“Hullo! Hullo! Jobbins!”

His voice was silly and uncannily stifled. Deflated, he sank to his former disgusting level.

He had disturbed more than water when he tried his leap. An anonymous soft object bobbed against his chin. The stench was outrageous. I can’t, he thought, I can’t stay like this. Already his fingers had grown cold and his arms were racked. Presently—soon—he would no longer feel the edge, he would only feel pain and his fingers would slip away. And what then? Float on his back in this unspeakable water and gradually freeze? He concentrated on his hands, tipping his head back to look up the length of his stretched arms at them. The details of his predicament now declared themselves: the pull on his pectoral muscles, on his biceps and forearms, and the terrible strain on his gloved fingers. The creeping obscenity of the water! He hung on for some incalculable age and realized that he was coming to a crisis when his body would no longer be controllable. Something must be done. Now. Another attempt? If there were anything solid to push against Suppose, after all, his feet were only a few inches from the bottom? But what bottom? The floor of a dressing-room? An understage passage? A boxed-in trap? He stretched his feet and touched nothing. The water rose to his mouth. He flexed his legs, kicked, hauled on the edge and bobbed upwards. The auditorium appeared. If he could get his elbows on the edge. No.

But at the moment when the confusion of circle and stalls shot up before his eyes, he had heard a sound that he recognized, a protracted groan, and at the penultimate second, he had seen—what? a splinter of light? And heard? Somebody cough.

“Hi!” Peregrine shouted. “Here! Quick! Help!”

He sank and hung again by his fingers. But someone was coming through the house. Muffled steps on the rags of carpet

“Here! Come here, will you? Onstage.”