He selected two oars and carried them under his arm into the boat-house. There was a skiff alongside, and he told her to step in. He gave a powerful shove from the stage and they forged backward from under the pointed roof. Skilfully and easily he manœuvred round and rowed with leisurely rhythm. Flo felt in the bottom of a hollow as she looked up at the great grey-green farmhouse, so unfamiliar from there. The drizzle flowed down on them, and beyond the immediate shores everywhere looked grey and soaked. Beside the willows Bert balanced the oars in the rowlocks and let the boat drift and there was silence. Fine as the rain was, Flo fancied that she heard the faintest sizzling as it met the placid surface. Bert saw to the spinners on his rods, then whipped them in a circle over his head and let them drop lightly astern one after the other. He told Flo how to hold the rods, and she was to report the least suggestion of a snatch. He began to row again, and she felt the slight vibration of the lines and was thrilled, expecting every moment to hook something about as big as a whale. Only nothing happened. They came to the first arm and went slowly across. Flo was excited to see a slim grey bird about a yard high leap off the mud at the far end and go in a swirl to the top of the willows. Its wings looked black and tremendous. Above the bushes the bird flapped slowly and seemed to fly with great ease.
“Wish I had a gun for the blighter,” said Bert. “Pike an’ them, they’re ruinin’ the place.”
Down the arm there were numbers of wild ducks, also, and six towered at the same moment as the heron, though not as high. They made a quick-winged circuit of the lake, and dropped back into the arm when the boat was past. Flo looked to the rods again, but still no fish was tempted.
“Are there any?” she asked.
“Plenty . . . but non always hungry,” Bert answered.
She watched him. He pulled easily, confidently. The hairy tweed of his jacket had been turned from rust-brown to grey by drizzle specks. Flo was getting damper and damper, but there was a pleasant clean feel with the rain; it seemed to cleanse her cheeks and she imagined herself looking pink and attractive. Bert smiled, but she knew intuitively that it was only because he was content. She wished that Jack Knight or Dick Goldbourn had been in the boat instead.
They had reached the far end and Bert turned and drove parallel with the rough-stone-faced dam which sloped away from them. Its level top of grass cut them off from everything beyond, as though the world in that direction ended there. They were in the widest part of the lake, near where Jenny and Jerry had swum. Midway Bert stopped, oar-blades moveless in the water. The little clap-clap of wavelets beneath the prow ended, silence was complete again. He looked up the water musingly, without speaking. Flo copied him. She had never realized that the lake was so big. It stretched away like a sea, and the dim flat height of Moss Top in the drizzle seemed miles off. The flat shores grown with willows on the north and with alders and bush hawthorns on the south reminded her of a page of a story she had read in a book left in the front room by one of the previous week-end visitors. It was called “Heart of Darkness,” and described a low-lying African coast backed by mysterious bush. “It’s just like that,” Flo thought.
“It’s a good spot,” said Bert, starting pulling again.
The south shore lacked the long arms of the north and was not as interesting, and Flo began to feel the wet going cold down her neck. She tried to mop it with her handkerchief, and Bert grinned and asked what was up. She was about to reply when he abruptly let go of his right oar to grab the rod on that side which she had neglected. He gave a quick wrist snatch, getting up swiftly with expert balance. Flo saw the line cut the water, first away from them, then left, then right. How queer, when she could not see anything; as if it was the line that had suddenly come alive and gone mad. Her pulse speeded up; she gripped the sides of the skiff, till the line all at once went dead again. “Small one,” Bert announced. He began to wind in, holding the rod tip close along the surface. “Get the net.”
She fumbled, the handle seemed too long. She gripped it halfway in her right hand, and stared intently overside. Slowly the vague dark shape of the fish came upward. She leaned over, dipping with a splash. As if electrified the fish leapt, smashing the water, so that momentarily she saw it complete—curved, lean, silvery blue and vicious. She almost sprawled overboard, her heart bolting.
“What the . . . the b’s gone!” exclaimed Bert, and went on more amused than angry, “You dipped as if you was after an alligator.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” murmured Flo, feeling foolish, yet half glad. “I wasn’t expecting it to . . .”