Why the boat was hanging from the ceiling, and a score of other questions were no longer of the remotest interest. They were entirely academic. Nothing mattered at all save the death of the man in the broad-brimmed hat.
For a moment she thought that she would bluff him, for it was unlikely that he had seen the head appear out of the waves, or knew that she had glimpsed his mottled face. But this was no time for games of bluff and blarney - no time to spin it out. It was true that she might have given secret orders to the outer boats to enter the cave in force and to take him at a moment when he was diverted from his scrutiny of the window by some object being thrown into the water from above, but all such niceties were not relevant to her mood, which was for quick and final slaughter in the name of the Stones.
IV
Titus had ceased to struggle and was only waiting for the moment when the two louts, who (no doubt with the most loyal intentions) were saving him from himself, relaxed for a moment and gave him the opportunity to jerk himself clear of them.
They had him by his coat and collar, on either side. His hands which were free had crept gradually together across his chest and he had secretly undone all but one of the jacket buttons.
The scores of boatmen, dizzy with the rising and falling of the water, and drenched with the rain, and tired with the eternal rekindling of the torches, had been unable to understand what was happening within the flooded 'cave', or in the room above it. They had heard voices and a few excited shouts but had no idea of the true situation.
But suddenly, the Countess herself appeared at the window and her resonant voice bored its way through the wind and rain.
'All boatmen will attend! There will be no fumbling! The Volunteer is dead.
The traitor who is now wearing his hat and coat is immediately below the window, in the room you are surrounding.'
She paused, and wiped the rain off her face with the flat of her hand, and then her voice again, louder than ever - 'The four central boats will be sculled by their stern oars. Three armed men will be on the bows of each boat. These boats will move forward when I lift my hand. He will be brought out dead. Draw your knives.'
As these last words were thrust out into the storm the excitement was so great and there was such pressing forward of all the men and boats that it was with difficulty that the four central boats of the cordon freed themselves from one another and manoeuvred into line.
It was then that Titus, noticing how his captors hold loosened their grip upon him as they stared spellbound at the window of the fateful room, wrenched himself forward and slipped his arms suddenly out of the sleeves of his jacket, and dodging through a group of boatmen dived into the water, leaving his empty coat behind him, in their hands.
He had had no sleep for many hours. He had had little to eat. He was living upon the raw end of his nerves, as a fanatic will walk upon spikes. A fever had started. His eyes had become big and hot. His nondescript hair was plastered over his forehead like seaweed. His teeth chattered. He burned and froze alternately. He had no fear. It was not that he was brave. It was that fear had been left somewhere behind. It had been mislaid. And fear can be wise and intelligent. Titus had no wisdom at this moment and no sense of self-preservation. No sense of anything at all except a hunger for finality. All his heartburn had been laid, unfairly for the most part, at Steerpike's door - as had been his sister's death and the death of his Passion, the mercurial sprite.
As he swam he gloried. The torchlit water closed over him, and broke away again in yellow flakes. He rose and subsided on the flood, his arms thrashing at the waves. All that the sky had emptied from its maw, the giant reservoirs, broke at his brow. He gloried.
His fever mounted. As he grew weaker he grew fiercer. Perhaps he was in a dream. Perhaps it was all a delusion - the heads at a thousand windows - the boats tossing like gold beetles at the foot of the midnight heights: the flooded window that yawned for blood and drama, the upper window where his mother loomed, her red hair smouldering, her face like marble.
Perhaps he was swimming to his death. It didn't matter. He knew that what he was doing was what he must do. He had no option. His whole life had been a time of waiting. For this. For this moment. For all it was and all it would mean.
Who was it that swam within him, whose limbs were his limbs and whose heart was his heart? Who was he - what was he, as he battled through bright waters? Was he the Earl of Gormenghast? The seventy-seventh lord? The son of Sepulchrave? The son of Gertrude? The son of the Lady at the window? The brother of Fuchsia? Ah yes, he was that. He was the brother of the girl with the white sheet to her chin and her black hair spread across the snow-white pillow. He was this. But he was no brother of her 'Ladyship' - but only of the drowned girl. And he was no one's figurehead. He was only himself. Someone who might have been a fish of the water, a star, or a leaf or a stone. He was Titus, perhaps, if words were needed - but he was no more than that - oh no, not Gormenghast, not the seventy-seventh, not the House of Groan, but a heart in a body that swam through space and time.
The Countess had seen him from her window but there was nothing she could do. He was not making for the cave-mouth, where the boats were already filling the narrow entrance, but for one of those outer stairways that rose out of the water at irregular intervals along the castle's face.
But she had not time to wait and follow his progress. Three swimmers were already in the water and giving chase. Now that she had seen the first of the boats entering the cave-mouth she turned back from the window and returned to the centre of the room where a group of officers was gathered about the huge spy-hole. As she approached them, a tall man who had been kneeling above the opening fell backwards with a crimson chin. Four of his teeth had been broken off and these with a small pebble rattled together in his mouth while his head shook with pain. The others drew away at once from the dangerous opening.
As they did so Titus entered the room, leaving a trail of water at every step. It was obvious that he was ill with fever and exhaustion, and ungovernable with the fire of it. His naturally pale skin was flushed. His peculiarities of body appeared to be strangely accentuated.
The sense of scale, which he had inherited from his mother - that effect of being larger than he really was, of being over-size, was now peculiarly in evidence. It was as though it were not just that Titus Groan had entered, but that his abstract, a prototype had come through the door, and that the floodwater that dripped from his clothes was somehow spilled in heroic measure.
The rather bluntish cast of his face was even blunter and plainer. The lower lip, trembling with excitement, hung open like a child's. But his pale eyes, so often sullen in their withdrawal, were now not only bright with the fever but with a lust of revenge - no lovely sight - and were icy at the same time with a determination to, prove himself a man.
He had seen his private world break up. He had seen characters in action. It was now for him to take the limelight. Was he the Earl of Gormenghast? Was he the seventy-seventh? No, by the lightning that killed her! He was the First - a man upon a crag with the torchlight of the world upon him! He was all here - there was nothing missing, brains, heart and sentience - an individual in his own right - a thing of legs and arms, of loins, head, eyes and teeth.