Fordham's Feud

“Oh, hang Novèl!” cut in Scott. “I’m for stopping here. What do you say, Miss Wyatt?”

“I am perfectly ready to do what every one else wishes,” answered Alma.

“Fordham, old man, I believe we none of us want to go any further,” said Philip. “It’s awfully hot, you know, and it’ll be no end of a grind. It’s a mistake, too, to make a toil of a pleasure. I propose that we bivouac here, feed, and poke a smipe, and drop down quietly on St. Jingo – or whatever you call it – afterwards. Let’s put it to the vote.”

“All right,” said Fordham, serenely. “It’s all one to me.”

Philip was right, the fact being that every one had had enough of it. So they ate their luncheon in the cool shade, and took their ease and were happy; and after a couple of hours or so started downward for the village, where they were to embark for the return voyage across the lake.

“We might have had some difficulty in getting a boat,” remarked Fordham. “As it happens, though, I saw my commissionaire, François Berthod, in Montreux, and he has a brother at St. Gingolph who owns one. So I made him wire him to look out for us.”

But when they reached St. Gingolph a fresh deadlock seemed likely to arise. There was not much demand for boatmen at the out-of-the-way, seldom-visited little village. Accordingly those amphibious worthies were, one and all, absent, following their other avocations, and among them Jules Berthod. To the whereabouts of the latter nobody seemed able to furnish a clue. The woman who managed the wineshop opined that he had gone over to Bouveret, and would not return till late; but in any case it didn’t matter, she being perfectly certain that neither Jules nor any other boat-owner would cross the lake that afternoon – an opinion abundantly backed up in unintelligible patois by more than one blue-bloused boozer lounging on the wooden seats.

But Fordham knew better, and he was right. For, as luck would have it, who should arrive at that very moment but the missing Jules – a cheery, copper-faced athlete, who, recognising Fordham, made no great difficulty about the undertaking. He glanced at the party, then at his boat; remarked dubiously that it was rather late in the day for crossing, and he should hardly get back that night; then shrugged his shoulders, ejaculated “Enfin,” and straightway set off to haul in his craft.

The latter, though roomy, was somewhat narrow of beam, and not so heavy as it looked. There were seats for three rowers, each pulling a pair of sculls.

“I’ll take stroke, if it’s all the same to everybody,” said Philip.

Fordham was about to demur, Philip being the heaviest man of the party, except perhaps the boatman, and there was abundance of weight in the stem; but remembering that Alma had been voted coxswain, he refrained. So Berthod was constituted bow, and Scott, eager to distinguish himself, took the remaining pair.

It was five o’clock when they pushed off. From St. Gingolph to Vevey the distance is about eight miles; therefore they reckoned upon barely two hours of easy pulling. Another two hours’ walk in the cool of the evening would bring them back to Les Avants almost before it was dark.

“I don’t think much of this sort of rowing,” grumbled Scott, for about the third time as, with a final effort to scrape down some of the stars of heaven, he violently fouled Philip’s oar. “They don’t seem to know what it is in this country. Fancy having your oars hitched on to an iron peg, instead of running free in rowlocks. Why, you can’t even feather.”

“I suppose you went in for boating a good deal when you were at the ’Varsity, Mr Scott?” remarked Fordham, innocently. It was rather cruel, Scott being one of that rapidly increasing class of parson who has never kept terms at any university.

“Er – not a very great deal – a little, that is,” was the somewhat confused reply.

“Didn’t aspire to your college boat, eh?” said Philip, who ever since they started had been mentally anathematising this cockney ’Arry, whose alternate star-scraping and crab-catching efforts had kept him in a lively state of irritation and bad time.

“Won’t some of you young ladies favour us with a song?” suggested the General. “Nothing like melody on the water.”

“Rather,” said Philip. “It’ll send us along at twice the pace – inspire us, don’t you know. Make us keep time – if anything will,” he added, significantly.

There was some little demur among the girls, who were shy of singing without accompaniment. Then they started the Canadian boat-song, and the effect of the clear voices floating out over the mirror-like water was pretty enough, for the said voices certainly did “keep tune,” even though the oars – thanks to the star-scraping proclivities of the maladroit Scott – failed with exasperating frequency to “keep time.” And the scene was a lovely and a peaceful one, inspiring, too, if you came to contrast the utter insignificance of that cockleshell boat floating there on the blue expanse of lake, with the sombre grandeur of the great mountains – many a jagged and fantastic peak starting into view above and behind the abrupt forest-clad slopes sheering up from the water’s edge as the distance widened between them and the Savoy shore. Then, dominating the flat Rhone Valley, the towering Dent de Morcles, and further in the background the snowy head of the Mont Velan peeping round the volcano-like crest of the pyramid-shaped Mont Catogne, and above the green slopes around Les Avants, the rocky hump of the Naye shone red in the beams of the westering sun.

But in spite of the calm and peaceful stillness lying alike upon the water and the encircling mountains, Jules Berthod seemed not altogether at ease. There was a heavy loom of cloud over the purple Jura, which to the mind of the experienced boatman had no business to be there. At the same time a kind of lurid opacity crept over the hitherto radiant sun.

“Crr-rré nom! Si on allait nous flanquer un coup de vent, par exemple!” he muttered between his teeth as he sent more than one uneasy glance to the westward.

There was one upon whom that glance was not lost – who had also begun to read the face of the sky. That one was Fordham.

“What do you say to my taking your place, Mr Scott?” he said. “We must be nearly half-way across by now. If anything, rather more.”

Scott, who had had enough of it, jumped at this proposal, and sank down with a sigh of relief into the cushioned seat among the ladies.

“When are we to take our turn?” asked the youngest Miss Ottley.

“Better wait until we have broken the back of the work,” answered Fordham, who knew, however, that no feminine hand was destined to handle the oar that day.

“Bless my soul, but how chilly it has turned,” said General Wyatt.

It had – and more. The boat no longer slid smoothly over the glassy water. Something of a swell had arisen.

“By Jove! If only we had a sail we should slip along sweetly. There’s quite a little breeze getting up,” said Philip, resting a moment on his oars. “Well, we haven’t, so it’s of no use wishing. But how about another song? We want invigorating. Does any one know the Eton fourth of June song?”

It happened that nobody did, and Philip remarking that that inspiriting chorus was a thin affair if rendered as a solo, was urgently assured that he never was more mistaken in his life and as urgently pressed to give practical proof of the same. Then the disputants abruptly paused. For Jules Berthod was resting on his oars, and seemed deep in a hurried consultation with Fordham, who, it will be remembered, now occupied the middle seat.

“Nom de nom!” he growled. “Ça arrive – ça arrive. Je l’attendais bien – allez!”

“What is the matter?” exclaimed Marian Ottley, with a shade of alarm. “Is it going to be rough, or what?”

A heavy lumping swell was now running, into which the boat rose and fell with a plash and an angry hiss, as each well-timed, powerful stroke forced her through. But a marvellous and magical change had come over the whole scene. The great curtain of cloud seemed now to spread over half the lake, and was gliding on, on. It stole up over the Savoy mountains, and each hitherto shining summit now reared itself dark and threatening against the inky veil. It had thrown out an advance guard of flying scud, which already partially enshrouded the peaks and ridges dominating the Rhone Valley to the eastward, and still it crept on. The air was stirred in fitful puffs, moaning and chill, and the sun had disappeared. The sudden metamorphosis from golden unclouded afternoon to the brooding lurid gloom of half day was inexpressibly awesome – almost appalling.

“Do you mind taking a ‘trick at the wheel,’ General Wyatt?” said Fordham. “We shall want some masterly steering directly.”

“No, uncle. I can do it better than you,” objected Alma, firmly. “That’s one advantage my riverside dwelling has left me – handiness with the tiller ropes.”

“But you’ll have to keep us head to a tolerably heavy sea,” said Fordham. “That is, not straight at it, but as nearly so as possible. You must not let her fall away on any account.”

“I thoroughly understand boats – in smooth water or rough,” answered the girl, calmly.

“Hurrah!” cried Phil. “Three cheers for our coxswain!”

She spoke no more than the truth. There was strength in those supple young wrists and judgment within that well-shaped head, and all there realised that the General at his age would make the more indifferent helmsman of the two.

A whirring vibrating hum seemed to fill the air. Over the water not half a mile distant stretched a dark line. Nearer, nearer it came, and as it swept steadily on, those in the boat had no difficulty in making out a jagged, serrated ridge of leaping wave crests, banked up white and gleaming against the inky scud which seemed urging it on. On, on – nearer, nearer. It was a critical moment. Most of those in the boat held their breath. Could that cockleshell live a moment against that creaming surging wall of water rolling on to engulf it?

Nearer – nearer! The fearful roar of the advancing waves became stunning, deafening. It was a terrible moment, and to those awaiting the shock it seemed as hours. Philip, grasping his oars rigidly in the intensity of the crisis, cast one look over his shoulder at the advancing terror, then at the group in the stern-sheets. The two Ottley girls had buried their faces in their hands. Scott was livid, his eyes starting from his head. Even the old General’s face looked rigidly nerved for a desperate emergency. But she who sat holding the tiller ropes – not a quiver was in her countenance. There was the keenness of steel in her grey eyes, and the little hands seemed to conceal the strength of a vice, as the boat’s head swept round to meet the advancing shock.

It came. With a mighty roar the huge wall of water struck them. The little craft seemed literally flung into the air, then plashed down again, and those within her thought she had buried herself in the waves for good and all. She reeled and rocked, and but for those firm hands that held the tiller ropes would have spun round and sunk headlong. Several great seas swept beneath her, leaving her half full of water, and the terrified shrieks of the two thoroughly frightened girls, the million bellowing voices of the gale, the roaring, hissing tongues of the leaping billows, the weird darkness of the lowering scud out of which leapt each succession of towering curling seas thundering down upon the tiny craft like ravenous monsters sure of their prey, constituted a scene and surroundings well calculated to try the boldest nerves.

For awhile nobody spoke. Those in charge of the boat knew exactly what to do, and did it – fortunately so, or the fate of every soul there was sealed. In the teeth of the fierce tornado it was all the three strong men could do to keep steerage way on her, and well they knew that should she fall away for one instant the next would witness her capsize. And ever the huge waves flung her from crest to crest, drenching her occupants, while the air was filled with clouds of spray torn from the breaking summits and hurled away high overhead.

“Oh, my God!” shrieked Scott, his eyes starting from his wet and livid countenance, as a sudden volume of water struck him full on the neck, nearly knocking him overboard. “Oh, my God! We shall never see land again?”

“Shut your mouth, you snivelling sneak?” said Philip, exasperated beyond all patience. “Look at Miss Wyatt there and then heave your pitiful cowardly carcase overboard.” At which remark Fordham laughed aloud, his short, dry guffaw more sardonic than ever.

But the wretched chaplain was impervious even to this humiliation, so abject, so overmastering was his terror. He cowered in the bottom of the boat, his face hidden in his hands, moaning.

“Get up, will you!” cried Fordham, savagely. “You’re in Miss Wyatt’s way. And make yourself useful if you can. Take that hat of yours and bale like the devil.”

The peremptory tone had some effect, and the wretched man made an effort to obey. But a fresh sea dashed the hat from his hands and carried it away.

“This’ll never do,” muttered Fordham, in a tone only audible to Philip. “Why can’t those two damned women rouse themselves and bear a hand, instead of screeching there like stuck pigs?”

The General had been baling away manfully, but it was terribly uphill work, for every wave that struck the boat sent a pouring, hissing stream right into her.