"The tide is out," said I, "so that if I may but get through, there is the dry bank above the pirates' gallows to go by; and after, the rest should be plain enough." Which gallows I spoke of (now all rotten) yet stood in the ooze to be flooded at high tide, it having been formerly used against such pirates and river thieves as were caught and there hanged, until, the tide rising, they were drowned.
In reply to my further questionings, she said that Skene was to be sought amidst the streets about the Tower Royal, which was where I had gone that day I lost my way in the fog, when Idonia found me, and, indeed, was no great distance from Chequer Lane.
"When you shall have found him, or however it fall out, you will return to me, dear heart?" said Idonia, who was now weeping so bitterly that I could scarce keep hold of my resolution to be gone. But I did so at length, and, going downstairs to the room I had left, found it to my delight still free. Nigh choked with the beating of my heart, I soon discovered the stone steps that led down to the cellars, which were a narrow passage-room lit with a swinging lantern, and having three or four locked doors of other vaults (used, I supposed, for storage of wines and such-like) to the right and left of it. But in the river-wall, when I looked, I could perceive no grid nor aperture of such sort as Idonia had spoken, and for some moments remained as one lost, for mere disappointment. However, recovering myself a little, I felt along the whole, length of the wall, high and low, until to my infinite pleasure my hand struck upon a new oaken door, bolted with a great bolt that I slid back without the least noise. For the door itself, I clearly perceived, it had been found necessary to put it in place of the old, decayed grid, and 'twas sure as provident a repairing as any it hath been my fortune to light on!
Well, I think it stands not upon me to relate the several stages of my prison-breaking, nor of my lurking along the river-bank under the very eyes of my warders into safety; though I confess that more than once my back burnt hot with the thought of the little peering tapster and of that great arquebus he so diligently polished.
CHAPTER XX
THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHINESE JAR
The events which succeeded upon my escape from the Fair Haven of Wapping have come to assume in my mind a significance and singular quality of completeness that hath, therefore, moved me to bestow upon them the name of the "Adventure of the Chinese Jar;" for, detached from every circumstance, there yet stands out, clear and hard against my background of memory, that odd, fantastic shape of a blue-painted jar, with its dragon-guarded lid, its flowered panels, and a haunting remnant scent of the spices it had once enclosed.
I left the ooze and filthy slime of the river-bank when I had gone some furlong or so, and, turning inland up a row of squalid cabins, got at length into the Minories, and entered through the wall by Aldgate. Methought that some of the guard I encountered about the gatehouse regarded me with looks of surprise and ill-will, which, indeed, the disorderliness of my clothing necessarily invited, as well, perhaps, as a no very restrained gait and behaviour, for I was in a fever to be forward upon my errand, and dreaded the least hindrance therein. However, none accosting me, I passed by into the City, and was already proceeding at a great rate towards Tower Royal, when I came upon a group of persons that were talking eagerly and in loud voices, so that I could not but hear a part of their discourse.
"He will certainly be apprehended before nightfall," said one, a merchant by his habit; "so close a watch do they keep in these days upon all suspected malefactors."