Three Men and a Maid by P. G. Wodehouse (free e reader txt) 📗

his hat and this brutal attack upon it confirmed his gloomiest apprehensions. Now thoroughly convinced that the only thing to do was to sell his life dearly he wrenched himself round, seized his assailant by the neck, twined his arms about his middle, and accompanied him below the surface.

By the time he had swallowed his first pint and was beginning his second, Sam was reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that this was the end. The thought irritated him unspeakably. This, he felt, was just the silly, contrary way things always happened. Why should it be he who was perishing like this? Why not Eustace Hignett? Now there was a fellow whom this sort of thing would just have suited. Broken-hearted Eustace Hignett would have looked on all this as a merciful release.

He paused in his reflections to try to disentangle the more prominent of Mr. Swenson's limbs from about him. By this time he was sure that he had never met anyone he disliked so intensely as Mr. Swenson—not even his Aunt Adeline. The man was a human octopus. Sam could count seven distinct legs twined round him and at least as many arms. It seemed to him that he was being done to death in his prime by a solid platoon of Swedes. He put his whole soul into one last effort … something seemed to give … he was free. Pausing only to try to kick Mr. Swenson in the face Sam shot to the surface. Something hard and sharp prodded him in the head. Then something caught the collar of his coat; and, finally, spouting like a whale, he found himself dragged upwards and over the side of a boat.

* * * * *

The time which Sam had spent with Mr. Swenson below the surface had been brief, but it had been long enough to enable the whole floating population of the North River to converge on the scene in scows, skiffs, launches, tugs and other vessels. The fact that the water in that vicinity was crested with currency had not escaped the notice of these navigators and they had gone to it as one man. First in the race came the tug Reuben S. Watson, the skipper of which, following a famous precedent, had taken his little daughter to bear him company. It was to this fact that Marlowe really owed his rescue. Women have often a vein of sentiment in them where men can only see the hard business side of a situation; and it was the skipper's daughter who insisted that the family boat-hook, then in use as a harpoon for spearing dollar bills, should be devoted to the less profitable but humaner end of extricating the young man from a watery grave.

The skipper had grumbled a bit at first, but had given way—he always spoiled the girl—with the result that Sam found himself sitting on the deck of the tug engaged in the complicated process of restoring his faculties to the normal. In a sort of dream he perceived Mr. Swenson rise to the surface some feet away, adjust his Derby hat, and, after one long look of dislike in his direction, swim off rapidly to intercept a five which was floating under the stern of a near-by skiff.

Sam sat on the deck and panted. He played on the boards like a public fountain. At the back of his mind there was a flickering thought that he wanted to do something, a vague feeling that he had some sort of an appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was. Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the knack of it.

"Well, aincher wet?" said a voice.

The skipper's daughter was standing beside him, looking down commiseratingly. Of the rest of the family all he could see was the broad blue seats of their trousers as they leaned hopefully over the side in the quest for wealth.

"Yessir! You sure are wet! Gee! I never seen anyone so wet! I seen wet guys, but I never seen anyone so wet as you. Yessir, you're certainly wet!"

"I am wet," admitted Sam.

"Yessir, you're wet! Wet's the word all right. Good and wet, that's what you are!"

"It's the water," said Sam. His brain was still clouded; he wished he could remember what that appointment was. "That's what has made me wet."

"It's sure made you wet all right," agreed the girl. She looked at him interestedly. "Wotcha do it for?" she asked.

"Do it for?"

"Yes, wotcha do it for? How come? Wotcha do a Brodie for off'n that ship? I didn't see it myself, but pa says you come walloping down off'n the deck like a sack of potatoes."

Sam uttered a sharp cry. He had remembered.

"Where is she?"

"Where's who?"

"The liner."

"She's off down the river, I guess. She was swinging round, the last I seen of her."

"She's not gone?"

"Sure she's gone. Wotcha expect her to do? She's gotta to get over to the other side, ain't she? Cert'nly she's gone." She looked at him interested. "Do you want to be on board her?"

"Of course I do."

"Then, for the love of Pete, wotcha doin' walloping off'n her like a sack of potatoes?"

"I slipped. I was pushed or something." Sam sprang to his feet and looked wildly about him. "I must get back. Isn't there any way of getting back?"

"Well, you could catch up with her at quarantine out in the bay. She'll stop to let the pilot off."

"Can you take me to quarantine?"

The girl glanced doubtfully at the seat of the nearest pair of trousers.

"Well, we could," she said. "But pa's kind of set in his ways, and right now he's fishing for dollar bills with the boat-hook. He's apt to get sorta mad if he's interrupted."

"I'll give him fifty dollars if he'll put me on board."

"Got it on you?" inquired the nymph coyly. She had her share of sentiment, but she was her father's daughter and inherited from him the business sense.

"Here it is." He pulled out his pocket-book. The book was dripping, but the contents were only fairly moist.

"Pa!" said the girl.

The trouser-seat remained where it was—deaf to its child's cry.

"Pa! Commere! Wantcha!"

The trousers did not even quiver. But this girl was a girl of decision. There was some nautical implement resting in a rack convenient to her hand. It was long, solid, and constructed of one of the harder forms of wood. Deftly extracting this from its place she smote her inoffensive parent on the only visible portion of him. He turned sharply, exhibiting a red, bearded face.

"Pa, this gen'man wants to be took aboard the boat at quarantine. He'll give you fifty berries."

The wrath died out of the skipper's face like the slow turning down of a lamp. The fishing had been poor, and so far he had only managed to secure a single two-dollar bill. In a crisis like the one which had so suddenly arisen you cannot do yourself justice with a boat-hook.

"Fifty berries!"

"Fifty seeds!" the girl assured him. "Are you on?"

"Queen," said the skipper simply, "you said a mouthful!"

Twenty minutes later Sam was climbing up the side of the liner as it lay towering over the tug like a mountain. His clothes hung about him clammily. He squelched as he walked.

A kindly looking old gentleman who was smoking a cigar by the rail regarded him with open eyes.

"My dear sir, you're very wet," he said.

Sam passed him with a cold face and hurried through the door leading to the companion-way.

"Mummie, why is that man wet?" cried the clear voice of a little child.

Sam whizzed by, leaping down the stairs.

"Good Lord, sir! You're very wet!" said a steward in the doorway of the dining-saloon.

"You are wet," said a stewardess in the passage.

Sam raced for his state-room. He bolted in and sank on the lounge. In the lower berth Eustace Hignett was lying with closed eyes. He opened them languidly—then stared.

"Hullo!" he said. "I say! You're wet."

* * * * *

Sam removed his clinging garments and hurried into a new suit. He was in no mood for conversation, and Eustace Hignett's frank curiosity jarred upon him. Happily, at this point, a sudden shivering of the floor and a creaking of woodwork proclaimed the fact that the vessel was under way again, and his cousin, turning pea-green, rolled over on his side with a hollow moan. Sam finished buttoning his waistcoat and went out.

He was passing the Enquiry Bureau on the C-Deck, striding along with bent head and scowling brow, when a sudden exclamation caused him to look up, and the scowl was wiped from his brow as with a sponge. For there stood the girl he had met on the dock. With her was a superfluous young man who looked like a parrot.

"Oh, how are you?" asked the girl breathlessly.

"Splendid, thanks," said Sam.

"Didn't you get very wet?"

"I did get a little damp."

"I thought you would," said the young man who looked like a parrot. "Directly I saw you go over the side I said to myself: 'That fellow's going to get wet!'"

There was a pause.

"Oh!" said the girl, "may I—Mr.—?"

"Marlowe."

"Mr. Marlowe. Mr. Bream Mortimer."

Sam smirked at the young man. The young man smirked at Sam.

"Nearly got left behind," said Bream Mortimer.

"Yes, nearly."

"No joke getting left behind."

"No."

"Have to take the next boat. Lose a lot of time," said Mr. Mortimer, driving home his point.

The girl had listened to these intellectual exchanges with impatience.
She now spoke again.

"Oh, Bream!"

"Hello?"

"Do be a dear and run down to the saloon and see if it's all right about our places for lunch."

"It is all right. The table steward said so."

"Yes, but go and make certain."

"All right."

He hopped away and the girl turned to Sam with shining eyes.

"Oh, Mr. Marlowe, you oughtn't to have done it! Really, you oughtn't! You might have been drowned! But I never saw anything so wonderful. It was like the stories of knights who used to jump into lions' dens after gloves!"

"Yes?" said Sam, a little vaguely. The resemblance had not struck him.
It seemed a silly hobby and rough on the lions, too.

"It was the sort of thing Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad would have done!
But you shouldn't have bothered, really! It's all right now."

"Oh, it's all right now?"

"Yes. I'd quite forgotten that Mr. Mortimer was to be on board. He has given me all the money I shall need. You see it was this way. I had to sail on this boat in rather a hurry. Father's head clerk was to have gone to the bank and got some money and met me on board and given it to me, but the silly old man was late, and when he got to the dock they had just pulled in the gang-plank. So he tried to throw the money to me in a handkerchief and it fell into the water. But you shouldn't have dived in after it."

"Oh, well!" said Sam, straightening his tie, with a quiet brave smile. He had never expected to feel grateful to that obese bounder who had shoved him off the rail, but now he would have liked to seek him out and offer him his bank-roll.

"You really are the bravest man I ever met!"

"Oh, no!"

"How modest you are! But I suppose all brave men are modest!"

"I was only too delighted at what looked like a chance of doing you a service."

"It was the extraordinary quickness of it that was so wonderful. I do admire presence of mind. You didn't hesitate for a second. You just shot over the side as though propelled by some irresistible force!"

"It was nothing, nothing really. One just happens to have the knack of keeping one's head and acting quickly on the spur of