ANOTHER POLICE-GALLEY.
"Bill White," said Todd.
"Well, what now?" said the boy, in a sulky tone.
Todd pointed to the pistol, and merely uttered the one word--"Remember!"
and then, with a horrible misgiving at his heart, he let the lad pull
into the landing-place. Some half-dozen lazy-looking fellows were
smoking their pipes upon the dirty beach, and Todd, concealing the
pistol within his capacious cuff, sprang on the shore. He turned and
looked at the boy, who slowly pushed off, and gained the deep water
again.
"He is afraid," thought Todd, "he is afraid, and will be too glad to get
away and say nothing."
Bill White's actions were now not a little curious, and they soon
attracted the observation of all the idlers on the beach, and put Todd
in a perfect agony of apprehension. When the boy was about half a dozen
boats' length from the shore, he shipped one of his oars, and then, with
his disengaged hand, he lifted from the bottom of the boat an old
saucepan, which he held up in an odd, dodging kind of way before his
face, with an evident idea that if Todd fired the pistol at him, he
could interrupt the bullet in that way. Then, in a loud clear voice, he
cried--
"Hilloa! Don't have anything to do with that Mr. Smith. He has been
threatening to shoot me, and he has got a pistol in his hand. He's a bad
'un, he is. Take him up! That's the best thing you can do. He's
well-nigh as bad as old Todd the murderer of Fleet Street, that they
can't catch. Take him up. I advises you. Blaze away, old curmudgeon."
Todd's rage was excessive, but he thought that the best plan would be to
try to laugh the thing over, and with a hideous affectation of mirth, he
cried out--
"Good-by, Bill--good-by. Remember me to your father, and tell him all
the joke."
"It wasn't a joke," said Bill White.
"Ha! ha!" laughed Todd. "Well--well, I forgive you, Bill--I forgive you.
Mind you take my message to your aunt, and tell her I shall be at the
chapel on Wednesday."
"Oh, go to the deuce with you," said Bill, as he put down the saucepan
upon finding that his late fare was not disposed to carry his threat of
shooting him into effect. "You are an old rogue, that you are, and I
daresay you have done something that it would be well worth while to
take you up for."
With this, Bill began vigorously to pull away against the stream,
puffing and blowing, and looking as indignant as he possibly could. Todd
turned with a sigh to the men at the little landing, and affecting to
wipe a tear from his left eye, he said--
"You would not believe, gentlemen, that that boy could say such things
to his poor old uncle, and yet you wouldn't believe if I were to tell
you the pounds and pounds that boy has cost me and his poor aunt. He
don't behave well to either of us; but we are as fond of him as
possible. It's in our natures to love him, and we can't help it."
"Lor!" said one of the men.
"You looks tender-hearted," said another.
The others all laughed at this, and Todd thought it was as well to seem
as if he thought that some very capital joke was going on, so he laughed
too.
"I was thinking," he said, when the merriment had a little subsided, "I
was thinking of going right on to Gravesend. What do you say to taking
me now, a couple of you? There's the tide nicely with you all the way,
and I am always a liberal enough paymaster."
"What will you give?" said one with a voice like a cracked trumpet with
a bad cold.
"Why, name your price, and I shall not say no to it."
"What shall we take the gemman for, Bill?" said this man to another, who
was smoking a short pipe.
"A rum 'un," was the reply of Bill.
"Don't be a _hass_. I didn't go for to ask you what sort of _indiwiddle_
he was, but what we'd take him to Gravesend for."
"Oh, that's the caper, is it?"
"Yes it is, idiot."
"Well--fifteen bob and a tanner."
"Will that do, sir?" said the other to Todd, who thought that it would
look bad to acquiesce too readily in the amount, so he said--
"I will give the fifteen shillings."
"Very good. We won't go to loggerheads about the tanner; so come along,
sir, and we'll soon get you to Gravesend, with this tide a-running all
the way there, as comfortably as it can, all of a purpose."
Todd was well enough pleased to find that these two men owned the
longest and strongest-looking wherry that was at the landing-place. He
ensconced himself snugly enough in the stern of the boat and they put
aside their pipes, and soon pushed off into the middle of the stream.
"Once more," thought Todd, "once more I am on the road to escape; and
all may yet be well."
The two men now set to work with the oars in earnest. They felt, that as
they were paid by the job, the best way was to get it over as quickly as
possible; and, aided by the tide, it was perfectly astonishing what
progress they made down the river.
Todd every now and then cast a long and anxious glance behind him; and
presently he saw a boat shooting along, by the aid of six rowers, at
great speed, and evidently turning into the little landing-place from
where he had just come. His eyesight was either sharpened by the morning
light, or fancy deceived him, for he thought he saw the boy, Bill White,
seated in the stern of the boat.
Todd was in an agony. He knew not whether to attract the attention of
the two watermen to the large boat with all its rowers, so that he might
get an opinion from them concerning it or not; and then again, he
thought that at the moment, there would be a good chance of working upon
the cupidity of the men, if any real danger should befall him of
capture.
"I say, Bill," said one.
"Well, say it."
"There's one of the police officer's gone into the Old Stairs. There's
something afloat this here morning."
"Ah! They are always at some manoeuvre or another. Pull away. It ain't
no business of our'n."
Todd could almost have hugged the man for the sentiment he uttered; and
how he longed to echo those two words, "pull away;" but he was afraid to
do so, lest, by any seemingly undue anxiety just then for speed upon his
part, he should provoke the idea that the police-boat was as interesting
to him as it really was.
Poor, wretched, guilty Todd surely suffered a hundred times the pangs of
death during his progress down the river; and now he sat in the stern of
the boat, looking as pale as death itself.
"You don't seem very well," said one of the men.
"Oh, yes--yes, I am quite well, I thank you."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it; for you look just as if you had been buried
a month, and then dug up again."
"Ha! ha!" laughed Todd,--what a hideous attempt at a laugh it
was!--"that is very good."
"Oh, lor! do you laugh that way when you are at home? 'cos if you do, I
should expect the roof to tumble in with fright, I should."
"How funny you are," said Todd. "Pull away."
He did venture to say, "pull away!" and the men did pull with right
good-will, so that the landing-place, and the long police-boat that was
at it, looked just like two specks by the river-side; and, indeed it
would have been a long pull and a strong one to catch Todd's wherry.
The murderer breathed a little more freely.
"How far have we got to go now?" he said.
"Oh, a matter of nine miles yet."
"And how long will it take you?"
"About one hour and a quarter, with the tide running at such a pace as
it is. There's some wind, too, and what there is, is all with us, so we
cut along favourably. What are they doing away yonder, Bill?"
"Where?" said Bill.
"Right in our wake, there. Oh, they are getting up a sail. I'll be
hanged if they ain't, and pulling away besides! Why, what a hurry they
must be in, to be sure, to get down the river. I never knew them do that
before."
Todd looked along the surface of the water, and he saw the police-boat
coming along at such a rate, that the spray was tossed up in the air
before her prow in millions of white particles.
A puff of smoke came from her side, and a slight sharp report rung upon
the morning air. A musket or a pistol had been discharged on board of
her.
"What's the meaning of that, Bill?"
"I can tell you," said Todd, sharply, before Bill had done moving his
head from side to side, which was a habit of his preparatory to replying
to any very intricate question. "I can tell you easily."
[Illustration: The Police-Galley Chasing Todd To Gravesend.]
"What is it then?"
"You pull away, and I'll tell you. You see that boat with the sail and
the six rowers there?"
"Yes, yes!"
"And you heard them fire a gun?"
"To be sure."
"Well, pull away. It's enough to make a cat laugh; but it was Mr.
Anthony Strong that fired that gun."
"How very droll? But what did he do it for?"
"Well, pull away, and I'll tell you. You must know that Mr. Anthony
Strong, who is in command of that police-boat, is my brother-in-law, and
he laid a wager with me, that he would start from the pier at Cheyne
Walk, Chelsea, at daybreak this morning, and get to Gravesend before me,
if I started from Blackfriars, and did the best I possibly could to get
on that money and men could do for me. I allowed that he was to take all
his six rowers with him, and hoist his sail if he liked, and I was to
take no more than two watermen at a time. When he saw me, he was to fire
a gun, you see; and the wager is for twenty pounds and a dinner. I
should like to win it, and so, if you can fairly beat him, with the
start you have, which is above a mile--"
"It's above two," said Bill, "Water's deceiving."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it; and I was going to say, I would stand five
guineas!"
"You will, old fellow?"
"I will; and to convince you of it, here they are, and I will place them
in your hands at once; so now, I do hope that you will pull away like
devils!"
"Won't we! If Mr. Anthony Strong, with all his sail and his six hands,
catches us on this side of Gravesend, I'll give him leave to skin me and
eat me at the dinner that he would win. No, no! if we don't know the
currents, and the shortcuts of the river a little bit better than ever a
captain of police-boat that ever lived, or that ever will live, why you
may set me down for a frog or a Frenchman, which, I take it, are much of
a muchness."
"They is," said the other.
Todd shouted with delight, and it was real now the wild laughter that
shook his frame, for he began to think he was safe. The confident tone
in which the waterman spoke, had quite convinced him that he could do
what he said. With a perfect confidence in the power of his two
watermen, he looked at the police wherry without any alarm, and the foam
that it dashed up as it came bounding on, did not seem to fall coldly
upon his breast, as it had seemed to do before.
"Two miles," he said. "That's a long start."
"In a stern chase," said Bill, "it's half of the blessed world to get
over is them two miles."
"Yes, yes--exactly; and I shall beat Mr. Anthony Strong, I feel now. You
see, my little nephew, Bill White, gave me the first start from
Blackfriars; but I knew I could not depend upon him all the way, so
I--There's another gun. Hal ha! Mr. Strong, it won't do."
"Well," said Bill, with a look of what he, no doubt, thought was great
cleverness, "if I didn't know as this was a bit of fun between Mr.
Anthony Strong and you, sir, I should have said that them guns was for
us to lie-to."
"That's just what he wants," cried Todd.
"Does he?"
"Yes. He thinks that he will frighten whoever is rowing into a dead
stop, when they find a police-galley firing guns; but I think he is
mistaken in this matter, my friends."
"Rather!" said Dick, as he bent his back to the oars, and pulled away
like a giant.
How the boat shot through the water! and yet to Todd's apprehension, the
police-galley gained upon him. Of course, he told himself that it must
gain with its sail and six rowers; but the question was, how much it
would gain in the seven or eight miles they had got to go? With what a
feverish action Todd licked his lips.