"It is all your silly rot that has stuck us here," Gage returned. "If you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."
"Well, get it over now," retorted Peckover, "as quick as you like, and no tricks."
"All right; come on," said Gage ill-humouredly. "Let's hope those fools won't see through the fake."
"This way," said Peckover, starting off breast-high in the water, towards the nearest shore, and still holding tightly to his companion.
"You are not going to walk?" Gage exclaimed aghast.
"I'm going to do what I can do best, and I can't swim," Peckover replied, with a determination which was apparent even through his shivering. "We'll have to try this life-saving joke in some other form. It's getting a bit stale this way."
Slowly their progress towards the shore, impeded by mud and thick weeds, began. They had not noticed that the farmer, actuated by humanitarian motives or with an eye to reduction of rent, had run off to an old boat-house, and was now hurrying back with an oar and a coil of rope.
"All right, my lord!" shouted the butcher, as taking credit for his friend's action. The two men, shivering and struggling unromantically through the jungle of weeds, smiled unpleasantly at the cry.
Suddenly Peckover became aware that the water was up to his chin. "It's getting deeper," he gasped, trying to hold his companion back.
"Let it," Gage retorted sulkily. "We've got to get to shore, dead or alive."