All.
’Then if I row up under the Fellowship and lay
there, no need to whistle. You’ll make
out that there’s a speck of something or another
there, and you’ll know it’s me, and you’ll
come down that cause’ay to me. Understood
all?’
Understood all.
‘Off she goes then!’
In a moment, with the wind cutting keenly at him sideways,
he was staggering down to his boat; in a few moments
he was clear, and creeping up the river under their
own shore.
Eugene had raised himself on his elbow to look into
the darkness after him. ‘I wish the boat
of my honourable and gallant friend,’ he murmured,
lying down again and speaking into his hat, ’may
be endowed with philanthropy enough to turn bottom-upward
and extinguish him!—Mortimer.’
‘My honourable friend.’
‘Three burglaries, two forgeries, and a midnight
assassination.’ Yet in spite of having
those weights on his conscience, Eugene was somewhat
enlivened by the late slight change in the circumstances
of affairs. So were his two companions.
Its being a change was everything. The suspense
seemed to have taken a new lease, and to have begun
afresh from a recent date. There was something
additional to look for. They were all three more
sharply on the alert, and less deadened by the miserable
influences of the place and time.
More than an hour had passed, and they were even dozing,
when one of the three—each said it was
he, and he had not dozed—made out Riderhood
in his boat at the spot agreed on. They sprang
up, came out from their shelter, and went down to
him. When he saw them coming, he dropped alongside
the causeway; so that they, standing on the causeway,
could speak with him in whispers, under the shadowy
mass of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters fast asleep.
‘Blest if I can make it out!’ said he,
staring at them.
‘Make what out? Have you seen him?’
‘No.’
‘What have you seen?’ asked Lightwood.
For, he was staring at them in the strangest way.
‘I’ve seen his boat.’
‘Not empty?’
’Yes, empty. And what’s more,—adrift.
And what’s more,—with one scull gone.
And what’s more,—with t’other
scull jammed in the thowels and broke short off.
And what’s more,—the boat’s
drove tight by the tide ’atwixt two tiers of
barges. And what’s more,—he’s
in luck again, by George if he ain’t!’
THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN
Cold on the shore, in the raw cold of that leaden
crisis in the four-and-twenty hours when the vital
force of all the noblest and prettiest things that
live is at its lowest, the three watchers looked each
at the blank faces of the other two, and all at the
blank face of Riderhood in his boat.
‘Gaffer’s boat, Gaffer in luck again,
and yet no Gaffer!’ So spake Riderhood, staring
disconsolate.
