eat. But
Langrish, eager to continue, went on,--

"The rest of us pulled Tempest through easy. If Trim hadn't dropped his
'h's,' and--"

Here there was a real row. Trim rose majestic and outraged, and hurled
himself on the secretary; and for a quarter of an hour at least, any
casual passer-by glancing at the apparently empty barge in mid-stream,
would have come to the conclusion that it was swaying from side to side
rather more violently than the force of the current seemed to warrant.

Trimble's "h's" took a long time to avenge, and by the time it was done
most of us were pretty much the colour of the coal-dust in which we had
searched for them.

Langrish was about to proceed with his luckless minutes when Warminster,
who had happened to peep above board for the sake of fresh air,
exclaimed,--

"Hullo, we're adrift!"

Instantly all hands were on board, and we discovered that our gallant
barge, probably during the last argument, had slipped her boathook at
the stern, and that the rope which held our prow had evidently been
slipped for us by a couple of youths wearing the town-boy ribbon, whom
we could descry at that moment strolling innocently up the towing-path,
apparently heedless of our existence.

The great lumbering barge was going down stream side on, about half-way
between either bank, at the breakneck speed of a mile an hour. We had
lost our boathook, and had nothing whatever to navigate our craft with.
Worst of all, at the end of the long reach, coming to meet us, we could
see another barge, towed by a horse, which could certainly never pass up
in safety.

We were in for it, and had evidently nothing to do but peer, with our
grimy faces over the gunwale, at our impending doom. About a hundred
yards off the men in charge of the opposition barge became aware of our
presence, and a hurried interchange of polite observations took place
between the skipper at the helm and the driver on the tow-path, the
result of which was that their tow-rope was cast off and hauled ashore;
and man and horse, accompanied by a dangerous-looking dog, advanced at a
quick pace to meet us.

The rope was hurriedly gathered up in a coil and thrown across our bows,
and we were invited to hitch the loop at the end over the hook on our
front thwart. The horse was then put in motion, and the downward career
of our ark suffered an abrupt check, as we found ourselves rudely lugged
in towards the bank.

The situation was an aw