t with
his left hand, landing on Ibbetson's mouth, and cutting off his last
words, an order, shouted to the rowers:--"Sheer off, and row for the
bridge ... I can ..." Both of them believed he would have said:--"I can
manage him by myself."

But nothing further passed. For the boat, not built to keep an even keel
with two strong men struggling together in the stern, lurched over,
shipping water the whole length of the counter. The rowers tried to obey
orders, the more readily--so they said after--that their chief seemed
quite a match for his man. There was a worse danger ahead, a barge
moored in the path, and they had to clear, one side or the other. The
best chance was outside, and they would have succeeded but for the cable
that held her. It just caught the bow oar, and the boat swung round, the
stroke being knocked down between the seats in his effort to back water
and keep her clear. Half-crippled already and at least one-third full of
water, she was in no trim to dodge the underdraw of the sloping bows of
an empty barge, at the worst hour of ebb-tide. The boy in the garden,
next door to The Pigeons, whom curiosity had kept on the watch, saw the
swerve off-shore; the men struggling in the stern; the collision with
the moorings; and the final wreck of the boat. Then she vanished behind
the barge, and was next seen, bottom-up, by children on the bridge over
the little creek three minutes lower down the stream, whose cries roused
those in hearing and brought help. When the man came back with the
whisky-flask, his mate had vanished, and the boat with its crew. If he
guessed what had passed, it was from the running and shouting on the
bank, and the boats that were putting off in haste; and then, well over
towards Hammersmith Bridge, that they reached their quarry and were
trying to right her on the water, possibly thinking to find some former
occupant shut in beneath. He did not wait to see the upshot; but,
pocketing the flask, got away unnoticed by anyone, all eyes being intent
upon the incident on the river.

The sergeant, Ibbetson, was drowned, and the facts narrated are taken
literally, or inferred, from what came out at the inquest. The theory
that recommended itself to account for his conduct was that he had
recognised a culprit whom he had known formerly, for whose apprehension
a reward had been offered, and had, without hesitation, formed a plan of
separating him from his companion--or companions, for who could s