My hearing is sharp enough now, but at the time I speak as was even more acute. Just as I turned my head, I heard, or thought I heard the man whisper the words: “Both together.” Instantly the suspicion flashed across my mind that these words related to myself, and I turned round and faced the couple in a moment.
What I saw in the expression of each of them seemed to warrant my acting with immediate decision. I seized the man between his manacled wrists so that he could not raise his hands.
With an instinctive thought I plunged my right hand into the pocket of my pilot coat, pulled out the pistol my mate had handed to me, cocked it with my thumb, and holding it within a few inches of the face of the woman opposite, I looked steadily into her eyes, and said with emphasis, “If you attempt to stir before we reach the next station you will certainly be a dead woman!”
It was something fearful to notice the immediate change on that woman’s countenance. She became of a pallid whiteness, and her lips had the purple-bluish tinge that indicate so unmistakably an access of deadly fear. In the highly-dramatic positions I have just described we sped on until the next stopping station was reached, and that occupied fully more than twenty minutes.
The moment the train came to a stop I thus addressed the woman, keeping her “covered” with the muzzle of my pistol: “Leave the carriage; and, if you value your liberty, make what speed you can to get into hiding.”
She disappeared instanter; and I felt a heavy load of anxiety lifted off my mind as she left us, for of all the encounters I most hate, an encounter with a woman is to be classed foremost.
Not a word passed between my prisoner aad me during the remainder of the journey to London, which we were no great while in reaching, and where I duly delivered him into safe keeping at Bow-street police-office.
Next morning I had to conduct my prisoner to Woolwich, there to deliver him to the authorities of the hulks, from whom he had obtained his ticket-of-leave. He seemed to have recovered from his scare of the day before, and on our journey spoke freely enough, and with an earnestness that left no doubt of the truth of his communication.
“Master,” said he, “I am main glad you kept your head yesterday, and did not lean out of the winder. Had you done so, missus and I meant to have pitched you out, and taken our chance afterwards of getting off.
“I was not very likely to be so easily put off my guard,” was the laconic answer.