"Pull now, man! Pull as you never did before!" cried he, and the wherryman bent hard to his oars.
Yet great as was the haste of those who put forth into the foggy Thames, it was more than equalled by that of one who appeared upon the dock, even as the creak of the oars grew fainter in the gloom. There came the rattle of wheels upon the quay, and the sound of a driver lashing his horses. A carriage rolled up, and there sprang from the box a muffled figure which resolved itself into the very embodiment of haste.
"Hold the horses, man!" he cried to the nearest by-stander, and sprang swiftly to the head of the stairs, where a loiterer or two stood idly gazing out into the mist which overhung the water.
"Saw you aught of a man," he demanded hastily, "a man and a woman, a tall young woman—you could not mistake her? 'Twas the Polly Greenway they should have found. Tell me, for God's sake, has any boat put out from this stair?"
"Why, sir," replied one of the wherrymen who stood near by, pipe in mouth and hand in pocket, "since you mention it, there was a boat started but this instant for midstream. They sought McMaster's brigantine, the Polly Perkins, that lies waiting for the tide. 'Twas, as you say, a young gentleman, and with him was a young woman. I misdoubt the lady was ill."
"Get me a boat!" cried the new-comer. "A sovereign, five sovereigns, ten sovereigns, a hundred—but that ship must not weigh anchor until I board her, do you hear!"
The ring of the imperative voice, and moreover the ring of good English coin, set all the dock astir. Straightway there came up another wherry with two lusty fellows, who laid her at the stair where stood the impatient stranger.
"Hurry, men!" he cried. "'Tis life and death—'tis more than life and death!"
And such fortune attended Sir Arthur Pembroke that forsooth he went over the side of the Polly Perkins, even as the gray dawn began to break over the narrow Thames, and even as the anchor-song of the crew struck up.