisherman! Instead, a four-oared craft, manned by four men, for there is this number on the bank. The anglers skiff had in it only two—himself and his oarsman.
But she has no need to count heads, nor scrutinise faces. Those now before her eyes are all strange, and far from well favoured; not any of them in the least like the one which has so prepossessed her. And while making this observation another is forced upon her—that their natural plainness is not improved by what they have been doing, and are still—drinking.
Just as the young ladies make this observation, the four men, hearing oars, face towards them. For a moment there is silence, while they in the Gwendoline are being scanned by the quartette on the shore. Through maudlin eyes, possibly, the fellows mistake them for ordinary country lasses, with whom they may take liberties. Whether or not one cries out—