The wood of the window-frame was too swollen to slide, so we had to push in the window with an oar before we could get inside. The torch showed a bedroom; very tasteful once, but now with a tidemark half-way up the walls. I squelched across the carpet and got the door open with a little difficulty. Outside on the landing the water was within a few inches of the top of the stairs. The floor above was all right, though. Quite comfortably furnished, too.
'This'll do,' Phyllis decided.
She lit a couple of candles, and started to rearrange things in the room she had chosen. I went down again, pulled our rolls of bedding and the other necessaries out of the dinghy, and made sure it was fastened securely, with enough slack for the tide.
When I got the stuff up Phyllis had already shed her coat and, looking business-like in a kind of windbreaker-suit, was lugging comfortable chairs in from another room. I got busy knocking away the stair-rail and breaking up the banisters for a fire.
The curtains were only cotton, so we covered them with blankets. It was not very likely that anyone would come to investigate a light, but if he did, and found the dinghy unguarded, he would certainly make off with it. Then we were able to settle down to stoking the fire and enjoying the growing warmth of the room.
Our supper consisted of biscuits, sausages cooked in the can and eaten off a fork, and tea made with bottled rainwater and condensed milk. Not an elegant meal, but in spite of the depressing thought that down in the depths of such a house, and safely out of our reach, there must be a lot of more exciting things to drink, we felt the better for it.
When it was done we extinguished the candles for economy's sake, piled on more wood, and lay back enjoying the blaze. For half a cigarette there was silence, then Phyllis said:
'Well, so far, so not very good. What now?'
It was a fair summary of my own state of mind.
'I don't like to admit it,' I said, 'but it does begin to look as if Cornwall may have to be cancelled.'
'That man was pretty scornful about it, wasn't he? But that might have been because he didn't believe us.'
'It sounded as if he foresaw a lot of obstacles in the way with himself as the first,' I said. 'It seems likely that there are quite a lot of independent districts we should have to cross.'
'Even if we were to go back to London we should have to face getting out of it somehow, sooner or later unless, of course, we get shot there. It's bound to go on getting worse all the time. In the country you can at least grow things. You do have a chance. But a city is a sort of desert of bricks and stones. Once you've used up what is there, you're done for.'
I considered Rose Cottage. There was some soil, of a kind though it was not a region I should have chosen for attempting to live off the land. But it was clear that no one was going to welcome us on to good, lush land if there was any left. And she was right about the barrenness of cities, once their reserves have been used up. I doubted any welcome in Cornwall, but Rose Cottage might offer just a chance provided there was not someone already there, and that we could get there at all
We went on discussing the prospects in a desultory way for an hour or more without getting any further, and ended by gazing silently into the fire, devoid of further suggestions. Presently Phyllis yawned. We pulled the damp clothes from the beds, spread out on own bedding rolls with their waterproof covers on the mattresses, made up the fire again, put the shotgun handy, and then turned in.
Technically, I suppose, it was the morrow that brought us the new idea, though I have an abiding feeling that a morrow does not properly begin until breakfast-time, and this idea turned up at about one in the morning. It arrived with a bump that woke me.
I sat up with the sound of the thud still in my ears, thoroughly awakened and alert. The room was almost dark, for the fire had sunk to a few ashes. There came another, but lesser, thump on the wall outside, and then the sound of something scraping along it. I snatched up the shotgun, jumped out of bed, and whipped the blanket and curtain aside from the nearest window. There was plenty of flotsam, sheds, chicken-houses, furniture, logs, all kinds of smaller stuff that could have made the bump. On the other hand, it might have been made by somebody who had spotted the dinghy, and the loss of that would be disastrous.
I looked out. The moon was sinking now, but still bright. The dinghy still rode safely just below. The scraping came again, along the other wall. I scrambled back, and found the torch on the table between the beds.
'What's the matter?' inquired Phyllis's voice, but I was in too much of a hurry to answer. Gun in one hand and torch in the other, I ran to the next room. One of its windows faced north. I dropped the torch, raised the sash, and looked out over the levelled shotgun. Just below, there was a boat, a small, cabin motor-boat, nudging along the wall, and I was gazing down at the figure of a woman lying in her well. It was scarcely more than a glimpse, for at that moment the boat scraped to the corner of the house; the current swung her out and took her away. I caught up the torch.
'What is it?' Phyllis demanded as I pelted past the bedroom door.
'Boat,' I called back as I ran down the stairs.
The water on the next floor was waist-deep now, and icy, but I was in too much of a hurry to pay it a lot of attention. With the risen level it was difficult to get aboard the dinghy without upsetting her, but I managed it. Then, of course, the outboard had to go sulky. Not until the fourth or fifth attempt did it fire. By that time I had lost sight of the drifting motor-boat, but I turned into the current, and chased after her.
It was only by chance that I did not miss her altogether and go charging on uselessly downstream. The current had carried her straight into a submerged spinney, and I had just a glimpse of her in the tangle of branches as I passed. Like any other boat nowadays she had been painted not for show but for discretion, and it was a near thing.
When I got aboard her I flashed the light in through the open doors of the little cabin. There was no one in there. The woman lying in the well had been shot twice, in the neck and in the chest, and must have died some hours before. I lifted her over the side, and let her go.
I could not hope to tow the boat back against both tide and current with the outboard, and I was growing too numb with cold to spend time trying to find out how to run her. The best course seemed to be to make sure that she would drift no further, and hope that no one else would see her before I could come back in daylight. It was a risk. A boat of any kind was beyond price, but the alternative was almost certainly pneumonia. Moreover, I daren't delay long, for once the moon had set it wouldn't be easy to find the house again.
Phyllis was warming a blanket for me in front of the rekindled fire. Freed of my wet pyjamas, and wrapped in that, I began to glow after a bit.
'A sea-going motor-boat?' Phyllis inquired, excitedly.
'Well, kind of high in the bows not one of those car-on-water things. So I should think it's meant for sea. Small, though.'
'Don't be irritating. You know perfectly well what I mean. Could it get us to Cornwall?'
'With our knowledge of the things, it's more a question of could we get it to Cornwall? and there my opinion isn't worth any more than yours. We might try at least it looks to me as if we might. See what you think when you've looked her over.'
I had no doubt whatever what she would think. But for decisive discouragement on my part we should probably have set out on an attempt to get along the coast in the little fibre-glass dinghy.