Now they were gliding down the summit level of the canal; the cutting was growing deeper and deeper, so that the echo of the sound of the horses’ hoofs came ringing from the rocky banks. Round the shallow curve must surely be Sapperton Tunnel.

“Hold hard, Charlie!” suddenly yelled the steersman. A moment later he sprang to the after towline and tried to cast it off from the timber head, and there was wild confusion. Shouts and yells on the towpath horses whinnying, hoofs clattering. Hornblower caught a glimpse of the lead horse leaping frantically up the steep slope of the cutting—just ahead of them was the castellated but gloomy mouth of the tunnel and there was no other way for the horse to turn. The Queen Charlotte lurched hideously against the bank to the accompaniment of screams from the second-class cabin; for a moment Hornblower was sure she would capsize. She righted herself and came to a stop as the towlines slackened; the frantic struggles of the second horse, entangled in two towlines, ended as it kicked itself free. The steersman had scrambled on to the towpath and had dropped the after line over a bollard.

“A pretty kettle o’ fish,” he said.

Another man had shown up, running down the bank from the top whence spare horses looked down at them, whinnying. He held the heads of the Queen Charlotte’s horses, and near his feet lay Charlie, the boatmanpostillion, his face a mask of blood.

“Get ye back in there!” bellowed the steersman to the women who were all scrambling out of the secondclass cabin. “All’s well. Get ye back! Once let them loose on the country”—he added to Hornblower—“and they’d be harder to catch than their own chickens.”