"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 sho............