“A medium?” I said weakly.

“Yes, you know, one of those persons who tips tables and dresses up in cheesecloth with flour on her face to tell you your uncle’s very happy in the afterlife and his will’s in the top lefthand drawer of the sideboard. I’ve never believed in them myself, but then again, I’ve never believed in Fate either. And that’s what it must have been. My meeting Miss Mering, and your being on the railway platform and her telling me she and her cousin were to go to Iffley this afternoon.

“Only I hadn’t enough money for the boat, which is why it must be Fate. I mean, what if you hadn’t wanted to go on the river and hadn’t had the cost of Jabez? We shouldn’t be going to meet her at Iffley right now, and I might never have seen her again. At any rate, these mediums are apparently very good at finding missing cats as well as wills, so they came up to Oxford for a séance. But the spirits didn’t know where Princess Arjumand was either, and Miss Mering thought it might have followed her up from Muchings End, which didn’t seem very likely. I mean, a dog might follow one, but cats—”

Only one thing in all this tangled account was clear — he was not my contact. He knew nothing about what it was I was supposed to do at Muchings End. If it was Muchings End and I hadn’t gotten that wrong, too. I had gone off with a contemp and a complete stranger — to say nothing of the dog — and left my contact waiting on the station platform or the tracks or in a boathouse somewhere. And I had to get back there.

I looked back at Oxford. Its distant spires shone in the sun, already two miles behind. And I couldn’t jump overboard and walk back because that would mean leaving my luggage behind. I’d already abandoned my contact. I couldn’t abandon my luggage as well.

“Terence,” I said. “I’m afraid I—”

“Nonsense!” someone ahead of us shouted, and there was a splash that nearly swamped the boat. The covered basket, which was sitting on the top of the Gladstone bag, almost went overboard. I grabbed for it.

“What is it?” I said, trying to see round the curve.

Terence looked disgusted. “Oh, it’s very likely Darwin.”

I kept imagining I was cured, when clearly I was obviously still suffering from a considerable residue of time-lag and was still having Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds. “I beg your pardon?” I said cautiously.

“Darwin,” Terence said. “Professor Overforce taught him to climb trees and now he’s taken to jumping down on innocent passersby. Turn the boat, Ned.” He gestured the direction I was to turn us in. “Bring us away from the bank.”

I did so, trying to see round the bend and under the willows.

“Landed bang in the middle of a punt with two Corpus Christi men and their girls last week,” Terence said, rowing us toward the middle of the river. “Cyril completely disapproves.”

Cyril did, in fact, look disapproving. He had sat up, more or less, and was looking toward the willows.

There was another, louder splash, and Cyril’s ears went back alertly. I followed his gaze.

Either I had been mistaken about my Difficulty, or my Blurring of Vision had taken on new dimensions. An elderly man was floundering in the water beneath the willows, splashing wildly and uselessly.

Good Lord, I thought, it is Darwin.

He had Darwin’s white beard and mutton chop whiskers and his balding head, and what looked like a black frock coat was floating around him. His hat, upside down, was floating several yards from him, and he made a grab for it and went under. He came up choking and flailing, and the hat drifted farther out.

“Good heavens, it’s my tutor, Professor Peddick,” Terence said. “Quick, turn the boat, no, not that way! Hurry!”

We rowed frantically over, me with my hands in the water, paddling, to make us go faster. Cyril stood up with his front paws on the tin trunk like Nelson on the bridge at Trafalgar.

“Stop! Don’t run Professor Peddick over,” Terence said, pushing the oars away from him and leaning over the side.

The old man was oblivious to us. His coat had billowed up like a lifejacket around him, but it obviously wasn’t keeping him afloat. He went under for more than the third time, one hand still reaching ineffectually for his hat. I leaned over the edge of the boat and grabbed for him.

“I’ve got his collar,” I shouted, and suddenly remembered that the one Warder had put on me was detachable, and fumbled for the collar of his frock coat instead. “I’ve got him,” I said, and yanked upward.

His head rose out of the water like a whale’s, and, also like a whale, spewed a great gasping spout of water all over us.

“ ‘Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise.’ Don’t let go,” Terence said, clamping Professor Peddick’s hand onto the side of the boat and fishing for the other one. I’d lost my grip on his neck when he spouted, but his hand had come up, too, when he breached, and I grabbed for that and pulled, and his head came up again, shaking water like a dog.

I have no idea how we got him into the boat. The gunwale dipped sharply underwater, and Terence shouted, “Cyril, no! Ned, back up! We’re going under! No, don’t let go!” but our masses of luggage apparently acted as ballast and kept us from upsetting, even though Cyril came over at the last minute to look at the proceedings and add to the weight on this side of the boat.

Finally, I got a grip on one of his arms, and Terence maneuvered around till he was on the professor’s other side, bracing his foot against the portmanteau so the boat didn’t capsize and got a grip on the other, and we were able to haul him, drenched and pathetic, over the side and into the boat.

“Professor Peddick, are you all right, sir?” Terence said.

“Perfectly all right, thanks to you,” he said, wringing out his sleeve. What I had taken to be a frock coat was actually a black gabardine academic robe. “Fortuitous thing you came along when you did. My hat!”

“I’ve got it,” Terence said, leaning out over the water. What I had taken to be a hat was a mortarboard, complete with the tassel.

“I know I packed blankets. I remember Dawson setting them out,” Terence said, rummaging in his luggage. “What on earth were you doing in the water?”

“Drowning,” Professor Peddick said.

“You very nearly were,” Terence said, digging in the tin box. “But how did you come to be in the water? Did you fall in?”

“Fall in? Fall in?” the professor said, outraged. “I was pushed.”

“Pushed?” Terence said, taken aback. “By whom?”

“By that murderous villain Overforce.”

“Professor Overforce?” Terence said. “Why would Professor Overforce push you in the water?”

“Larger matters,” Professor Peddick said. “Facts are inconsequential in the study of history. Courage is unimportant, and duty and faith. Historians must concern themselves with larger matters. Pah! A lot of scientific rigamarole. All history can be reduced to the effects of natural forces acting upon populations. Reduced! The Battle of Monmouth! The Spanish Inquisition! The Wars of the Roses! Reduced to natural forces! And populations! Queen Elizabeth! Copernicus! Hannibal!”

“Perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning,” Terence said.

“Ab initio. An excellent plan,” Professor Peddick said. “I had come to the river to reflect upon a problem I was having with my monograph on Herodotus’s account of the battle of Salamis by that method which Mr. Walton recommends as the perfect aid to thinking, ‘a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts.’ But, alas, it was not to be. For I had come to ‘piscatur in aqua turbida.’ ”

Oh, good, I thought, another one who makes no sense and spouts quotations. And in Latin.

“One of my pupils, Tuttle Minor, had told me he’d seen a white gudgeon just here along the bank while practicing for the Eights. Nice boy, wretched recitations and worse penmanship, but very sound on fish.”