“Sure, we’re all right with them. Routine check. But there’s already a reward out for you. There’s only a cubby-hole below. Can’t even stow you lumpy and suspicious-looking under a bunk pallet, we kip on deck.”

“How near are they?” I quavered, peering ahead. “Is that them?”

“Mp-hm.”

I tugged off my sandals. “Goin’ to swim for it?” they said, catching on fast. “And not a moment too soon. You a good swimmer, missy? Make for that bank over there. Work forward. We may be able to pick you up at the ruined warehouse, though there’s no saying.”

The muffled oars of the law, smugly and rather pathetically certain it was sneaking up on these experienced river-farers, were now sending wash against our bows and making occasional plop noises which I suppose it fondly imagined would be mistaken for fish rising.

Guts helped me off with my dress, helped drag off my trousers. In my little shift I put my hands together and dived off the bulwark. I made the water with as little sound, just about, as the oars of the law. This now cried “Halt!” in a loud voice. My heart froze so I didn’t even notice the coldness of the new element. Guts’ voice bawled back, “Waddya mean, Halt?” There was a clash of grappling hooks, canvas hauled down and my friends allowed themselves to be boarded. Something hit the water beside me. My sandals, straight down, knack-thrown. My dress, trousers and cloak in a bundle. They didn’t want any trace of me left on board. A sudden sense of loss sent me for that bundle, entangling myself in the wash of the now floating vessels. I hit an oar and hoped like hell that no one was at the top of it. I got that bundle just as the cloth was begin to spread out under the surface of the water. This heavy Diary in the swinging purse-like pocket of the cloak, it acted like a plummet-stone.

Swimming with the Diary bundled in the cloak clasped to my breast was difficult. The water was cold and sent little electric shivers against my limbs. I struck out for the bank they’d indicated. This was very different from swimming in the tower-top pool where I learnt. This was the farthest bank, the nearest one was a mass of wharfs and movements and lights, this was a row of gardens and big private mansions and little quiet, dark, private, landing-stages. Not too soon, I began to smell the wafted fragrance over the pervasion of salt and river-weed which in the small rounded enclosure of my nostrils seemed to suggest a wideness of miles.

Two lights ribboned past—long flutter-gilled eels, lambent in their own phosphorescence.

For a moment my swimming hand was lit underwater—a strange, thin, pearl object, a confident clawing on the element, on life …