She could hear the murmur of the sea behind the Den, a bar of shingle and sand that more than half closed the mouth of the river.
Kate leaned over the side of the boat. The water gulped and curled away; in a quarter of an hour it would be gone. She thrust her boat farther out, as already it was being left high and dry.
She would allow Pooke five minutes longer, ten minutes at the outside; yet she had no watch by which to measure the time. She shrank from being benighted on that side of the river. She shrank from the alternative of a scolding from her aunt should she come across without Pooke.
What if John Pooke were to arrive at the landing-place one minute after she had departed? What if she waited for John Pooke one minute over the moment at which it was possible to cross? Whilst thus tossed in doubt, the train glided by. There were lights in the carriages, a strong light in the driving carriage cast forward along the rails. The train did not travel fast--at a rate not above thirty miles an hour.
Kate heaved a sigh. “At last! Pooke will be here directly. Oh dear! I hope not too late.”
The atmospheric train slipped away into darkness with very little noise, and then the only sound Kate heard was that of the lapping of the water against the sides of the boat, like that produced by a dog drinking.
CHAPTER V
ON A MUD-BANK
“Halloa! Ferry, ho!”
“Here you are, sir.”
“Who is that singing out?”
“It is I--Kate Quarm.”
“What--Kitty Alone? Is that what is to be? Over the water together--Kitty Alone and I?”
On the strand, in the gloom, stood a sturdy figure encumbered with a hat-box and a large parcel, so that both hands were engaged.
“Are you John Pooke?”
“To be sure I am.”
In another moment the young fellow was beside the boat.
“Here, Kitty Alone! Lend a hand. I’m crippled with these precious parcels. This blessed box-hat has given me trouble. The string came undone, and down it went. I have to carry the concern tucked under my arm; and the parcel’s bursting. It’s my new suit dying to show itself, and so is getting out of this brown-paper envelope as fast as it may.”
“We are very late,” said Kate anxiously. “The tide is running out hard, and it is a chance if we get over.”
“Right, Kitty. I’ll settle the hat-box and the new suit--brass buttons--what d’ye think of that? And straps to my trousers. I shall be fine--a blazer, Kitty--a blazer!”
“Do sit down, John; it is but a chance if we get across. You are so late.”
“The Atmospheric did it, for one--my hat for the other, tumbling in the darkness out of the box, and in the tunnel too. Fancy if the train had gone over it! I’d have wept tears of blood.”
“Do, John Pooke, do sit down and take an oar.”
“I’ll sit down in a minute, when I’ve put my box-hat where I nor you can kick it about, and the new suit where the water can’t stain it.”
“John, you must take an oar.”
“Right I am. We’ll make her fly--pist!--faster than the blessed Atmospheric, and no sticking half-way.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
Kate thrust off. She had altered the pegs, and now she gave John an oar.
“Pull for dear life!” she said; “not a moment is to be lost.”
“Yoicks away!” shouted Pooke. “So we swim--Kitty Alone and I.”
Kate, more easy now that the boat was started, said, “You asked me my name. I said Kate Quarm.”
“Well, but everyone knows you as Kitty Alone.”
“And every one knows you as Jan Tottle, but I shouldn’t have the face to so call you; and I don’t see why you should give me any name than what properly belongs to me.”
“Your father always so calls you.”
“You are not my father, and have no right to take liberties. My father may call me what he pleases, because he is my father. He is my father--you my penny fare.”
“And the penny fare has no rights?”
“He has right to be ferried over, not to be impudent.”
Pooke whistled through his teeth.
The girl laboured hard at the oar; Pooke worked more easily. He had not realised at first how uncertain was the passage. The tide went swirling down to the sea with the wind behind it, driving it as a besom.
“I say, Kate Quarm--no, Miss Catherine Quarm. Hang it! how stiff and grand we be! Do you know why I have been to Exeter?”
“I do not, Jan.”
“There, you called me Jan. You’ll be ’titling me Tottle, next. That gives me a right to call you Kitty.”
“Once, but no more; and Kitty only.”
“I’ve been to Exeter to be rigged out for sister Sue’s weddin’. My word! it has cost four guineas to make a gentleman of me.”
“Can they do that for four guineas?”
“Now don’t sneer. Listen. They’d took my measure afore, and they put me in my new suit, brass buttons and everything complete, and a new tie and collars standing to my ears--and a box-hat curling at the sides like the waves of the ocean--and then they told me to walk this way, please sir! So I walked, and what should I see but a gentleman stately as a dook coming towards me, and I took off my hat and said, Your servant, sir! and would have stepped aside. Will you believe me, Kate! it was just myself in a great cheval glass, as they call it. You’ll be at the wedding, won’t you?--if only to see me in my new suit. I do believe you’ll fall down and worship me, and I shall smile down at you and say, Holloa! is that my good friend Kitty Alone? And you’ll say, Your very humble servant, sir!”
“That I shall never do, Mr. Pennyfare,” laughed Kate, and then, becoming grave, immediately said, “Do pull instead of talking nonsense. We are drifting; look over your shoulder.”
“So we are. There is Coombe Cellars light, right away up stream.”
“The wind and stream are against us. Pull hard.”
Jan Pooke now recognised that he must use his best exertions.
“Hang it!” said he, watching the light; “I don’t want to be carried out to sea.”
“Nor
