Holderness slipped his feet from the stirrups, swinging his legs up on to the horse’s quarters, letting the weight off its back. As the current took hold, the tow rope tautened, and horse and rider swung midstream like the weight on the end of a pendulum, Rolly now swimming confidently. Lord Holderness, ready for the undertow, pulled hard on the right rein as soon as he felt the quarters swinging, just as Collins had told him, until slowly they began to make progress again.
Hervey, watching through his telescope, began at last to believe the scheme would work. And then he froze. Lord Holderness was struggling – upright, violently. ‘What—’
He tumbled from the saddle suddenly, as if shot.
Hervey raced into the water, grabbing the return rope. ‘Hold hard, Johnson! Hold hard!’
Collins remounted and put his trooper into the water. ‘Keep it taut, Johno!’
‘What’s to do?’ asked Corporal Steele anxiously, closing to Johnson’s side.
‘Ah don’t know. T’Colonel just seemed to thrash abaht an’ then tummel into t’watter.’
‘Oh, no,’ groaned Steele as he got hold of the rope.
‘What’s up wi’im then, Flashy? Is ’e poorly?’
‘Just keep ’old o’ this rope, Johno.’
Hervey made progress despite the weight of sodden uniform, and his left arm over the rope. But Collins bore down quicker. As he reached Rolly, held fast midstream by the tow rope, he saw Lord Holderness motionless in the water, a leg held by the reins, and knew he had but a few seconds before the current would sweep his own trooper clear. He slipped from the saddle to grasp Rolly’s reins, holding on desperately to his own, until he was able to thread his arm through both sets of reins and get a hand to Lord Holderness’s crossbelt.
Hervey just reached them as the drag of Collins’s trooper became too much to fight against. ‘I’ve got him!’
‘Go on, then, sir; I’ll cut Rolly free.’
‘Hervey? Is that you? What goes there?’ Fairbrother’s voice came from but a dozen feet away. He had swum down the tow rope just as Hervey had along the return line.
‘Hol’ness is in the water, but we have him.’
‘What would you have me do?’
Serjeant-Major Collins had managed to draw his sabre. ‘How close is the return line tied, sir? I’ve got to cut Rolly free.’
‘A good six feet. Give me the sabre!’
Somehow Collins did it, before at last the drag broke Rolly’s reins, and his trooper slid away with the current, Collins hanging on, exhausted. Fairbrother cut through the tow between return line and neck loop, and the commanding officer’s charger drifted off downstream after them. ‘Hervey, do you manage?’
Cornet Blanche, newly joined the regiment and detailed by Captain Worsley for the crossing detachment, was now in the river and closing fast to Hervey’s aid. Between the two of them, Hervey reckoned they would recover the colonel. ‘Yes, Fairbrother. Get back to yonder bank!’
In a few minutes more, helping hands pulled the three from the river. ‘Get blankets!’ gasped Hervey. ‘Wrap all there are about him!’
Corporal Steele felt for a pulse – successfully. ‘Thank God, sir: he’s breathing.’
‘I don’t think he can have swallowed much water. He was not long in it. I don’t know what happened; the horse, perhaps . . .’
‘Sir,’ said Steele, as if seeking permission to give an opinion.
‘What? What is it, Corporal Steele?’
‘Sir, the colonel has fits, sir. Not often, but he’s had two or three bad ones since we came to Hounslow.’ Lord Holderness had brought his groom with him from the 4th Dragoon Guards.
‘We must get the surgeon. See to it, Mr Blanche,’ he said, turning to the bedraggled new cornet.
‘He’ll be all right, sir, will Lord Hol’ness,’ said Steele, anxiously. ‘He just needs to sleep. Only half an hour or so, and then he’s right as a line, sir.’
Johnson brought Hervey his brandy flask. ‘Corporal White’s gone off t’elp t’serjeant-major, sir.’
Hervey was relieved to hear it, and could only pray that Collins was fit to be helped. He cursed. ‘A foolhardy thing, that,’ he muttered – though in Johnson’s hearing, not meaning to bring an answer. ‘Noble, but deuced foolhardy.’
‘What’s tha want to do, then, sir?’
Hervey took another draw from the flask. ‘Do? We do again as we just have, until we get someone other than Captain Fairbrother across!’
‘Right, sir.’ The disapproving resignation in Johnson’s tone was too familiar to invite remark, let alone rebuke.
An age seemed to pass before Collins returned. Hervey sighed, wearied but relieved again. ‘How many more times might you be able to do that, Sar’nt-Major?’
‘How many times might you want me to, sir? How’s the colonel?’
‘He’s well enough.’
Cornet Blanche came back. ‘Major Hervey, sir, I have sent Corporal Beckett for the surgeon. He said he knew where to find him.’
‘I told
‘Sir, I’m sorry. I thought I would be of more use here.’
Hervey shook his head, despairing of his ill temper. ‘So you would, Mr Blanche; so you would. You did right.’
‘Orders, sir?’ asked Collins, declining Johnson’s offer of a blanket with a shrug of the shoulders.
‘We carry on. Who was next to go?’
‘I was, sir,’ came Corporal White’s voice.
‘Very well . . . no. Mr Blanche, you will go next, if you please, since you have your uniform waterproof already.’ The ironic tone of his voice was marked.
‘Thank you, sir. It can absorb no more, that is for sure.’
Spirits were restored.
‘You’re sure the colonel’s well, Corporal Steele?’ Not that there was anything they could do if the answer were in the negative.
‘Ay, sir, he is.’
‘Very well. Have we the tow rope back?’
‘Sir,’ came another voice.
‘Carry on, then, Sar’nt-Major.’
Collins made a new loop in the tow and put it over Cornet Blanche’s charger’s neck. ‘Now, remember, sir, keep his nose at yon bank and be ready for the current to swing ’im round, about thirty yards in.’
‘I will, thank you, Serjeant-Major.’
Blanche sounded steady enough, thought Hervey. But if he botched it, then he did not fancy the chances of getting
Blanche saluted sharply and urged his mare to the edge of the bank. Like the colonel’s charger before her, she too took a quick, curious look at the moon on the water, and then slid willingly into the river. Blanche slipped his feet from the stirrups, swung his legs up on to the mare’s quarters, and as the current took hold, and the tow rope tautened, they swung to the exact same position midstream, the mare swimming well. Blanche pulled hard on the right rein as soon as he felt her quarters swinging, and gradually they began making headway. It took no more than five minutes, although it seemed longer to Hervey, and then the mare was making her first footing in the shallows on the far side. She struggled out, blowing hard as if she had just run a fast mile, and Blanche jumped down.
Fairbrother was waiting. ‘Welcome to the playing fields of Eton.’
‘Welcome back, you might say, sir.’
‘I should have known,’ replied Fairbrother, raising his eyebrows.
‘And that was as hard a game as ever I had here, I may tell you.’ Blanche handed Fairbrother the water-deck bundle in which his clothes had been wrapped. ‘Here’s a parcel from home, as it were.’
