The Chase on the Thames.—Albert’s Successful Disguise.—The Old Stairs
at Buckingham-street.
There was something spirit-stirring and exciting to the young
imagination of Albert Seyton in the turn things had taken, as regarded
his chase of Jacob Gray. Who or what the man was who seemed equally
determined with himself not to lose sight of Gray, he could not divine;
but be he whom he might, or his object what it might, Albert resolved
he should not stand in the way of his own great effort to discover his
long lost Ada.
“He may follow,” thought Albert, “and I cannot, with any show of
reason, quarrel with him for the same thing that I am doing myself; but
he shall not, if I can help it, be foremost in the chase.”
While these reflections were passing through Seyton’s mind, the boat in
which was Jacob Gray was shooting far ahead; and by Albert’s direction,
the waterman who rowed the wherry in which he (Albert) sat, moved into
another channel, so as not to seem to follow Gray’s boat, although he
easily kept it in view.
“You quite understand me,” said Albert; “I wish to follow yon wherry
sufficiently close to see where it lands its passengers without being
seen myself. My object is an honest one, and I pray you, as you know
the river, to adopt some course which will accomplish my purpose.”
“I tell you what it is,” said the waterman. “The safest way in the
world to follow a boat, is to pass it.”
“Rather a strange way of following,” said Albert.
“I don’t exactly mean following,” added the man; “but finding out where
it’s a going to. Now, I can easily pass Ben’s boy, and then all we have
to do, is to take no notice, but keep on ahead for a little way till
they puts in at some stairs. They won’t suspect nothink then.”
“That is a very good plan,” said Albert; “but he I am following knows
me by sight, I fear too well, to make it safe or practicable.”
“Oh!—He does—does he? Then I’ll tell you what you’ll do—put on my
jacket and badge, and this red night-cap, and I’ll be hanged if your
own mother would know you.”
“Row easy, then, that the change may not be noticed,” said Albert.
The boatman dipped but one oar languidly in the stream, and allowed the
wherry to drift among some barges when he instantly shipped his oars,
and doffing his coat and red night-cap, he tendered them to Albert, who
was soon attired in the very cumbrous garment, which went on easily
over all his other clothing. He then gathered up all his long hair, and
confined it under his red night-cap, which he pulled on nearly to his
eyes.
The waterman sat for a moment, apparently lost in intense surprise, at
the alteration which the two articles had made in his customer’s
appearance, and certainly it would have required somebody most
wonderfully well acquainted with the young man to recognise him in his
strange disguise. A more complete alteration of personal appearance
could not possibly be conceived, and the absence of the long curled
hair gave his face quite a different contour.
“Upon my word,” said the waterman, “I never saw, in all my life,
anything to ekal this. Why, I shouldn’t have known you myself for my
fare. You needn’t mind running alongside of him now, for I’ll be hanged
if he’ll guess it’s you, if he eats, drinks, and sleeps with you.”
“I dare say I look very different,” said Albert, “but for Heaven’s sake
don’t lose sight of him.”
“Oh! I’ll be up to him in five minutes. I know how Ben’s boy can pull,
and I know how I can pull. Hilloa—there goes your friend.”
The boat, with the spy, shot past at this moment, and Albert was now
the last in the chase, to his great aggravation.
Such a state of things, however, did not long continue, for the
waterman, after taking a sturdy look behind him to mark the relative
position of the boats, bent to his oars with such strength and
determination that the light wherry shot through the water with amazing
speed. At each vigorous pull of the oars the boat actually seemed to
jump forward several yards, and the distance between it and the boat
preceding it sensibly decreased each moment.
“I told you I’d soon be up with them, sir,” said the waterman, as they
came within a dozen boats’ lengths of the wherry in which was Sir
Francis Hartleton’s man. “Now you’ll see me pass ’em, in proper style.
I won this boat on the Thames, and you shall see as it ain’t thrown
away upon me.”
The oars were dipped cleanly into the stream, and rose with scarcely a
ripple—the speed of the boat, for the space of about twenty yards, was
prodigious, and Albert felt that he was moving through the water at a
most exhilarating rate. Now they were alongside of the boat with the
spy, who immediately, to the immense diversion of the waterman, cried,—
“Hilloa, you there. Where did you land that young fellow you had?”
“Him with the long hair?” said the waterman.
“Yes!”
“And the plum coloured coat?”
“Yes, yes—you know.”
“You want to know where I landed him?”
“Of course, I do. I asked you that.”
“Then find out, spooney.”
“I tell you what,” cried the spy. “If I wasn’t busy, I’d have you taken
before your betters.”
“They are no acquaintances of yours, I should say,” replied the
waterman.
“Do you see this?” cried the infuriated spy, as he produced a small
staff with a gilt-crown on the top of it. “Do you see this, fellow?”
“Yes!”
“Then mind what you are at.”
“Do you see this?” said the waterman, indicating with his fore finger
the extreme point of his nose, an action which seemed to be especially
aggravating to the officer, who immediately said to the boy,—
“Pull alongside of him—pull away.”
“Pull away,” echoed Albert’s waterman, as with a laugh, he bent himself
to his work, and soon left the other wherry behind, without a hope of
overtaking him.
When the wherry was out of ear-shot, he turned to Albert and said,—
“You see, sir, he didn’t know you.”
“No, my disguise appears to be effectual. Get now as near to the other
boat as you like.”
The man nodded, and in a few moments, Albert Seyton was so near to
Jacob Gray that he could almost have sprung from one boat to the other.
Gray looked anxiously and suspiciously at the wherry, but as it, to his
eyes, contained only two watermen, he never for a moment dreamt of any
danger from it.
Albert buried his chin in the ample collar of the coat, and as his boat
passed so close to the one Gray was in that the watermen had both to
ship their oars, he gazed with no little emotion upon the pale sallow
face of the man who he would have travelled all over the world to meet,
in order to wring from him the knowledge of where to find his
much-loved and cruelly-persecuted Ada.
Gray glanced for a moment at Albert, but it was evident he knew him
not. Nothing was further from Gray’s thoughts than a meeting with
Albert Seyton; and, in fact, since Ada had left him, he scarcely
regarded Albert Seyton as in any way connected with him or his
fortunes, and never for a moment took the trouble to speculate upon
what he would or could do or say, were they to meet accidentally.
“Where are you coming to now?” cried Gray’s boatman.
“Nowhere’s partiklar,” was the reply of the other; “where are you?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Oh, nothink—nothink—only I’d a let you lay hold behind.”
Gray’s waterman, with a hearty curse, resumed his oars and gave up the
parley.
“Now, I bethink me,” said Gray, in a low tone, “you may put me in at
the small stairs, by Buckingham-street.”
“Yes, your honour. We are just there.”
“Good. That will do.”
The stairs at the end of Buckingham-street led up to a handsome garden
then, and were themselves of an ancient and decayed appearance, being
worn in the centre quite into deep hollows, and withal so rickety and
injured by time and rough usage, that it required some steadiness to
ascend them. Jacob Gray, however, from that very reason, thought it a
safe place of landing, and when the head of his boat was moored to one
of the crumbling piles, that had been rotting in the bed of the river
for more than fifty years, he walked cautiously along the seats, and
after liberally paying the waterman, he commenced carefully ascending
the slippery time-worn steps.
Albert, at this moment, was in a state of excitement impossible to be
described. He paid the waterman immediately Gray’s wherry turned its
head towards the shore, and sat with his hands upon the coat, as ready
as a harlequin in a pantomime to throw it off, and assume his proper
appearance; but then Gray might look round, and he felt the necessity
of waiting until he had actually ascended the stairs. Oh, what an agony
of suspense was that brief period!
At length Gray turned sharp round to his right hand when he got to the
top of the steps, and with the speed of lightning Albert Seyton threw
off the coat and night-cap, and sprung after him to the intense
astonishment of Gray’s waterman, who stood with his mouth wide open,
and his eyes staring out of his head like those of a boiled fish, for
nearly two minutes before he could ejaculate,—
“Well, I never—there’s ago—in all my blessed born days I never. Who the
devil’s that?”
“Ah, your’s hit it now,” said Albert’s waterman, as he deliberately put
on the coat.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been giving the devil a coat. Didn’t you see how quick we went?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he was steering with his tail all the time, so you see I’d
nothing to do but to pull away.”