By the time Jonson had finished this speech, the coach stopped—I looked eagerly out—Jonson observed the motion: “We have not got half-way yet, your honour,” said he. We left the coach, which Jonson requested me to pay, and walked on.
“Tell me frankly, Sir,” said Job, “do you know where you are?”
“Not in the least,” replied I, looking wistfully up a long, dull, ill-lighted street.
Job rolled his sinister eye towards me with a searching look, and then turning abruptly to the right, penetrated into a sort of covered lane, or court, which terminated in an alley, that brought us suddenly to a stand of three coaches; one of these Job hailed—we entered it—a secret direction was given, and we drove furiously on, faster than I should think the crazy body of hackney chariot ever drove before. I observed, that we had now entered a part of the town, which was singularly strange to me; the houses were old, and for the most part of the meanest description; we appeared to me to be threading a labyrinth of alleys; once, I imagined that I caught, through a sudden opening, a glimpse of the river, but we passed so rapidly, that my eye might have deceived me. At length we stopped: the coachman was again dismissed, and I again walked onwards, under the guidance, and almost at the mercy of my honest companion.
Jonson did not address me—he was silent and absorbed, and I had therefore full leisure to consider my present situation. Though (thanks to my physical constitution) I am as callous to fear as most men, a few chilling apprehensions, certainly flitted across my mind, when I looked round at the dim and dreary sheds—houses they were not—which were on either side of our path; only here and there, a single lamp shed a sickly light upon the dismal and intersecting lanes (though lane is too lofty a word), through which our footsteps woke a solitary sound. Sometimes this feeble light was altogether withheld, and I could scarcely catch even the outline of my companion’s muscular frame. However, he strode on through the darkness, with the mechanical rapidity of one to whom every stone is familiar. I listened eagerly for the sound of the watchman’s voice, in vain—that note was never heard in those desolate recesses. My ear drank in nothing but the sound of our own footsteps, or the occasional burst of obscene and unholy merriment from some half-closed hovel, where infamy and vice were holding revels. Now and then, a wretched thing, in the vilest extreme of want, and loathsomeness, and rags, loitered by the unfrequent lamps, and interrupted our progress with solicitations, which made my blood run cold. By degrees even these tokens of life ceased—the last lamp was entirely shut from our view—we were in utter darkness.
“We are near our journey’s end now,” whispered Jonson
At these words a thousand unwelcome reflections forced themselves voluntarily on my mind: I was about to plunge into the most secret retreat of men whose long habits of villany and desperate abandonment, had hardened into a nature which had scarcely a sympathy with my own; unarmed and defenceless, I was going to penetrate a concealment upon which their lives perhaps depended; what could I anticipate from their vengeance, but the sure hand and the deadly knife, which their self-preservation would more than justify to such lawless reasoners. And who was my companion? One, who literally gloried in the perfection of his nefarious practices; and who, if he had stopped short of the worst enormities, seemed neither to disown the principle upon which they were committed, nor to balance for a moment between his interest and his conscience.
Nor did he attempt to conceal from me the danger to which I was exposed; much as his daring habits of life, and the good fortune which had attended him, must have hardened his nerves, even he, seemed fully sensible of the peril he incurred—a peril certainly considerably less than that which attended my temerity. Bitterly did I repent, as these reflections rapidly passed my mind, my negligence in not providing myself with a single weapon in case of need: the worst pang of death, is the falling without a struggle.
However, it was no moment for the indulgence of fear, it was rather one of those eventful periods which so rarely occur in the monotony of common life, when our minds are sounded to their utmost depths: and energies of which we dreamt not, when at rest in their secret retreats, arise like spirits at the summons of the wizard, and bring to the invoking mind, an unlooked for and preternatural aid.
There was something too in the disposition of my guide, which gave me a confidence in him, not warranted by the occupations of his life; an easy and frank boldness, an ingenuous vanity of abilities, skilfully, though dishonestly exerted, which had nothing of the meanness and mystery of an ordinary villain, and which being equally prominent with the rascality they adorned, prevented the attention from dwelling only upon the darker shades of his character. Besides, I had so closely entwined his interest with my own, that I felt there could be no possible ground either for suspecting him of any deceit towards me, or of omitting any art or exertion which could conduce to our mutual safety or our common end.