desperate leap from the timbers into-she didn't know what. Down,
down, down-plop, splash, plunge into the deep water, not cold,
for it was August, but oh, so horrible! She spluttered and
coughed when she came to the top, glanced around to see if the
Monsters were swimming after her, and struck out for shore. She
had never learned to swim, and yet she swam, for the simple
reason that a Cat's position and actions in swimming are the same
as her position and actions in walking. She had fallen into a
place she did not like; naturally she tried to walk out, and the
result was that she swam ashore. Which shore? The home-love never
fails: the south side was the only shore for her, the one nearest
home. She scrambled out all dripping wet, up the muddy bank and
through coal-piles and dust-heaps, looking as black, dirty, and
unroyal as it was possible for a Cat to look.

Once the shock was over, the Royal-pedigreed Slummer began to
feel better for the plunge. A genial glow without from the bath,
a genial sense of triumph within, for had she not outwitted three
of the big Terrors?

Her nose, her memory, and her instinct of direction inclined her
to get on the track again; but the place was infested with those
Thunder-rollers, and prudence led her to turn aside and follow
the river-bank with its musky home-reminders; and thus she was
spared the unspeakable horrors of the tunnel.

She was over three days learning the manifold dangers and
complexities of the East River docks. Once she got by mistake on
a ferryboat and was carried over to Long Island; but she took an
early boat back. At length on the third night she reached