Remarkably, no one seems injured. Reg Prinz finds his eyeglasses and calls for his cameraman. Ambrose is comforting Bea excessively where they have fallen together against a spilt stack of folding chairs. I myself had clutched the railing in amazement at Bray’s behaviour and at sight of the fast-approaching shore, which evidently no one else remarked, and so I only laddered my panty hose against a stanchion at the crash, but did not fall. Therefore I was also perhaps the only one who saw Bray spring into the bower of branches a moment after, and hang there easily awhile by one hand like a — well, what: gibbon? fruit bat? Tarzan of the Apes? — surveying the chaos with great frightened eyes which he shaded with the other hand. By the time folks are on their feet he has dropped noiselessly to the deck and stands blinking as if about to weep or swoon. Prinz approaches him cautiously, cameraman at his elbow. Men with electric torches are running toward us along the shore now, calling ahead…
But I shan’t write, not to you; only summarise. The Gadfly was fast; when reversing her engines failed to pull her off, it was decided to leave her there till morning, when the situation and damage to the hull could be better assessed. (She was “kedged off” next day without difficulty, as fortunately undamaged, except cosmetically, as ourselves.) Meanwhile, state police cars, park police cars, sheriffs’ cars, ambulances, volunteer firemen, and hosts of Chautauquans assembled to witness and assist: we were handed down ladders from bow to beach — rather, from bow to woodland path — questioned, examined for injuries, and led through the flashing lights and milling curious to a bus sent over from the institution (The Spirit of Chautauqua) to fetch us, finally, home, after Prinz and Ambrose had got all the footage — I should say mileage — they wanted from the scene.
All this, I daresay, you will have read in your Daily Chautauquan or the Buffalo press, together with the news that while no charges were placed against “Captain” Bray — who plausibly maintained that he had sprung to save Ms Golden from what he took to be assault by a drunken passenger — he was peremptorily sent packing. We were apologised to, offered another excursion gratis at our pleasure (no takers), instructed to send our dry-cleaning bills to the little company for reimbursement. It was explained that the vessel’s safety record was thitherto unblemished; that Bray was not a regular employee but a part-time standby pilot called on only for unscheduled occasions when the regular skipper was unavailable, et cetera.
What was not likely in the news reports is that Prinz, and Ambrose too, were delighted with their episode and fascinated by their Mr Bray — who, when he learned that we were Only Acting, wept with humiliation at his disgrace (I think he had cause to be indignant at us, madman or no). Indeed he went upon his knees to ask our pardon, in particular Ms Golden’s, for whose sake he disquietingly declared himself ready to kill or die. And when these effusions were accepted by A. & P. (if not by Bea, who uncharitably bade him Fuck Off Already and called for a drink), he declared himself egregiously misled about our characters and intentions by “agents of the anti-Bonapartist conspiracy” and begged us to permit him to make amends. Specifically, in the name of our mutual benefactor His Majesty the late Harrison Mack, he hoped we would call upon him next day in nearby Lily Dale, where he invited us to photograph a ruin infinitely more consequential than that of a paltry excursion boat: he meant the failure of “LILYVAC II,” his “computer facility,” and with it the wreck of his “Novel Revolution” (or revolutionary novel, I never got it straight which), sabotaged by those same conspirators who had undermined the Tidewater Foundation and the world’s best hope for — here he looked worshipfully at Bea — a new Golden Age.
Certifiable lunacy! Which of course enraptured Ambrose, especially the “computer-novelist” business. Back at the Athenaeum at last, well past midnight, I tumbled straightway into bed and sleep. Before my lover joined me (and woke me for my nightly seeding) he and Prinz had made plans for an overland excursion on the morrow to Lily Dale, to Wrap Up That Part of the Story on location before returning to Maryland.
