But Thomas did not see the race, not because he was in haste to get ashore, but because something happened. His waterman, anxious to see the sport, lingered in the crowd lining the whole of that side of the river. In a boat a little way farther up was a large family party, and in it a woman who was more taken up with the baby in her arms than with all that was going on around her. In consequence of her absorption in the merry child, which was springing with all the newly-discovered delight of feet and legs, she was so dreadfully startled when the bows of another boat struck the gunwale just at her back, that she sprung half up from her seat, and the baby, jerking itself forward, dropped from her arms into the river. Thomas was gazing listlessly at the water when he saw the child sweep past him a foot or so below the surface. His next remembered consciousness was in the water. He was a fair swimmer, though no rider. He caught the child, and let himself drift with the tide, till he came upon the cable of a vessel that lay a hundred yards below. Boats came rushing about him; in a moment the child was taken from him and handed across half a dozen of them to his mother; and in another moment he, too, was in a boat. When he came to himself a gin-faced, elderly woman, in a small threadbare tartan shawl, was wiping his face with a pocket-handkerchief, and murmuring some feminine words over him, while a coarse-looking, dough-faced man was holding a broken cup with some spirit in it to his mouth.
"Go ashore with the gentleman, Jim," said the woman. "There's the India Arms. That's a respectable place. You must go to bed, my dear, till you gets your clo'es dried."
"I haven't paid my man," said Tom, feebly. He was now shivering with cold; for, after the night and day he had spent, he was in no condition to resist the effects of the water.
"Oh, we'll pay him. Here, Fluke," cried two or three—they seemed all to know each other.
"Come along, sir," cried twenty shrill voices over his head. He looked up and saw that they were alongside of a great barge which was crowded with little dirty creatures, row above row. "Come this way—solid barges, sir, all the way. Ketch hold of the gen'lm'n's hand, Sammy. There. Now, Bill."
They hauled and lifted Thomas on to the barge, then led him along the side and across to the next yawning wooden gulf, and so over about seven barges to a plank, which led from the last on to a ladder ascending to the first floor of a public-house, the second floor of which, supported upon piles, projected over high water. There his conductors, two ragged little mudlarks, left him.
Through an empty kind of bar-room, he went into the bar, which communicated with the street. Here first he found that he had been followed by the same man who had given him the gin. He now passed before him to the counter, and said to the woman who was pumping a pot of beer:
"This gen'leman, Mrs. Cook, 's been and just took a child out o' the water ma'am. He 'ain't got a change in his wescut-pocket, so if you'll do what ye can for 'im, there's many on us'll be obliged to ye, ma'am."
"Lor', whose child was it, Jim?"
"I don't know as you know her, ma'am. The man's name's Potts. He keeps a public down about Limehouse, someveres."