Archie dropped his paddle and, tearing up the bark rope that lashed the raft, looped the free end round her waist. Then the rain broke on them, driving in horizontal sheets. Norah shut her eyes to save her sight. She opened them to see Archie leap from the raft. Her heart stood still, till she saw him standing chest-high in the surf and heard him bellow to her to put her arms round his neck....
The day following that scurry of rain, Mrs. Lavater launched her counter attack, which proved to be nothing more sinister than the convention of the members of the Golf Club (a body differing from the population of Abercorn by the exclusion of children under twelve—see Rule Four) to discuss the motion 'that this meeting approves the enlargement of the links.'
The Mackenzie faction, secure in their canvassed majority of five against four (for the D.C. stood firm in his neutrality), arrived to find the meeting enlarged by the presence of the eldest Lavater girl, Dorothea, aged twelve and a half. Too late they realised that Dorothea, whom lack of clubs had kept away from the links, had by the workings of Anno Domini equalised the vote.
With superb self-control and diplomacy worthy of Whitehall, Mackenzie rose to propose that, in view of the deadlock, the meeting be postponed to that day fortnight.
Mrs. Lavater, prompted by a suspicion that Angus Mackenzie was due to celebrate a thirteenth! birthday at the beginning of next month, opposed the amendment on the indisputable grounds that, before the fortnight was up, the N.C. would have gone on leave and the doctor would have accompanied him as far as his tropical disease research station in the Luangwa Valley.
But, suggested Mr. Mackenzie, since the doctor and the N.C. held opposite opinions on the vexed question, would they not, so to speak, pair with each other?
'So important a matter,' retorted Mrs. Lavater with crushing effect, 'must be settled by the whole community.'
On the morning of this eventful day, Matao, terrified into vigilance by Archie's threat of degradation and a beating, signalled with a yell of delight the thin blue smoke of a village hidden behind a cluster of islets....
About the hour that Mrs. Lavater said 'check' to Mr. Mackenzie's queen, Archie and his followers pushed on, leaving the village rich in silver, but emptied of fruit, fish and canoes. Its young men had agreed to take them to the south end of the lake, and as they paddled they sang to keep their hearts up for the long adventure.
The old men and the women remaining in the village could hear the singing, after the shadow flung by the chain of islands had swallowed each canoe that vanished like a water rat, slanting into the darkness of a hollow bank. So calm was the silver water that for a moment the wake of each boat showed separately, when the hull that had cut it had gone.