CHAPTER V.
RIPE AND DROPPED
Mrs. Sidebottom slept soundly, only troubled by the mistake about the tablecloth. The captain slept soundly, troubled by nothing at all. The scream of steam-whistle, the bray of buzzer and bawl of syren, the jangle of alarm bells, and the hum of voices outside their windows, did not rouse them. They had become accustomed to these discordant noises which startled the ears every morning early, to rouse the mill-hands and call them from their beds. Moreover, the whistles and buzzers and syrens were not in the town, but were below in the valley, at some distance, and distance modified some of the dissonance.
It is true that Mrs. Sidebottom dreamed, and to dream is not to enjoy perfect rest. She dreamt that her brother Jeremiah was examining the tablecloth, and that she was dribbling water over the sheet out of a marrow-spoon, in patterns, to give it an appearance of being figured with acorns and oak-leaves. And she found in her dreams that Jeremiah was hard to persuade that what he had before him was a figured damask tablecloth and not a sheet. And she thought how she assured her brother on her word that what he saw was a watered table-cover, and mightily pleased she was with herself at her ingenuity in equivocation.
But towards morning the house was roused by violent ringing at the front-door bell, and by calls under the windows, and gravel thrown at the panes. The watchman had come, at Salome's desire, to inquire if by chance Mr. Pennycomequick was there. He had gone out, after his return home, and had not returned or been seen. Fears were entertained that he might have been swept away in the flood.
'Flood! what flood?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom.
'The valley is full of water. Holroyd reservoir be busted.'
'And – Mr. Pennycomequick has not been seen?'
'No, ma'am. Miss Cusworth thought there might be a chance he had come back here and was staying talking.'
'He has not been here since he dined with us.'
'He said he was boun' to take a stroll on t' tow-path. I see'd him there. If he's not got off it afore the flood came down he's lost.'
'Lost! Fiddlesticks! I mean – bless my soul.' Mrs. Sidebottom's heart stood still for a moment. What! Jeremiah ripe, and dropped from the tree already. Jeremiah gone down the river with the anges-à-cheval inside him that he had enjoyed so recently.
She ran upstairs and hammered at her son's door. His window looked out on the valley, not into the street, and he had not been roused at the same time as his mother. As she ran, the thought came to her uncalled, like temptations, 'I needn't have had champagne at six-and-six. It does not matter after all that the sheet and the tablecloth changed places. I might just as well have had cheap grapes.'
'Lamb!' she called through the door, 'Lamb! Do get up. Your uncle is drowned. Slip into your garments. He has been swept away by the flood. Don't stay to shave, you shaved before dinner; and your prayers can wait. Do come as quickly as possible. Not a minute is to be lost.'
She opened his door, and saw her son with a disordered head and sleepy eyes, stretching himself. He had tumbled out of his bed and into his dressing-gown. There was gas in the room, turned down to a pea when not required for light; and this the captain, when roused, had turned up again.
'Oh, Lamb! Do bestir yourself! Do you hear that your uncle is dead, and that he has been carried away by a flood? It is most advisable that we should be in his house before the Cusworths or the servants have made away with anything. These are the critical moments, when things disappear and cannot be traced afterwards. No one but the Cusworths know what he had, there may be plate and jewellery that belonged to his mother. I cannot tell. We do not know what money there is in the house, and what securities he has in his strong box. My dear Lamb! Yes, brush your hair, and don't look stupid. You may lose a great deal by lack of promptitude. Of course we must be in charge. The Cusworths have no locus standi. I shall dismiss them at the earliest convenience. Good gracious me, what things you men are! If you go to bed you get frouzy and rumpled in a way women never do. I have noticed, in crossing the Channel, how a man who gets sea-sick breaks up altogether and becomes disreputable; whereas a woman may have been ten times as ill, yet when she steps ashore she is decent and presentable. I can wait for you no longer. I shall go on by myself. When you are ready, follow.'
Mrs. Sidebottom ran back to her room, and was equipped to start in an incredibly short time. When she again came forth she looked into her son's room once more, and said, 'I do hope and trust, Lamb; that your uncle took his keys with him. It would be too frightful to suppose that he had left them behind, and that these Cusworths should have had the house to themselves and the keys all this while.'
Mrs. Sidebottom hastened to the residence of her half-brother, which stood on the slope of the hill a few minutes' walk from the factory. There was now sufficient light for her to see that the whole basin of the Keld was occupied by water, that not the fields only, but the mill-yards as well were inundated. The entire population of Mergatroyd was awake and afoot, and giving tongue like a pack of beagles. The street or road leading down the hill into the valley was crowded with people, some hurrying down to the water, others ascending, laden with goods from the houses that had been invaded by water. The cottagers in the bottom had escaped, or were being rescued. What had become of the workers in Mitchell's no one knew, and fears were entertained for them. The mill itself stood above the water, but if the hands engaged in it had attempted to leave it, they must have been overtaken and carried away by the flood. Fortunately the majority of the mills were nearer the hillsides than Mitchell's, so that escape from them was comparatively easy. The rush of the torrent had been along the course of the river and canal, and though the water surged against the wall that enclosed the mill-folds, and even entered the walls and swamped the basements of the houses therein, it was with reduced force.
Mrs. Sidebottom gave little attention to the scenes of havoc, to the distress and alarm that prevailed. Her one dread was lest she should reach her brother's house too late to prevent its pillage.
When she arrived there she found that Salome was not in, that Mrs. Cusworth, a feeble and sickly woman, was frightened and incapacitated from doing anything, and that the servants were out in the streets.
'What made my brother go out?' asked Mrs. Sidebottom; 'why was he not in bed like a Christian?'
'He had been sitting up, talking with Salome,' answered the widow, 'and as he had taken no exercise for two days, and did not feel sleepy, he said he would take a short walk.'
'What keys has he left, and where are they? I do not mean the key of the groceries, or of the cellar, but of his papers and cash-box.'
Mrs. Cusworth did not know. She had nothing to do with these keys; she supposed that Mr. Pennycomequick carried them about with him.
'Probably,' said Mrs. Sidebottom; 'but gentlemen when going out to dinner sometimes forget to take the keys out of their pockets and put them in those of the dress suit. I had a husband. He did it, and many a lecture I have given him for his want of prudence. Do you know where his everyday clothes are? I suppose he went abroad in his dress-coat and smalls. I had better have a look and make sure.'
Mrs. Cusworth thought, in reply, that probably the clothes would be found in Mr. Pennycomequick's bedroom.
'There is a light in it, I suppose,' said his half-sister. 'By-the-way, who had charge of the plate?'
'I have,' answered the widow.
'You have, then, the key of the plate-chest?'
'There is no plate-chest. There is a cupboard.'
'Iron-plated?'
'Oh no; there is no silver, or very little – only some teaspoons, all the rest is electro. But do you think, Mrs. Sidebottom, that dear Mr. Pennycomequick is – is lost?' The widow's eyes filled and she began to cry.
'Lost! oh, of course.'
'But we cannot tell, we do not know, but he may have taken refuge somewhere.'
'Fiddlesticks – I mean, hardly likely. He was on the towpath, and there is no place of refuge he could reach from that.'
'Really dead! really dead!' The poor widow broke down.
'Dead, of course, he is dead, with all this water. Bless me! You would not call in the ocean to drown him. I have known a case of a man in the prime of life who was smothered in six inches.'
'Yes, but he may have left the towpath in time, and then, instead of returning home, have gone about helping the poor creatures who have been washed out of their houses, and some of them have not had time to get into their clothes. It would be like his kind heart to remain out all night rendering every assistance in his power.'
'There is something in that,' said Mrs. Sidebottom, and her face became slightly longer. 'He has not been found.'
'No, not yet.'
Mrs. Sidebottom mused.
'I don't see,' she said, 'how he can have got away if he went on the towpath. I have heard he was seen going on to it. The towpath is precisely where the greatest danger lay. It is exactly there that the current of the descending flood would reach what you would call its maximum of velocity. Is not Salome come in yet? Why is she out? What is she doing?'
Then in came her son, in trim order; neither the danger in which his uncle might be, nor his prospect of inheriting that uncle's fortune, could induce Lambert to appear partially dressed. His mother drew him aside into the dining-room.
'Lambert,' she said, 'there is no plate. I am not sorry for it, for if Jeremiah had laid out money in buying silver, he would have gone in for King's pattern, or Thread and Shell – which are both odious, vulgar and ostentatious, only seen on the tables of the nouveaux riches.'
'Is my uncle not returned?'
'No, Lamb! and, there is a good soul, run down the road, bestir yourself, and ascertain whether the towpath, to which your uncle Jeremiah said he was going, is really submerged, and to what depth, and ascertain also at what rate the current runs, and whether it is likely to subside. Mrs. Cusworth thinks it not impossible that your uncle may be helping the wretches who are getting out of their bedroom windows, or are perched on the roofs of their houses. Oh, Lamb! if your uncle were to turn up after the agony of mind he has occasioned me, I could hardly bear it; I would go into hysterics. My dear Lamb! do keep that old woman talking whilst I run upstairs to Jeremiah's dressing-room. I must get at his everyday smalls, and see if he has left his keys in the pocket; men do such inconsiderate things. I must do this as a precaution, you understand, lest the keys should fall into improper hands, into the hands of designing and unscrupulous persons, who have no claim on my brother whatever, and no right to expect more than a book or a teacup as a remembrancer. Lamb! it looks suspicious that Salome should keep out of the way now. Goodness gracious! what if she has been beforehand with me, and is out concealing the spoils! Go, Lamb, make inquiries after your uncle, and keep an eye open for Salome. The girl is deep. I will go and search the pockets of your uncle's panjams, pepper and salt; I know them. We must not put or allow temptations to lie in the way of the unconscientious.'
CHAPTER VI.
A COTTAGE PIANO
Mr. Pennycomequick had but just reached the hut of the keeper of the locks when he saw a great wave rushing down on him. It extended across the valley from bank to bank, it overswept the raised sides of canal and river, and confounded both together, and, as if impelled by the antagonism of modern socialism against every demarcation of property, caused the hedges of the several fields and bounding walls to disappear, engulfed or overthrown.
The hut was but seven feet high on one side and six on the other, and was small – a square brick structure with a door on one side and a wooden bench on that toward the locks. Unfortunately the hut had been run up on such economical principles that the bricks were set on their narrow sides, instead of being superimposed on their broad sides, and thus made a wall of but two and a half inches thick, ill-calculated to resist the impetus of a flood of water, but serviceable enough for the purpose for which designed – a shelter against weather. It was roofed with sandstone slate at a slight incline. Fortunately the door looked to the east, so that the current did not enter and exert its accumulated strength against the walls to drive them outwards. The door had been so placed because the west wind was that which brought most rain on its wings.
Jeremiah put a foot on the bench, and with an alacrity to which he had long been a stranger, heaved himself upon the roof of the shelter, not before the water had smitten it and swirled about the base and foamed over his feet. Had he not clung to the roof, he would have been swept away. To the west the darkness remained piled up, dense and undiluted, as though the clouds there contained in them another forty-eight hours of rain. A very Pelion piled on Ossa seemed to occupy the horizon, but above this the vault became gradually clearer, and the crescent moon poured down more abundant light, though that was not in itself considerable.
By this light Jeremiah could see how widespread the inundation was, how it now filled the trough of the Keld, just as it must have filled it in the remote prehistoric age, when the western hills were sealed in ice, and sent their frosty waters burdened with icebergs down the valleys they had scooped out, and over rocks which they furrowed in their passage.
Jeremiah looked at the lock-keeper's cottage, not any longer as a possible place of refuge, but out of compassion for the unfortunate man who was in it. Not a sound issued thence; not a light gave token that he had been roused in time to effect his escape, if only to the roof. Probably, almost certainly, he and his wife were floating as corpses in their little room on the ground floor.
Away on the ridge to the north, yellow lights were twinkling, and thence came sounds of life. The steam calls had ceased to shrill; they had done their work. No one slept in Mergatroyd – no one in all the towns, villages, and hamlets down the valley of the Keld – any more that night, save those who, smothered by the water, slept to wake no more.
Hard by the lock, growing out of the enbankment, stood a Lombardy poplar. The sudden blast of wind accompanying the water had twisted and snapped it, but had not wholly severed the top from the stump. It clung to this, attached by ligaments of bark and fibres of wood. The stream caught at the broken tree-top that trailed on the causeway, shook it impatiently, dragged it along with it, ripped more of the nerves that fastened it, and seemed intent on carrying it wholly away.
Notwithstanding his danger and extreme discomfort, with his boots full of water, Jeremiah was unable to withdraw his eyes for long from the broken tree, the top of which whipped the base of his place of refuge; for he calculated whether, in the event of the water undermining the hut, he could reach the stump along the precarious bridge of the broken top.
But other objects presented themselves, gliding past, to distract his mind from the tree. By the wan and straggling light he saw that various articles of an uncertain nature were being whirled past; and the very uncertainty as to what they were gave scope to the imagination to invest them with horror.
For a while the water roared over the sluice, but at last the immense force exerted on the valves tore them apart, wrenched one from its hinges, threw it down, and the torrent rolled triumphantly over it; it did not carry the door off, which held still to its lower hinge, at least for a time, though it twisted the iron in its socket of stone.
The water was racing along, now noiselessly, but with remorseless determination, throwing sticks, straw, and then a drowned pig at the obstructive hut. At one moment a boat shot past. If it had but touched the hut, Jeremiah would have thrown himself into it, and trusted that it would be stranded in shallow water. He knew how insecure was the building that sustained him. There was no one in the boat. It had been moored originally by a rope, which was snapped, and trailed behind it.
The moon flared out on the water, that looked like undulating mercury, and showed a dimple on its surface above the hut; a dimple formed by the water that was parted by the obstruction; and about this eddy sticks and strands were revolving. Then there approached a cradle in which whimpered a babe. On the cradle stood a cat that had taken refuge there from the water, when it found no other spot dry for its feet. And now the cradle swung from side to side, and as it tilted, the cat leaped to the upraised side, mee-awing pitifully, and then, as the strange boat lurched before a wave on the other side, the cat skipped back again to where it was before, with tail erect and plaintive cry, but, by its instinctive shiftings, preserving the balance of the little craft. The cradle was drawn down between the walls where the sluice had been, and whether it passed in safety beyond, Jeremiah could not see.
Now his attention was arrested by a huge black object sailing down stream, reeling and spinning as it advanced. What was it? A house lifted bodily and carried along? Jeremiah watched its approach with uneasiness; if it struck his brick hut it would probably demolish it. As it neared, however, he was relieved to discover that it was a hayrick; and on it, skipping from side to side, much as the cat had skipped on the cradle, he observed a fluttering white figure.
Now he saw that a chance offered better than that of remaining on the fragile hut. The bricks would give way, but the hayrick must float. If he could possibly swing himself on to the hay, he would be in comparative safety, for it is of the nature of strong currents to disembarrass themselves of the cumbrous articles wherewith they have burdened themselves and throw them away along their margins, strewing with them the fields they have temporarily overflowed. It was, however, difficult in the uncertain light to judge distances, and calculate the speed at which the floating island came on, and the rick struck the hut before Jeremiah was prepared to leap. He, however, caught at the hay, and tried to scramble into the rick that overtopped him, when he was thrown down, struck by the white figure that leaped off the hay and tumbled on the roof, over him. In another instant, before Jeremiah could recover his feet, the rick had made a revolution and was dancing down the stream, leaving a smell of hay in his nose, and the late tenant of the stack sprawling at his side.
'You fool!' exclaimed Mr. Pennycomequick angrily, 'what have you come here for?'
'I could hold on no longer. I was giddy. I thought there was safety here.'
'Less chance here than on the rick you have deserted. You have spoiled your own chance of life and mine.'
'I'm starved wi' caud,' moaned the half-naked man, 'I left my bed and got through t'door as t'water came siping in, and I scram'led up on to t'rick. I never thowt t'rick would ha' floated away.'
'Here, then,' said Jeremiah, removing his great coat, but with a bad grace, 'take this.'
'That's better,' said the man, without a word of thanks, as he slipped into the warm overcoat. 'Eh! now,' said he, 'if t'were nobbut for the way t'rick spun aboot, I could na' ha' stuck there. I wouldn't ha' gone out o' life, spinning like a skoprill' (tee-totum), 'not on no account; I'd a-gone staggering into t'other world, and ha' been took for a drunkard, and I'm a teetotaler, have been these fifteen years. Fifteen years sin' I took t'pledge, and never bust out but once.'
'You have water enough to satisfy you now,' said Jeremiah grimly.
'Dost'a want to argy?' asked the man. 'Becos if so, I'm the man for thee, Peter – one, three, twenty, what dost'a say to that, eh?'
Jeremiah was in no mood to argue, nor was the time or place suitable; but not so thought this fanatic, to whom every time and place was appropriate for a dispute about alcohol.
'I wonder whether the water is falling,' said the manufacturer, drawing himself away from his companion and looking over the edge into the current. He saw apples, hundreds of apples swimming past; a long wavering line of them coming down the stream, like migrating ants, or a Rechabite procession, turning over, bobbing, but all in sequence one behind the other. By daylight they would have resembled a chain of red and yellow beads, but now they showed as jet grains on silver. They had come, no doubt, from a farmer's store or out of a huckster's cart.
Jeremiah leaned over the eave of the hut to test the distance of the water; then caught an apple and threw it on the roof, whence it rolled over and rejoined the procession on the further side.
''Tis a pity now,' muttered the man in nightshirt and topcoat, ''tis a pity aboot my bullock, I were bown to sell'n a Friday.'
Suddenly Jeremiah recoiled from his place, for, dancing on the water was a human body, a woman, doubtless, for there was a kerchief about the head, and in the arms a child, also dead. The woman's eyes were open, and the moon glinted in the whites. They seemed to be looking and winking at Jeremiah. Then a murky wave washed over the face, like a hand passed over it, but it did not close the eyes, which again glimmered forth. Then, up rose the corpse, lifted by the water, but seeming to struggle to gain its feet. It was caught in that swirl, that dimple Jeremiah had noticed on the face of the flood above his place of refuge.
How cruel the current was! Not content with drowning human beings, it romped with them after the life was choked out of them, it played with them ghastly pranks. The undercurrent sucked the body back, and then ran it against the bricks, using it as a battering-ram. Then it caught the head of the poplar and whipped the corpse with it, as though whipping it on to its work which it was reluctant to perform. The manufacturer had gone out that night with his umbrella, and had carried it with him to the roof of the hut. Now with the crook he sought to disengage the dead woman and thrust her away from the wall into the main current; he could not endure to see the body impelled headlong against the bricks.
'What art a'doing?' asked the man, also looking over. Then, after a moment he uttered a cry, drew back, clasped his hands, then looked again, and again exclaimed: 'Sho's my own lass, and sho's a hugging my bairn!'
'What do you mean?'
'It's my wife, eh! 'tis a pity.'
Mr. Pennycomequick succeeded in disengaging the corpse and thrusting it into the stream; it was caught and whirled past. The man looked after it, and moaned.
'It all comes o' them fomentations,' he said. 'Sho'd bad pains aboot her somewhere or other, and owd Nan sed sho'd rub in a penn'orth o' whisky. I was agin it, I was agin it – my mind misgave me, and now sho's taken and I'm left, 'cos I had nowt to do wi' it.'
You may as well prepare to die,' said Jeremiah, 'whisky or no whisky. This hut will not stand much longer.'
'I shudn't mind so bad if I'd sold my bullock,' groaned the man. 'I had an offer, but, like a fool, I didn't close. Now I'm boun' to lose everything. 'Tis vexing.'
Just then a heavy object was driven against the wall, and shook the hut to its foundations, shook it so that one of the stone slates was dislodged and fell into the water. Jeremiah leaned over the eaves and looked again. He could make out that some piece of furniture, what he could not distinguish, was thrust against the wall of the hut. He saw two legs of turned mahogany, with brass castors at the ends that glistened in the moonlight. They were about four feet and a half apart, and supported what might be a table or secretaire. The rushing water drove these legs against the wall, and the castors ran and felt about the bricks as groping for a weak joint where they might knock a hole through. Then, all at once, the legs drew or fell back, and as they did so the upper portion of the piece of furniture opened and disclosed white and black teeth, in fact, revealed a keyboard. This was but for a moment, then the instrument was heaved up by a wave, the lid closed over the keys, and the two brass-armed legs were again impelled against the fragile wall.
It is hardly to be wondered at that the ancients attributed living souls to streams and torrents, or peopled their waves with mischievous nixes, for they act at times in a manner that seems fraught with intelligence. It was so now. Here was this hut, an obstruction to the flood, feeble in itself, yet capable of resisting its first impetus, and likely to defy it altogether. The water alone could not dissolve it, so it had called other means and engines of destruction to its aid. At first, in a careless, thoughtless fashion, it had thrown a dead pig against it, then the corpse of a woman weighted with her dead babe; and now, having cast these away as unprofitable tools, it brought up, at great labour – a cottage piano. A piano is perhaps the heaviest and most cumbrous piece of furniture that the flood could have selected, and, on the whole, the best adapted to serve its purpose, as the deceased pig was the least. What force it must have exerted to bring up this instrument, what judgment it must have employed in choosing it! And what malignity there was in the flood in its persistent efforts to break down the frail substructure on which stood the two men! The iron framework of the instrument in the wooden back was under water, the base with the pedals rested against the foot of the hut. The water driving at the piano thus lodged, partially heaved it, as though a shoulder had been submitted to the back of the instrument, and thus the feet were driven with sharp, impatient strokes against the bricks. Moreover, every time that the piano fell back, the lid over the keys also fell back, and the white line of keys laughed out in the moonlight. But whenever the wave heaved up the piano, then the lid fell over them. It was horrible to watch the piano labouring as a willing slave to batter down the wall, as it did so opening and shutting its mouth, as though alternately gasping for breath and then returning to its task with grim resolution.
The moon was now disentangled from cloud; it shone with sharp brilliancy out of a wide tract of cold gray sky, and the light was reflected by the teeth of the keyboard every time they were disclosed. Hark! The clock of Mergatroyd church struck three. The dawn would not break for two or three hours.
'I say, art a minister?' suddenly asked the man in a nightshirt and great-coat.
'No; I am not,' answered the manufacturer impatiently. 'Never mind what I am. Help me to get rid of this confounded cottage-piano.'
'There, there!' exclaimed the man; 'now thou'rt swearing when thou ought to be praying. Why dost'a wear a white tie and black claes if thou ba'nt a minister? Thou might as weel wear a blue ribbon and be a drunkard.'
Mr. Pennycomequick did not answer the fellow. The man was crouched in squatting posture on the roof, holding up one foot after another from the cold slates that numbed them. His nightshirt hung as a white fringe below his great-coat. To the eye of an entomologist, he might have been taken for a gigantic specimen of the Camberwell Beauty.
'If thou'd 'a been a minister, I'd 'a sed nowt. As thou'rt not, I knaw by thy white necktie thou must 'a been awt to a dancing or a dining soiree. And it were all along of them soirees that the first Flood came. We knaws it fra' Scriptur', t'folkes were eatin' and drinkin'. If they'd been drinkin' water, it hed never 'a come. What was t'Flood sent for but to wash out alcohol? and it's same naaw.'
Mr. Pennycomequick paid no heed to the man; he was anxiously watching the effect produced by the feet of the piano on the walls.
'It was o' cause o' these things the world was destroyed in the time o' Noah, all but eight persons as wore the blue ribbon.'
Again the forelegs of the piano crashed against the bricks, and now dislodged them, so that the water tore through the opening made.
'There's Scriptur' for it,' pursued the fellow. 'Oh, I'm right! but my toes are mortal could. Don't we read that Noah and his family was saved by water? Peter, one, two, three, twenty – answer me that. That's a poser for thee – saved because they was teetotalers.'
At that moment part of the wall gave way, and some of the roof fell in.
'Our only chance is to reach the poplar-stump, said Jeremiah. 'Come along with me.'
'Nay, not I,' answered the man. 'The ships o' Tarshish was saved because Jonah was cast overboard. Go, then, and I'll stay here and be safe. I'll no be any mair i' t' same box wi' an alcohol-drinker.'
He drew up his feet under him, and put his fingers into his mouth to warm them.
Mr. Pennycomequick did not delay to use persuasion. If the man was fool enough to stay, he must stay. He slipped off the top of the hut, and planted one foot on the piano, then the other; his only chance was to reach the broken poplar, scramble up it, and lodge in its branches till morning. To do this he must reach it by the broken top that at present was caught between the legs of the piano, so that the water brushed up over the twigs. Jeremiah sprang among the boughs, and tried to scramble along it. Probably his additional weight was all that was required to snap the remaining fibres that held the portions together, for hardly was Mr. Pennycomequick on it than the strands yielded, and down past the crumbling hut rushed the tree-top, laden with its living burden, entangled, laced about with the whip-like branches, and as he passed he saw the frail structure dissolve like a lump of sugar in boiling water and disappear.