It proved to be the timber cross-piece of a derrick used for hoisting sacks of grain into the loft, working on an axle, and now swung inboard for the night. A double rope ran through the pulley at its end and had been hitched back over the iron winch which worked it. We pushed the derrick out over the lane and I manned the winch handle, while Master Archie caught hold of the hook and pulley at the end of the double line. Checking the handle with all my strength I lowered him as noiselessly as I could. As his feet touched the cobbles below he let go and, without a thought of my safety, made off down the lane.
I tugged the derrick inboard and recaptured the rope; cogged the winch, swung out, dropped hand over hand into the lane, and raced up it with all the terrors of the law at my heels.
CHAPTER VIII.
POOR TOM BOWLING.
Master Archibald's advice to me—to escape down to the water-side and conceal myself on shipboard—though acute enough in its way, took no account of certain difficulties none the less real because a soldier would naturally overlook them. To hide in a ship's hold you must first get on board of her unobserved, which in broad daylight is next to impossible. Moreover, to reach Cattewater I must either fetch a circuit through purlieus where every householder knew me and every urchin was a nodding acquaintance, or make a straight dash close by the spot where by this time Mr. Trapp would be getting anxious—if indeed Southside Street and the Barbican were not already resounding with the hue and cry. No: if friendly vessel were to receive and hide me, she lay far off, across the heart of the town, amid the shipping of the Dock. Yonder, too, Miss Plinlimmon resided.
If you think it absurd that my thoughts turned to her, whose weak arms could certainly shield no one from the clutches of the law, I beg you to remember my age, and that I had never known another protector. She, at least, would hear me and never doubt my innocence. She must hear, too, of Archie's danger.
That to reach her, even if I eluded pursuit to the Hospital gate, I must run the gauntlet of Mr. George—who would assuredly ask questions—and possibly of Mr. Scougall, scarcely occurred to me. To reach her—to sob out my story in her arms and hear her voice soothing me—this only I desired for the moment; and it seemed that if I could only hear her voice speaking, I might wake and feel these horrors dissolve like an evil dream. Meanwhile I ran.
But at the end of a lane leading into Treville Street, and as I leapt aside to avoid colliding with the hind-wheels of a hackney-coach drawn in there and at a standstill close by the kerb, to my unspeakable fright I felt myself gripped by the jacket-collar.
"Hi! Bring-to and 'vast kicking, young coal-dust! Where're ye bound, hey? Answer me, and take your black mop out of a gentleman's weskit."