“A guinea,” shouted the suffragette, who was experiencing the joys of very big-game hunting, “to the boatman who can get us up to the Caribbeania before she starts.”
She spoke in the voice of one accustomed to speaking in Trafalgar Square, and everybody understood her. A boat practically cut the feet from under them before she had finished speaking, and in it they splashed furiously out into the bay.
“We shall catch it,” said the gardener, rowing energetically with one finger. “I’m a man of luck.”
He was posing as one who would not utter a reproach. It was a convenient pose for all concerned. When they were about half-way, the suffragette said, “You know—it takes a little courage to admit hysteria.”
“Of course it does, my dear,” said the gardener. “I wouldn’t have done it for the world.”
Presently they were within bare shouting distance of the whale which had threatened to make Jonahs of them. A liner’s farewells are like those of a great many women I know, very elastic indeed.
“You’ll do it,” shouted a voice from the high boat-deck.
They did it. The Captain shook his finger at them from the bridge.
“What happened?” asked Courtesy, meeting them on the main deck with a shawl to put round the suffragette. Some women seem to think that a shawl, or a hot bath, or a little drop of sal-volatile are equal to any emergency under the sun.
“She didn’t know that was the last launch,” said the gardener, still posing as the magnanimous defender.