Moreover she had caught the rope in her hands, and was holding on to it with the tenacious grasp of one who dreads drowning.
The boatman could not see her face, which appeared to be buried within the folds of a cloak!
He did not stay to look for a face. Enough for him that there was a body in danger of being drowned; and throwing one arm around it, with the other he commenced “swarming” along the tow-rope in the direction of the barge!
Mrs B, who had long since forsaken the tiller, and was now “for’ard,” helped him and his burden aboard; which, examined by the light of the canal-boat lantern, proved to be a very beautiful lady, dressed in rich silk, with a gold watch in her waistbelt, and a diamond ring sparkling upon her fingers!
Mrs Bootle observed that beside this last, there was another ring of plain appearance, but in her eyes of equal significance. It was the hoop emblematic of Hymen.
These things were only discovered after the saturated cloak had been removed from the shoulders of the half-drowned woman; and who, but for it and the tow-rope, would have been drowned altogether.
“What is this?” asked the lady, gasping for breath, and looking wildly around. “What is it, Dick? Where are you? Where am I? O God! It is water! I’m wet all over. It has nearly suffocated me! Who are you, sir? And you, woman; if you are a woman? Why did you throw me in? Is it the river, or the Serpentine, or where?”
“’Taint no river, mistress,” said Mrs Bootle, a little nettled by the doubt thrown upon her womanhood, “nor the Sarpentine neyther. It’s the Regent Canal. But who ha’ pitched you into it, ye ought best to know that yourself.”
“The Regent’s Canal?”
“Yes, missus,” said Bootle, taking the title from his wife; “it’s there you’ve had your duckin’—just by the Park Road here. You come switching over the bridge. Can’t you tell who chucked you over? Or did ye do it yerself?”