"I wonder whether that fellow in the train was all above board?" said Malcolm. "Now I come to think over the matter it looks rather fishy. And we told him a jolly lot, too. He might be a Boche."
"If he is a Boche, and I run across him, I'll bash him," said Selwyn vehemently.
"Set to, you Diggers!" ordered Fortescue. "Selwyn, you take an oar and relieve Carr. Now, then, you pull while I back."
Under the reverse action of the oars the boat turned towards the shore, then both men pulled their hardest.
"We don't seem to be moving," remarked Malcolm after five minutes had elapsed. "I've been watching those two lights, and they have been in line ever since we turned."
"Perhaps we're aground," suggested Fortescue, and thrusting his oar vertically into the water he sounded. The thirteen-foot oar failed to touch bottom.
"Plenty of water," he reported. "Carr, you must be making a mistake. Now, Selwyn, put your back into it. I've never had such a heavy old tub to pull in all my previous experience."
"We're not gaining an inch," reported Malcolm.
"Current out of the river, most likely," was Selwyn's theory.
For once Fortescue lost his temper.