“Hallo-o-o! How’s fishin’?”
She picked up her pine candle, hurried out to the bank and crept cautiously down the crazy, wooden stairs. Setting her torch in the iron cage at the bow, she cast off the painter and, standing erect, swung the long pole. Out into obscurity shot the punt, deeper and deeper plunged the pole. She headed up river to allow for the current; the cool breeze blew her hair and bathed her bared throat and arms deliciously; crimson torchlight flickered crisscross on the smooth water ahead.
Every muscle in her body was in play now; the heavy pole slanted, rose and plunged; the water came clip! slap! clap! slap! against the square bows, dusting her with spray.
On, on, tossing and pitching as the boat hit the swift, deep, center current; then the pole struck shallower depths, and after a while her torch reddened foliage hanging over the northern river bank.
She drove her pole into the clay as the punt’s bow grated; a Federal cavalryman—a mere lad—muddy to the knees, brier-torn, and ghastly pale, waded out through the shallows, revolver in hand, clambered aboard, and struck the torch into the water.
“Take me over,” he gasped. “Hurry, for God’s sake! I tell you——”
“Was it you who called?”
“Yes. Snuyder sent you, didn’t he? Don’t stand there talking——”
With a nervous stroke she drove the punt far out into the darkness, then fell into a measured, swinging motion, standing nearer the stern than the bow. There was no sound now but the lapping of water and the man’s thick breathing; she strove to pierce the darkness between them, but she could see only a lumpish shadow in the bow where he crouched.
“I reckon you’re Roy Allen,” she began, but he cut her short: