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The Major went into Mr.Basket's fish-pond souse!--on all fours, precipitately, with hands wildly clawing the water amid the astonished goldfish.
The echo of the splash had hardly lost itself in the dark garden-alleys before he scrambled up, coughing and sputtering, and struggling to shore rubbed the water from his eyes.

Now the basin had not been cleaned out for some months, and beneath the water, which did not exceed a foot and a half in depth, there lay a good two inches of slime and weed, some portion of which his knuckles were effectively transferring to his face.

He had lost a shoe.
Worse than this, as he stood up, shook the water out of his breeches and turned to escape back to the house, it dawned on him that he had lost the latchkey! He had been carrying it in his hand at the moment of the catastrophe.
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