IT was fortunate for Jabez that the late rains had raised the level of the Irk: otherwise, that being the shallowest part of the stream, there would not have been sufficient depth of water to buoy him up when he was pitched over the wall; and had his head come in contact with rock or stone, falling from such an elevation, his history would have closed with the last chapter. It was doubly fortunate that sensible Simon had taught him that without which no boy’s education—nor, indeed, any girl’s either—is complete, and that Jabez, from very love of the water, had kept himself in practice whenever a holiday had given him opportunity.
He had gone over the wall backwards, falling into the stream head downwards, but not altogether unprepared; and to him head first, heels first, forward or backward, were all as one. Like a cork he rose, and struck out across the river. The slimy stone embankment seemed to slip from his touch; there was no hold for his hand; it was too steep and smooth to climb; and he felt that the river, swift in its fulness, was bent on bearing him to the Irwell, so dangerously near.
He raised his voice for “help.” Tabitha, listening, answered with a scream and a shout, and, bolting into the house, disturbed the Parson and his besotted father at their tea by the outcry she made, as she rushed on into the street with the alarm of “a lad dreawndin,” just as the conscious culprits slunk past to their own quarters.
Doctor Stone, the first recipient of terrified Kit Townley’s incoherent intelligence, was simultaneously racing at full speed, with a troop of College boys at his heels, down towards Hunt’s Bank and the outlet of the Irk, with the swift consciousness that the only hope of saving life was in the chance of reaching the confluence of the rivers first. He thought the dusk never came down so rapidly. A lamplighter, with ladder and flaring long-spouted oil-can light, was going his rounds.
“Turn back, my man, with ladder and light,” he called out, without stopping; and the man, seeing something unusual was astir or amiss, followed at a canter without question.
At Irk Bridge the librarian took the light from the man, and swung it to cast its reflection over the Irwell; but nothing was to be seen or heard but the full river, and the wash of its waters. To cross the bridge, in fear that the boy was beyond help, was but the work of a moment.
Slower, along the wooden railing of the Irk embankment, he held the lamp low. There was neither eddy or bubble on the water to tell where a drowning mortal had gone down.
“Jabez! Jabez Clegg!” he cried, but there was no response. Again and again he raised his voice—“Jabez! Jabez!” The only answer was from an advancing crowd, with Parson Brookes and Tabitha in their midst, who had rushed to the rescue with ropes and poles down the bridge at Mill Brow.
“I fear it’s no use, Parson Brookes,” said the librarian sadly; “the river’s high, and poor Jabez may have been drifting past Stannyhurst before we were out of the College Yard.”
“Jabez!” exclaimed Joshua aghast, “you cannot mean that Jabez Clegg is the boy drowned!” and he staggered as if some one had struck him.