“You tip ’em over, Tom; I’ll make ’em jump.”
Escape was impossible. Our exits were in the hands of the enemy. We made one feeble attempt to temporise.
“We’re sorry,” said I, in my capacity as spokesman. “We didn’t know it was your boat, really.”
“You knows it now,” said the proprietor. “Over you go, or I’ll ’elp yer.”
What! was it a case of being pitched overboard? We looked round desperately for hope, but there was none. We might by a concerted action have tackled one man, but the other on the bank, with the whip and the dog, was a formidable second line to carry. It needed all our philosophy to sustain us in the emergency.
“Come, wake up,” shouted the man. “’Ere, Tike, come!”
Whereupon, to our terror, the dog leapt up on to the barge, and jumped yapping in our midst.
“T’other side, if you please,” said the bargee, as I prepared dismally to take my header on the near side. “Wake ’im up, Tike!”
I needed no waking up; and giving myself up for lost, bounded to the other side of the barge, and made a floundering jump overboard. Luckily for us the Low Heathens could swim to a man, and if all that we were in for was to swim round that hideous barge and get ashore, we should have been easily out of it. But we had yet to reckon with the man and the whip, who in his turn made every preparation to reckon with us.
I was the first to taste his mettle. He had me twice before I could get clear, and I seem to feel it as I write. One by one the luckless and dripping Philosophers ran the gauntlet of that fatal debarkation, which was by no means alleviated by the opprobrious hilarity of our two castigators and the delighted yappings of Tike.