Down again, to the roar and torment below the surface. His brain, still working like lightning, guessed how it was with him. He was caught in the swirl below the dam, was being swept downstream on the surface, pushed into the undertow and carried up again along the bottom, to be spewed up and granted a second in which to breathe before being carried round again. He was ready this time to strike out feebly, no more than three strokes, sideways, at his next breathing space. When he was next.sucked down the pain in his breast was inconceivably greater and blending with that agony was another just as bad of which he now became conscious—the pain of the cold in his limbs. It called for every scrap of his resolution to force himself to take another breath and to continue his puny effort sideways when the time came for it. Down again; he was ready to die, willing, anxious to die, now, so that this pain would stop. A bit of board had come into his hand, with nails protruding from one end. That must be a plank from the boat, shattered to fragments and whirling round and round with him, eternally. Then his resolution flickered up once more. He caught a gulp of air as he rose to the surface, striking out for the shore, waiting in apprehension to be dragged down. Marvellous; he had time for a second breath, and a third. Now he wanted to live, so heavenly were these painless breaths he was taking. But he was so tired, and so sleepy. He got to his feet, fell as the water swept his legs away again from under him, splashed and struggled in mad panic, scrambling through the shallows on his hands and knees. Rising, he took two more steps, before falling with his face in the snow and his feet still trailing in the rushing water.
He was roused by a human voice bellowing apparently in his ear. Lifting his head he saw a faint dark figure a yard or two away, bellowing with Brown’s voice.
“Ahoy! Cap’n, Cap’n! Oh, Cap’n!”
“I’m here,” moaned Hornblower, and Brown came and knelt over him.
“Thank God, sir,” he said, and then, raising his voice, “The cap’n’s here, Mr. Bush.”
“Good!” said a feeble voice five yards away.
At that Hornblower fought down his nauseating weakness and sat up. If Bush were still alive he must be looked after at once. He must be naked and wet, exposed in the snow to this cutting wind. Hornblower reeled to his feet, staggered, clutched Brown’s arm, and stood with his brain whirling.
“There’s a light up there, sir,” said Brown, hoarsely. “I was just goin’ to it if you hadn’t answered my hail.”
“A light?”
Hornblower passed his hands over his eyes and peered up the bank. Undoubtedly it was a light shining faintly, perhaps a hundred yards away. To go there meant surrender—that was the first reaction of Hornblower’s mind. But to stay here meant death. Even if by a miracle they could light a fire and survive the night here they would be caught next morning—and Bush would be dead for certain. There had been a faint chance of life when he planned the escape from the coach, and now it was gone.
“We’ll carry Mr. Bush up,” he said.
“Aye aye, sir.”
They plunged through the snow to where Bush lay.
“There’s a house just up the bank, Bush. We’ll carry you there.”
Hornblower was puzzled by his ability to think and to speak while he felt so weak; the ability seemed unreal, fictitious.
“Aye aye, sir.”
They stooped and lifted him up between them, linking hands under his knees and behind his back. Bush put his arms round their necks; his flannel nightshirt dripped a further stream of water as they lifted him. Then they started trudging, knee deep in the snow, up the bank towards the distant light.
They stumbled over obstructions hidden in the snow. They slipped and staggered. Then they slid down a bank and fell, all together, and Bush gave a cry of pain.
“Hurt, sir?” asked Brown.
“Only jarred my stump. Captain, leave me here and send down help from the house.”
Hornblower could still think. Without Bush to burden them they might reach the house a little quicker, but he could imagine all the delays that would ensue after they had knocked at the door—the explanations which would have to be made in his halting French, the hesitation and the time wasting before he could get a carrying party started off to find Bush—who meanwhile would be lying wet and naked in the snow. A quarter of an hour of it would kill Bush, and he might be exposed for twice as long as that. And there was the chance that there would be no one in the house to help carry him.
“No,” said Hornblower cheerfully. “It’s only a little way. Lift, Brown.”
They reeled along through the snow towards the light. Bush was a heavy burden—Hornblower’s head was swimming with fatigue and his arms felt as if they were being dragged out of their sockets. Yet somehow within the shell of his fatigue the inner kernel of his brain was still active and restless.
“How did you get out of the river?” he asked, his voice sounding flat and unnatural in his ears.
“Current took us to the bank at once, sir,” said Bush, faintly surprised. “I’d only just kicked my blankets off when I touched a rock, and there was Brown beside me hauling me out.”
“Oh,” said Hornblower.
The whim of a river in flood was fantastic; the three of them had been within a yard of each other when they entered the water, and he had been dragged under while the other two had been carried to safety. They could not guess at his desperate struggle for life, and they would never know of it, for he would never be able to tell them about it. He felt for the moment a bitter sense of grievance against them, resulting from his weariness and his weakness. He was breathing heavily, and he felt as if he would give a fortune to lay down his burden and rest for a couple of minutes; but his pride forbade, and they went on through the snow, stumbling over the inequalities below the surface. The light was coming near at last.
They heard a faint inquiring bark from a dog.
“Give ‘em a hail, Brown,” said Hornblower.
“Ahoy!” roared Brown. “House ahoy!”
Instantly two dogs burst into a clamorous barking.
“Ahoy!” yelled Brown again, and they staggered on. Another light flashed into view from another part of the house. They seemed to be in some kind of garden now; Hornblower could feel plants crushing under his feet in the snow, and the thorns of a rose tree tore at his trouser leg. The dogs were barking furiously. Suddenly a voice came from a dark upper window,
“Who is there?” it asked in French.
Hornblower prodded at his weary brain to find words to reply.
“Three men,” he said. “Wounded.”
That was the best he could do.
“Come nearer,” said the voice, and they staggered forward, slipped down an unseen incline, and halted in the square of light cast by the big lighted window in the ground floor, Bush in his nightshirt resting in the arms of the bedraggled other two.
“Who are you?”
“Prisoners of war,” said Hornblower.
“Wait one moment, if you please,” said the voice politely.
They stood shuddering in the snow until a door opened near the lighted window, showing a bright rectangle of light and some human silhouettes.