Conscience came up very weak, and with Garnet as strong as ever it was plain that the round would be a brief one. This proved to be the case. Early in the second minute Garnet cross-countered with “All’s Fair in Love and War.” Conscience down and out. The winner left the ring without a mark.
I rose, feeling much refreshed.
That afternoon I interviewed Mr. Hawk in the bar-parlour of the Net and Mackerel.
“Hawk,” I said to him darkly, over a mystic and conspirator-like pot of ale, “I want you, next time you take Professor Derrick out fishing”—here I glanced round, to make sure that we were not overheard—”to upset him.”
His astonished face rose slowly from the pot of ale like a full moon.
“What ‘ud I do that for?” he gasped.
“Five shillings, I hope,” said I, “but I am prepared to go to ten.”
He gurgled.
I encored his pot of ale.
He kept on gurgling.
I argued with the man.
I spoke splendidly. I was eloquent, but at the same time concise. My choice of words was superb. I crystallised my ideas into pithy sentences which a child could have understood.
And at the end of half-an-hour he had grasped the salient points of the scheme. Also he imagined that I wished the professor upset by way of a practical joke. He gave me to understand that this was the type of humour which was to be expected from a gentleman from London. I am afraid he must at one period in his career have lived at one of those watering-places at which trippers congregate. He did not seem to think highly of the Londoner.
I let it rest at that. I could not give my true reason, and this served as well as any.
At the last moment he recollected that he, too, would get wet when the accident took place, and he raised the price to a sovereign.
A mercenary man. It is painful to see how rapidly the old simple spirit is dying out of our rural districts. Twenty years ago a fisherman would have been charmed to do a little job like that for a screw of tobacco.
Chapter 11.
The Brave Preserver
I could have wished, during the next few days, that Mr. Harry Hawk’s attitude towards myself had not been so unctuously confidential and mysterious. It was unnecessary, in my opinion, for him to grin meaningly when he met me in the street. His sly wink when we passed each other on the Cob struck me as in indifferent taste. The thing had been definitely arranged (ten shillings down and ten when it was over), and there was no need for any cloak and dark-lantern effects. I objected strongly to being treated as the villain of a melodrama. I was merely an ordinary well-meaning man, forced by circumstances into doing the work of Providence. Mr. Hawk’s demeanour seemed to say, “We are two reckless scoundrels, but bless you, /I/ won’t give away your guilty secret.” The climax came one morning as I was going along the street towards the beach. I was passing a dark doorway, when out shimmered Mr. Hawk as if he had been a spectre instead of the most substantial man within a radius of ten miles.
“‘St!” He whispered.
“Now look here, Hawk,” I said wrathfully, for the start he had given me had made me bite my tongue, “this has got to stop. I refuse to be haunted in this way. What is it now?”
“Mr. Derrick goes out this morning, zur.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “Get it over this morning, then, without fail. I couldn’t stand another day of it.”
I went on to the Cob, where I sat down. I was excited. Deeds of great import must shortly be done. I felt a little nervous. It would never do to bungle the thing. Suppose by some accident I were to drown the professor! Or suppose that, after all, he contented himself with a mere formal expression of thanks, and refused to let bygones be bygones. These things did not bear thinking of.
I got up and began to pace restlessly to and fro.
Presently from the farther end of the harbour there put off Mr. Hawk’s boat, bearing its precious cargo. My mouth became dry with excitement.
Very slowly Mr. Hawk pulled round the end of the Cob, coming to a standstill some dozen yards from where I was performing my beat. It was evidently here that the scene of the gallant rescue had been fixed.
My eyes were glued upon Mr. Hawk’s broad back. Only when going in to bat at cricket have I experienced a similar feeling of suspense. The boat lay almost motionless on the water. I had never seen the sea smoother. Little ripples plashed against the side of the Cob.
It seemed as if this perfect calm might continue for ever. Mr. Hawk made no movement. Then suddenly the whole scene changed to one of vast activity. I heard Mr. Hawk utter a hoarse cry, and saw him plunge violently in his seat. The professor turned half round, and I caught sight of his indignant face, pink with emotion. Then the scene changed again with the rapidity of a dissolving view. I saw Mr. Hawk give another plunge, and the next moment the boat was upside down in the water, and I was shooting headforemost to the bottom, oppressed with the indescribably clammy sensation which comes when one’s clothes are thoroughly wet.
I rose to the surface close to the upturned boat. The first sight I saw was the spluttering face of Mr. Hawk. I ignored him, and swam to where the professor’s head bobbed on the waters.
“Keep cool,” I said. A silly remark in the circumstances.
He was swimming energetically but unskilfully. He appeared to be one of those men who can look after themselves in the water only when they are in bathing costume. In his shore clothes it would have taken him a week to struggle to land, if he had got there at all, which was unlikely.
I know all about saving people from drowning. We used to practise it with a dummy in the swimming-bath at school. I attacked him from the rear, and got a good grip of him by the shoulders. I then swam on my back in the direction of land, and beached him with much /eclat/ at the feet of an admiring crowd. I had thought of putting him under once or twice just to show him he was being rescued, but decided against such a source as needlessly realistic. As it was, I fancy he had swallowed of sea-water two or three hearty draughts.
The crowd was enthusiastic.
“Brave young feller,” said somebody.
I blushed. This was Fame.
“Jumped in, he did, sure enough, an’ saved the gentleman!”
“Be the old soul drownded?”
“That girt fule, ‘Arry ‘Awk!”
I was sorry for Mr. Hawk. Popular opinion was against him. What the professor said of him, when he recovered his breath, I cannot repeat,—not because I do not remember it, but because there is a line, and one must draw it. Let it be sufficient to say that on the subject of Mr. Hawk he saw eye to eye with the citizen who had described him as a “girt fule.” I could not help thinking that my fellow conspirator did well to keep out of it all. He was now sitting in the boat, which he had restored to its normal position, baling pensively with an old tin can. To satire from the shore he paid no attention.
The professor stood up, and stretched out his hand. I grasped it.
“Mr. Garnet,” he said, for all the world as if he had been the father of the heroine of “Hilda’s Hero,” “we parted recently in anger. Let me thank you for your gallant conduct and hope that bygones will be bygones.”
I came out strong. I continued to hold his hand. The crowd raised a sympathetic cheer.
I said, “Professor, the fault was mine. Show that you have forgiven me by coming up to the farm and putting on something dry.”