Janet, unrecognising. Not a word came from his lips.
‘What are ye daein’ there?’ cried Janet hoarsely.
Her knees were shaking, but not from her exertions at the door.
His tongue passed over his lips. He looked as though he would bite. She sickened, she knew not why, but revulsion passed shuddering through her.
‘Foo is’t ye’re no awa’?’ she exclaimed, mastering herself.
‘I wadna gang.’
He smiled as he said this and held the box tighter. As she looked at it in his grasp, some inherited instinct rose in her, and though it had been mainly valuable to her for what it would bring, should it pass from his drowned hands into her living ones, it became, at that moment, a thing desired and desirable for itself. She did not know what sum was in it, but the rage for possession of it came to her.
He laughed quietly, his toothless mouth drawn into a long line. She pounced on him, shaking his arm.
‘Weel, awa’ ye come noo – the boat’s waitin’ on ye!’
He shook his head.
She had never laid rough hands on him before, but she gripped him now. She was strong and he was helpless; and he knew, in his helplessness, that she had come for the box. He had feared the river-watcher, and he now feared her. He did not know what she meant to do to him; his mind was obsessed by the box and the fear of its loss, and unhinged by the flood. He would have liked to resist her, but he could not, should he dare try. His concentrated hate shot at her like a serpent’s tongue.
‘I ken what’s wrang we’ ye!’ she shouted. ‘Ye’re feared for yer box! Ye’re feared yon man gets a sicht o’ it! Aye, but he’ll be here syne – he’s aifter ye! I saw his boat i’ the noo, an’ him in it – ye’d best come.’
His face changed. On the dusty window-pane the drops beat smartly.
‘Ach, ye auld fule!’ she cried savagely, ‘wad ye loss it a’? Div ye no see the rain? Div ye no ken the water’s creepin’ up? Muckle guid yer box’ll dae ye when the spate’s owre yer heid an’ you tapsalterie amang the gear the water’s washin’ doon! Haste ye noo. We’ll need awa’ frae this.’
She dragged him to his feet and he leaned on her, clutching his burden and unable to resist her violence.
They struggled across the floor and through the broken-down door. It was raining pitilessly. Thievie took no notice of it. He, who had known the river in every phase of drought or flood, should have had small doubt of the danger in which they stood. The roaring of its voice was increasing and there were fewer stone steps to be seen than when Janet made her entrance. It was pouring in the hills and the tide had yet a few hours to rise before it turned. Thievie looked this way and that. What he feared most was to see the river-watcher slide out of the mist in his boat; for the elements, the world and all the men and women in it were, to his disordered imagination, intent on one thing – the box. He would never sleep peacefully again should a strange eye see it. He would be robbed. He had long since been the slave of this one thought, and now it overwhelmed his dim, senile mind, even as the resistless water was overwhelming the land about them.
It took all her force and resolution to get him into the boat; he was so crippled and his arms so much hampered by the burden he carried. Though he cursed her as they went down the stair, his thoughts were of the river-watcher. In the middle of their descent he laughed his mirthless laugh.
‘God-aye, but he’ll be comin’!’ he said, ‘but it’ll no be there – he’ll no get a sicht o’t!’
At last she got him safely afloat, and having loosed the boat, rowed away from the stairs. The surrounding floods were peppered by the onslaught of heavy drops from the low sky, and then, as though a sluice-gate had been pulled up in the firmament, a very deluge was upon them. The little they could see was washed out and they were isolated from everything in a universe without form and void, at the inmost heart of the hissing downpour. The river’s noise was lost in it and all sense of direction left Janet. She pulled blindly, believing that she was heading for the boathouse. Soon they bumped and scraped against some projection and the stern swung round. She felt the boat move under her, as though drawn by a rope. She tried to straighten it, but the blinding descent of the rain bewildered her; a branch of an alder suddenly loomed out of it, the lower twigs sweeping her face. Thievie cried out and crouched, clinging with frenzy to his box, and she guessed they had drifted above the deep, wide drain whose mouth was in the river. Her blood ran cold, for its swollen waters must inevitably carry them into the very midst of the tumult.
The drain was running hard under the flood-water and she despaired of being able to struggle against it. They were broadside on; besides which she dreaded to be swept out of her seat by another branch, for there were several alder trees by the edge of the channel. The rain began to slacken.
As its fall abated, the river grew louder and the sky lifted a little and she could see the large alders, gaunt and threatening as spectres, blurred and towering over them. With that strange observance of detail, often so sharp in moments of desperate peril, she noticed a turnip, washed out of the ground and carried by the torrent, sticking in a cleft between two straggling branches, just below water-level. She made a tremendous effort and slewed the boat straight; and working with might and main at her oars, got it out of the under-tow that urged it riverwards.
All at once the river-watcher’s voice rang out from the direction of the boathouse, calling the old man’s name. She answered with all the breath she had left.
‘Yon’s him! Yon’s the river-watcher!’ shrieked Thievie, from where he still crouched in the bottom of the boat.
She ignored him, tugging at her oars and pulling with renewed strength towards the sound.
He raised himself, and clinging to one of them, tried to drag it from her. She wasted no breath but set her teeth, thrusting out at him with her foot. He clung with all his weight, the very helplessness of his legs adding to it. She dared not let go an oar to strike at him. She could not have believed him able to hamper her so – but then, neither had she believed he could get himself up the inside stair of the cottage unaided; and yet he had done it. It was as though the senseless god of his worship, lying in the box, gave him the unhallowed tenacity by which he was delivering them over to the roaring enemy they could not see, but could hear, plain and yet plainer.
She was growing weary and Thievie’s weight seemed to increase. Could she spare a hand to stun him she would have done so for dear life. She had heard of the many-armed octopus of the southern seas, and she remembered it now in this struggle that was no active struggle because one would not, and one dared not, lose grip.
The boat, with one oar rendered useless, swung round and drifted anew into the channel between the trees. Again the river-watcher was heard calling and again Janet tried to answer, but her breath was gone and her strength spent. The current had got them.
Thievie relaxed his grip as he felt the distance increase between himself and the voice. A branch stayed their progress for a moment, whipping the sodden hat from Janet’s head; her clothes were clinging to her limbs, her hair had fallen from its ungainly twist and hung about her neck. They went faster as they neared the racing river. Then the swirl caught them and they spun in its grip and were carried headlong through the mist. Janet shut her eyes and waited for the end.
Time seemed to be lost in the noise, like everything else. They sped on. At last they were not far from the estuary and the river had widened. Once they were all but
