Where were we?
What had happened to us?
I began to think it must be all a dream, and that I was really asleep in bed, and should wake up in a minute, and be told it was past ten.
I asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and she replied that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we both wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that was dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream; it got quite interesting.
I still went on pulling, however, and still no lock came in sight, and the river grew more and more gloomy and mysterious under the gathering shadows of night, and things seemed to be getting weird and uncanny.

I thought of hobgoblins and banshees, and will-o'-the-wisps, and those wicked girls who sit up all night on rocks, and lure people into whirl-pools and things; and I wished I had been a better man, and knew more hymns; and in the middle of these reflections I heard the blessed strains of "He's got 'em on," played, badly, on a concertina, and knew that we were saved.
I do not admire the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how beautiful the music seemed to us both then--far, far more beautiful than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that sort could have sounded.

Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind, would only have still further harrowed us.

A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up all hope.

But about the strains of "He's got 'em on," jerked spasmodically, and with involuntary variations, out of a wheezy accordion, there was something singularly human and reassuring.
The sweet sounds drew nearer, and soon the boat from which they were worked lay alongside us.
It contained a party of provincial 'Arrys and 'Arriets, out for a moonlight sail.