“But why full steam ahead?” I asked Brunow; and he turned upon me in the darkness with a faltering in his voice.
“I don't know,” he said. “There's something infernally strange about all this. Have we been trapped? This fellow's a German.”
“Trapped!” I answered. “How should we be trapped?”
“This,” cried Brunow, in a loud and quavering tone, “is not the ship I meant to board. There's some mistake here! Hi, you there!”
“Halloa!” said the man in the dreadnaught, approaching and speaking in broken English. “You can hoult your chaw. There is nothing for you to cry out about. Gom dis vays.”
Still in growing wonderment, and feeling on the whole that I should have been much better satisfied if I had had with me the brace of revolvers I had bought that morning, I followed the man down the companion-ladder.
CHAPTER XV
The paddles had already begun to churn in the water, and the vessel to move slowly, but with a swift vibration in every plank of her which promised speed when once she had gathered way. I was suspicious enough already, though in so vague a fashion that I hardly guessed what I suspected, and I recall the fact that I was not in the least surprised when I heard a cry from Ruffiano's lips, and saw the old man struggling in the arms of a big sailor who had clipped him by both elbows from behind and held him in a position of the most serious disadvantage. Without reflection, I sprang to his release. I felt a heavy blow between the shoulders, which would in all probability have taken effect upon my head but for my sudden movement, and in an instant I was in the middle of as severe a rough-and-tumble fight as I could remember anywhere. There were eight or ten people engaged in it, and the whole thing was so rapid that I had not the faintest idea as to where my opponents came from. I only know that within five seconds of the time at which I had left the deck I was somehow back upon it, fighting, as it seemed to me at the moment, for bare life, though I cannot think at this time of day that any very serious personal violence was intended towards myself.
I was fighting like mad with half a dozen when we suddenly swerved altogether against some part of the bulwark which had not been properly secured, and was probably made to open to afford a gangway for passengers, or for the unloading of baggage. The rail swung back, and I, clutching desperately at one of the fellows with whom I was struggling, fell overboard, and soused into the black water, with the bitter chill of a rainy spring in it. I think I may say quite honestly that on land I was a tolerably accomplished sportsman, but I was mainly inland bred as a boy, and though I could swim, after a fashion, and could also, after a fashion, handle a pair of sculls, I was a moderately poor creature in the water. The man I had clutched went down with me, and we both came up spouting the loathsome Thames water from our mouths and nostrils, and still holding to each other. As good luck would have it for me at that moment I came up on top, and a single blow disengaged me from my late adversary. The vessel from which we had fallen was already at a distance which seemed astonishing, and as I trod the water and looked about me, all the twinkling lights of the river craft and the shore looked alarmingly distant. I made for the nearest of them all, and swam, dreadfully embarrassed by my boots and soaked clothing. The light towards which I directed myself shone green over the black spaces of the water, and concentrating all my observation upon it, I thought I approached it at quite a royal pace. In a very little while, however, I discovered that the light was bearing down on me at a much greater rate than that at which I was approaching it, and finally I had some ado to get out of the way of the boat which carried it, and was considerably tossed and tumbled about in the long furrowing wake it made. I sang out at my loudest, but I can only suppose that I was not heard, for the craft, whatever it might have been, swept swiftly down the stream, and in a few seconds was lost to me. I began to feel horribly cold and hopeless. I have been in danger a good many times in my life, but almost always when I could warm the sense of peril by action; but here I felt for a moment as if my time had come, and as if nothing I could do could avert it. The fancy fairly sickened me; and what with the chill of immersion, the sickening taste of the nauseous water, and my own sense of feebleness as a swimmer, I was on the edge of giving up; but all of a sudden, as I have felt more than once in my time, a perfectly calm and bright sensation succeeded to the panic, and I rolled over on to my back, determined to make the best of things and to husband my strength as far as possible. I had read scores of times, as everybody has, that a man floating in the water has only to throw his head back, to keep his hands down, and to rest quite still to be safe. I tried this promising experiment, and whether from the weight of my wet clothes or the irregularity of my breathing, I found that it would not answer, and that I was compelled to keep in motion. I could feel that the current was carrying me, and as I paddled along, most carefully husbanding my strength, I saw that I was bearing gradually nearer to a light on shore, whose position in reference to the various other lights determined me that it was a fixed and not a moving object. I swam towards it, carefully regulating my respiration and determined to avoid all flurry, but I saw that in spite of my utmost efforts I was being hurried past it. Then I drifted into a space where there was something of a little broken, choppy sea, and got another fill of that beastly water, which tasted of tar and sewage and all abominations, and sickened me again to the very heart. Then, before I had fairly recovered from this, and while I was only automatically keeping myself afloat, I saw the wet, rotting piles of a wooden pier quite close to me, and swimming like a madman, touched the surface, and tried to get a grip of it. I failed, and was swept along, gripping and slipping in a most desperate endeavor, until at last the finger-nails of my right hand stuck somewhere in a crack of the water-soaked and slimy wood, and I held on, feeling that I was safe. I had not the faintest sensation of pain at the time, but I clung to the slimy pillar of that pier so urgently with both hands that my nails were half torn away, and for a fortnight later it was only with great difficulty that I could handle a pen, or button or unbutton a collar, or use a knife and fork. I tried to bottom the stream, but found I was quite out of my depth, and so worked cautiously along with the current from post to post until I came to the end of the structure, and then feeling my way round it in grim darkness, found myself at last with my feet embedded in soft mud. I held on there for a minute or two to take breath, and then fought on again. In a little while I found myself on dry land, but so used up by the pull and by the unwonted exertion that I fell all in a heap at the water's edge, and lay there so prostrated that I could move neither hand nor foot. At first the air was tenfold colder than the water had been, but the natural heat reasserted itself gradually, and my forces so far gathered themselves together that I could stand upon my feet and walk. I went on blindly just at first, with such lights as were visible dancing wildly all about me, and it must only have been by sheer good fortune that I did not wander back into the river from which I had so narrowly escaped. Sometimes I saw hundreds of lights, green and red and dazzling white, which had no existence at all, but in the midst of these I made out one which was stationary and real, and I went towards it. When I reached it I found that it hung above the door of that identical public-house at which we had found our boatman, and there at the doorway, glass in hand, was the hackney driver who had brought us down. The man looked amazed to see me, and was more surprised still when I hailed him. He undertook immediately to drive me back to town; helped me into the cab, wrapped me up from head to foot in a rough oilcloth, got me a stiff glass of hot brandy-and-water, and drove away.