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If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket latch loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain; or, knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunting among the beds for cucumbers and love-apples no one called out to me from any opened window; no dog sprang forward to bark an alarm.
Her allusion to the box of water-sodden Tändstickors gave him the notion of utilizing as an active ally the bleached remains of the poor fellow who had long ago fallen a victim to this identical mob of cut-throats or their associates.
With something akin to terror, he now turned from this street of shops into one of those with the pleasant dwellings, eager to find something alive, even a dog to bark an alarm. He entered one of the gardens, clicking the gate-latch loudly after him, but no one challenged. He drew a drink from the well with its loud-rattling chain and clumsy, water-sodden bucket, but no one called.
And now I'm terrible afraid you must face the worst. I've made a beginning, I'm sorry to say." He drew a parcel from under his arm and laid out afore her the wreck of a water-sodden billycock hat, a rag of a dark-blue flannel shirt and one ginger-coloured sock in a pretty ruinous state. "What d'you make of these here mournful relics?" he asked.
It moved me, too, to see pieces of banners and funeral shields, and even shreds of wreaths that dear hearts had put there a century ago, now all ruined and rotten some still clinging, water-sodden, to the coffins, and some trampled in the sand of the floor.
How I flew down it this morning, three steps at a time, and had some ado to hinder myself from sliding down the banisters, as we have all often, with dangerous joy, done at home! Now I crawl up, like some sickly old person. When I reach my bedroom, I throw myself into the first chair, and lie in it "... quiet as any water-sodden log Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook."
So completely was I transformed from a man into something debased that I went to her house and fell through the front door on the floor dead drunk. The landlady had me carried back to my office, where I lay like a water-sodden log, wholly unconscious, until the next morning. When I awoke I had no knowledge of anything that had happened.
It was a miserable night, the hours seemed interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in this miserable manner, we heard a faint halloo in the distance; it was now past eleven at night. We returned the hail, and bye-and-bye the peons returned bringing a boatman with them.
There were occasionally very welcome variations from this menu. Some paddies a little white bird not unlike a pigeon were snared with a loop of string, and fried, with one water-sodden biscuit, for lunch. Enough barley and peas for one meal all round of each had been saved, and when this was issued it was a day of great celebration.
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