Johnny felt the jerk, heard the Rector’s cry of warning, and in two seconds (he never knew how) had leapt over the stern oar, across the thwarts, past the kicking and terrified Bounce—­with whom the Rector was struggling as she threatened to leap overboard—­and reached the bows in time to snatch the oar as it slipped over the side.  But it had snapped both the thole-pins short off in their sockets and was useless.  The boat’s nose fell off and they were swept down towards the anchored hulk below.  Johnny could only wait for the crash, and he waited:  and in those few instants—­the doubt being still upon him—­bethought him that likely enough the Rector could not swim, or would be disabled by his lameness.  And . . . was he sorry?  He had not answered this question when the crash came—­the ferry-boat striking the very stem of the keel, her gunwale giving way to it with a slow grinding noise, then with a bursting crack as the splinters broke inwards.  As it seemed to him, there were two distinct bumps, and between them the boat filled slowly and the mare slid away into the water.  He heard voices shouting on board the keel.  The water rose to his knees and he sank in it, almost on top of Mr. Wesley.  At once he felt the whirl of the current, but not before he had gripped the Rector’s collar.  The other hand he flung up blindly.  By Providence the keel was freighted with sea-coal and low in the water, and as the pair slid past, Johnny’s fingers found and gripped the bulwark-coaming.  So for a half-minute he hung—­his body and the Rector’s trailing out almost on the surface with the force of the water, his arm almost dislocated by the strain—­until a couple of colliers came running to help and hauled them on board, the Rector first.  They had gripped the small boy as the boat sank, and he stood in the bows scared and dripping, but otherwise nothing the worse.  His brother, it appeared, could swim like a fish and was already a good hundred yards downstream, not fighting the current, but edging little by little for the home shore.  And astern of him battled the mare.

The colliers had a light boat on deck, but with it even in calm water they could have done little to help the poor creature, and on such a stream it was quite useless.  They stood watching and discussing her as she turned from time to time, either as the tide carried her or in vain, wild efforts to stem it:  the latter, probably, for after some ten minutes (by which time her head had diminished to a black speck in the distance) she seemed to learn wisdom from the example of the swimmer ahead, resisted no longer, and was finally cast ashore and caught by him more than half a mile below.

Johnny, seated on the grimy deck, heard the colliers discussing her struggles, but took no concern in them.  His eyes were all for the Rector, who, after the first fit of coughing, lay and panted against his knees, with gaze fastened on the steel-gray sky above.