was either drunk or blind, continued to pour water upon her with utter
indifference. A dozen voices yelled imprecations upon him, but he took
no heed whatever.

Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this point
what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper thing to
do. Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and judgment he then
displayed, he would have emerged from that incident the hero of the hour,
instead of, as happened, riding away followed by insult and threat.
Without a moment's hesitation he spurted at the man, sprang to the
ground, and, seizing the hose by the nozzle, attempted to wrest it away.

What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense would
have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to turn off the
tap. Then he might have played foot-ball with the man, or battledore and
shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or thirty people who had rushed
forward to assist would have only applauded. His idea, however, as he
explained to us afterwards, was to take away the hose from the man, and,
for punishment, turn it upon the fool himself. The waterman's idea
appeared to be the same, namely, to retain the hose as a weapon with
which to soak Harris. Of course, the result was that, between them, they
soused every dead and living thing within fifty yards, except themselves.
One furious man, too drenched to care what more happened to him, leapt
into the arena and also took a hand. The three among them proceeded to
sweep the compass with that hose. They pointed it to heaven, and the
water descended upon the people in the form of an equinoctial storm. They
pointed it downwards, and sent the water in rushing streams that took
people off their feet, or caught them about the waist line, and doubled
them up.