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not up to our full strength, because if more than four got on the water came up too near our knees, and we feared she might founder if over-manned.
    Daisy and Denny did not want to go on the raft, white mice that they were, so that was all right. And as H.O. had been wet through once he was not very keen. Alice promised Noel her best paintbrush if he’d give up and not go, because we knew well that the voyage was fraught with deep dangers, though the exact danger that lay in wait for us under the dairy window we never even thought of.
    So we four elder ones got on the raft very carefully; and even then, every time we moved the water swished up over the raft and hid our feet. But I must say it was a jolly decent raft.
    Dicky was captain, because it was his adventure. We had hop poles from the hop garden beyond the orchardto punt with. We made the girls stand together in the middle and hold on to each other to keep steady. Then we christened our gallant vessel. We called it the
Richard
, after Dicky, and also after the splendid admiral who used to eat wine glasses and died after the Battle of the Revenge in Tennyson’s poetry.
    Then those on shore waved a fond adieu as well as they could with the dampness of their handkerchiefs, which we had had to use to dry our legs and feet when we put on our stockings for dinner, and slowly and stately the good ship moved away from shore, riding on the waves as though they were her native element.
    We kept her going with the hop poles, and we kept her steady in the same way, but we could not always keep her steady enough, and we could not always keep her in the wind’s eye. That is to say, she went where we did not want, and once she bumped her corner against the barn wall, and all the crew had to sit down suddenly to avoid falling overboard into a watery grave. Of course then the waves swept her decks, and when we got up again we said that we should have to change completely before tea.
    But we pressed on undaunted, and at last our saucy craft came into port, under the dairy window and there was the milk pan, for whose sake we had endured such hardships and privations, standing up on its edge quite quietly.
    The girls did not wait for orders from the captain, as they ought to have done; but they cried out, ‘Oh, here it is!’ and then both reached out to get it. Anyone who has pursued a naval career will see that of course the raftcapsized. For a moment it felt like standing on the roof of the house, and the next moment the ship stood up on end and shot the whole crew into the dark waters.
    We boys can swim all right. Oswald has swum three times across the Ladywell Swimming Baths at the shallow end, and Dicky is nearly as good; but just then we did not think of this; though, of course, if the water had been deep we should have.
    As soon as Oswald could get the muddy water out of his eyes he opened them on a horrid scene.
    Dicky was standing up to his 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 Dora 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 paintbrush.
    Of course we knew it could not be a shark, but I