Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/289

 “This ain’t fair fightin’,” said Uncle Jim, almost weeping, and all his terrors had gone.

“Keep out!” said Mr. Polly, with an accurately poised pole.

“I tell you I got to land, you Fool,” said Uncle Jim, with a sort of despairing wrathfulness, and began moving down-stream.

“You keep out,” said Mr. Polly in parallel movement. “Don’t you ever land on this place again!”

Slowly, argumentatively, and reluctantly, Uncle Jim waded down-stream. He tried threats, he tried persuasion, he even tried a belated note of pathos; Mr. Polly remained inexorable, if in secret a little perplexed as to the outcome of the situation. “This cold’s getting to my marrer!” said Uncle Jim.

“You want cooling. You keep out in it,” said Mr. Polly.

They came round the bend into sight of Nicholson’s ait, where the backwater runs down to the Potwell Mill. And there, after much parley and several feints, Uncle Jim made a desperate effort and struggled into clutch of the overhanging osiers on the island, and so got out of the water with the millstream between them. He emerged dripping and muddy and vindictive. “By Gaw!” he said. “I’ll skin you for this!”

“You keep off or I’ll do worse to you,” said Mr. Polly.

The spirit was out of Uncle Jim for the time, and he turned away to struggle through the osiers towards the