"There," said she, "you see, even Charles repudiates the idea."
If this was so, Charles instantly repudiated the idea with more growls and the added violence of barks. She muffled him in the cloak and listened. A footstep on the towing-path.
"Hullo!" she called, and Edward added, "Hi, you there!" and Charles, wriggling forcefully among the folds of the cloak, barked again.
"That ought to fetch them, whoever they are," said Edward, and stood up.
Even as he did so a voice said, urgently and quite close above them. "'Ush, can't yer!" and a head and shoulders leaning over the edge of the lock came as a dark silhouette against the clear dark blue of the starry sky. For it was now as dark as a July night is--and that, as we know, is never really dark at all. '"Ush!" repeated the voice. "Shut up, I tell yer!" and, surprisingly and unmistakably, it was to the two in the boat that he was speaking. "Make that dawg o' yours choke hisself--stow it, can't yer! Yer don't want to be lagged, do yer? Yer aren't got 'arf a chants once any one knows you're 'ere. Don't you know you're wanted? The police'll be along some time in the night, and then you're done for."
"I think," said Edward, with extreme politeness, "that you are, perhaps, mistaking us for acquaintances, whereas we are strangers to you. But if you could be so kind as to open the gates and lend us a crowbar to get through the other locks you would not be the loser."
"I know yer, right enough," said the man. "Yer ain't no strangers to me. It was me as 'ired yer the boat up at the Anchor. The boss 'e sent me out to look for yer. Only 'e doesn't know I know about your being wanted. Least said soonest mended's what I allus say. Where's yer crow got to?"
"In the water," said Edward; "dropped off the lock gate."
"Clumsy!" said the man, giving the word its full vocative value. "Whereabouts?"
"Then yer tuck up yer shirt-sleeve and run yer 'and down and pass that there crow up to me. There ain't not above two foot o' water in 'er, if there's that."
To your Medway man the lock is as unalterably feminine as his ship to a sailor.
It was she who plunged her arm in the water, and, sure enough, there was the crowbar lying quietly and tamely beside them--"like a pet poodle," as she said.