shoulders in the inky waters; the raft had
righted itself, and was drifting gently away towards the front of the
house, where the bridge is, and Doar and Alice were rising from the
deep, with their hair all plastered over their faces--like Venus in the
Latin verses.

There was a great noise of splashing. And besides that a feminine voice,
looking out of the dairy window and screaming:

"Lord love the children!"

It was Mrs. Pettigrew. She disappeared at once, and we were sorry we
were in such a situation that she would be able to get at Albert's uncle
before we could. Afterwards we were not so sorry.

Before a word could be spoken about our desperate position, Dora
staggered a little in the water, and suddenly shrieked, "Oh, my foot!
oh, it's a shark! I know it is--or a crocodile!"

The others on the bank could hear her shrieking, but they could not see
us properly; they did not know what was happening. Noel told me
afterwards he never could care for that paint-brush.

Of course we knew it could not be a shark, but I thought of pike, which
are large and very angry always, and I caught hold of Dora. She screamed
without stopping. I shoved her along to where there was a ledge of
brickwork, and shoved her up, till she could sit on it, then she got her
foot out of the water, still screaming.

It was indeed terrible. The thing she thought was a shark came up with
her foot, and it was a horrid, jagged, old meat-tin, and she had put her
foot right into it. Oswald got it off, and directly he did so blood
began to pour from the wounds. The tin edges had cut it in several
spots. It was very pale blood, because her foot was wet, of course.

She stopped screaming, and turned green, and I thought she was going to
faint, like Daisy did on the jungle day.

Oswald held her up as well as he could, but it really was one of the
least agreeable moments in his life. For the raft was gone, and she
couldn't have waded back anyway, and we didn't know how deep the moat
might be in other places.

But Mrs. Pettigrew had not been idle. She is not a bad sort really.

Just as Oswald was wondering whether he could swim after the raft and
get it back, a boat's nose shot out from under a dark archway a little
further up under the house. It was the boathouse, and Albert's uncle had
got the punt and took us back in it. When we had regained the dark arch
where the boat lives we had to go up the cellar stairs. Dora had to be
carried.

There