CHAPTER XCII.
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.”