The most extraordinary thing about the whole damp business was the way the engine kept going. A real engine would have stopped dead the first time a wave came in and lay down beside it. But this rheumatic and asthmatic old bunch of junk, which some heartless pirate had sold to Algie for an engine, kept coughing and sputtering through it all. There was no spray-hood, and the water was about a foot deep all around the machine, but it hammered away with a steadiness it would never have displayed in happier circumstances.
We would have turned back if we could, but we couldn't. Algie was in no condition of mind to steer, and the boat wouldn't answer the rudder anyway. So we just chug-chugged through the welter, holding our breaths when we were under water, and gasping for air when we could get any. Now and then we caught sight of Algie hanging on to the wheel, evidently prepared to go to his God like a sailor. It was noble but it wasn't seamanship.
For years and years we kept plunging into huge waves that rose up from the nether abyss, towered over our heads, and then crashed down upon us like the side of the Woolworth Building. Once or twice we caught a fleeting glimpse of the shore, with peaceful cottages upon it, and we remembered that somewhere the sun was shining and somewhere hearts were light. But we had little time for reflection.
Suddenly, after a century or two of submarine existence, we found that we were at Sunnyside once more. We were very much at Sunnyside. We were on the beach, with huge waves breaking over us, and three hundred people yelling directions at us. Some noble life-savers stood on the end of a wharf and threw us a rope. Algie grabbed it and performed prodigies of pulling. But it was no use. There we stuck, and a lot more waves came tumbling in to play with us. That is where we personally saw our duty, and we did it. We got out and pushed. It sounds simple. Most heroic things do. But it took the eye that saw and the legs that dared. We clambered out in the bosom of a wave, got a firm toe-hold on the submerged soil of Sunnyside, laid our head lovingly against the polished side of the Gladiolus, and shoved her out into the Lake. Then we held her there and got in again, carrying about a barrel of water with us, like a Newfoundland dog coming back with a stick he has retrieved.
Far be it from us to dwell upon this part of the adventure, though we know men who have got their pictures into the paper and the pictures of their entire families for deeds no braver. And these men have been sailors, hardened to the perils of the splashy deep, while we are a raw amateur whose favorite exercise is running a typewriter. But let us pass on.
Little remains to be told. Algie finally managed to blunder into the shelter of the Humber River. There we fished the ladies out of the boat, wrung them out, and we all walked rapidly home. We walked to keep from being chilled to death—also because there wasn't the slightest chance of them letting us board a street-car in that condition. Fortunately, home wasn't more than a mile or so away—Algie's home. But it seemed farther. Our clothes stuck lovingly to our personalities, and passers-by made unfeeling remarks.
Algie and Mrs. Algie did their very best for us. They fed us, gave us old clothes while ours were drying, made us take a little something with hot water and lemon in it, and rendered all the first aids usual in such circumstances. When we came away we told them we had had a lovely time.
"You must come out again in her," said Algie, "when I have had her decked in, and a new four-cylinder engine...."
But that was a long time ago, and we are still resisting the temptation—tactfully, we trust, but firmly.
