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‘The river!’
One of those startling ideas that are overlooked simply because they are so obvious had sprung into
Flory’s mind.
‘The river! Of course! We can get to the police lines as easy as winking. Don’t you see?’
‘How?’
‘Why, down the river–in the water! Swim!’
‘Oh, good man!’ cried Ellis, and smacked Flory on the shoulder. Elizabeth squeezed his arm and
actually danced a step or two in glee. ‘I’ll go if you like!’ Ellis shouted, but Flory shook his head. He
had already begun slipping his shoes off. There was obviously no time to be lost. The Burmans had
behaved like fools hitherto, but there was no saying what might happen if they succeeded in breaking
in. The butler, who had got over his first fright, prepared to open the window that gave on the lawn,
and glanced obliquely out. There were barely a score of Burmans on the lawn. They had left the back
of the Club unguarded, supposing that the river cut off retreat.
‘Rush down the lawn like hell!’ Ellis shouted in Flory’s ear. ‘They’ll scatter all right when they see
you.’
‘Order the police to open fire at once!’ shouted Mr Macgregor from the other side. ‘You have my
authority.’
‘And tell them to aim low! No firing over their heads. Shoot to kill. In me guts for choice.’
Flory leapt down from the veranda, hurting his feet on the hard earth, and was at the river bank in
six paces. As Ellis had said, the Burmans recoiled for a moment when they saw him leaping down. A
few stones followed him, but no one pursued–they thought, no doubt, that he was only attempting to
escape, and in the clear moonlight they could see that it was not Ellis. In another moment he had
pushed his way through the bushes and was in me water.
He sank deep down, and the horrible river ooze received him, sucking him knee-deep so that it was
several seconds before he could free himself. When he came to the surface a tepid froth, like the from
on stout, was lapping round his lips, and some spongy thing had floated into his throat and was
choking him. It was a sprig of water hyacinth. He managed to spit it out, and found that the swift
current had floated him twenty yards already. Burmans were rushing rather aimlessly up and down the
bank, yelling. With his eye at the level of the water, Flory could not see the crowd besieging the Club;
but he could hear their deep, devilish roaring, which sounded even louder than it had sounded on
shore. By me time he was opposite the Military Police lines the bank seemed almost bare of men. He
managed to struggle out of me current and flounder through the mud, which sucked off his left sock. A
little way down the bank two old men were sitting beside a fire, sharpening fenceposts, as though
mere had not been a riot with in a hundred miles of them. Flory crawled ashore, clambered over the
fence and ran heavily across the moon-white parade-ground, his wet trousers sagging. As far as he
could tell in the noise, the lines were quite empty. In some stalls over to the right Verrall’s horses
were plunging about in a panic. Flory ran out on to the road, and saw what had happened.
The whole body of policemen, military and civil, about a hundred and fifty men in all, had attacked
the crowd from the rear, armed only with sticks. They had been utterly engulfed. The crowd was so
dense that it was like an enormous swarm of bees seething and rotating. Everywhere one could see