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Updated: June 27, 2025
The quiet, and the gloom, and the dropping rain, strangely affected him now, as he plied his punt-pole; once he could have wept in his remorse, and another time he almost shrieked in fear. How lonesome it seemed! how dreadful! and that death-dyed face behind him ha! woman, away I say! But he neared the island, and, all shoeless as he was, crept up its muddy bank.
He lay on his back, thinner and more peaked than ever in life; his yellow hair made him an aureole. He looked like some martyred ascetic, with his tightened smile and the gash half-way through his neck. Prosper leaned upon his punt-pole looking sorrowfully at him. "Alas, my brother," he said half whimsically, "do you smile? Even so I think God should smile that He had let such a thing be made.
Then the low western horizon turned to a dark band between sky and water, and the heavens immediately above took on a pale green lucence of infinite depth. "More wind," said Mr. Kincaid, glancing at it. Finally, although it was still possible plainly to see the incoming ducks against the sky, Mr. Kincaid laid aside his gun and picked up the punt-pole.
The craft seemed seaworthy, and he proceeded to forage for a punt-pole. Fully equipped at length, he stepped on board and poled himself out from the shore. Arrived at the farther bank, he calmly disembarked and tied up under the willows. He paused a few seconds to light another cigarette, then turned from the river and sauntered up the path between the high box hedges.
Helen began to sob again. She was working herself up into a highly nervous state and her imagination was "running away with her," as Ruth often said. Just then she almost lost the punt-pole, and this near-accident startled her. She might need that pole yet especially if the boat drifted into shallow water. She looked all around. She stood up, so as to see farther.
Her fright had made her somewhat nervous, and she was inclined to start at every sound. When the meal was over she went up to her favourite retreat on the upper deck. A golden twilight still lingered in the air, and the river was mysteriously calm. But the girl's heart was full of a heavy restlessness. Each time she heard a punt-pole striking on the bed of the river she raised her head to look.
Aguilar pushed off with an oar, and he continued to use the oar as a punt-pole, so that no sound of their movement should reach the bank. Water was pouring into the old sieve, and they touched ground once. But Aguilar knew precisely what he was about and got her off again. They approached the yacht with the slow, sure inexorability of Aguilar's character.
"Your decision relieves my mind," her companion declared, as he arranged the cushions behind her back. "I rather fancy myself with a pair of sculls, but a punt-pole never appealed to me. We will sit here and enjoy the peace. To-morrow night you will find it all disturbed music and raucous voices and the stampede of my poor, frightened horses in the park. This is really a very gracious silence."
At the very first glimpse the usual temptation for idle hands stared her in the face, for there on the jetty lay, not only the long punt-pole, but also the dainty little paddle which she had handled under Ralph's instructions the week before.
Sound travels easily over water, and the decoy-man must have heard the hail, but he paid no heed, only kept on poling his punt along, thrusting down the long ash sapling, which the fen-men used as punt-pole, staff, and leaping-pole in turn; and then as the boat glided on, standing erect in her bows like some statue. "Now, what a dried-up old yellow mummy he is!" cried Dick.
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