How long he remained thus he never knew. When he came to himself, conscious of a stiff back and an aching head, and raised himself, he found that he was alone in the boat, which was drifting towards the mud flats on the Surrey shore.
He looked around; the other boat, the fugitive boy, the pursuers, all had disappeared.
“Where am I?” he thought.
There were few lights on the banks; in the darkness he could not recognise his whereabouts. Seizing his sculls, he rowed slowly, painfully, across the stream towards the northern shore. Presently, in the distance, he caught sight of dim lights stretching across the river, and knew that they shone from the houses on London Bridge.
With a sigh he swung the boat about, and pulled still more slowly against the running tide, keeping close to the shore. It seemed hours before he came to the well-known stairs. He tied up the boat and then deliberated.
“Shall I go and tell Boulter what’s happened? He’ll be at the Pig and Whistle: I’d better go home.”
Dragging himself along, more distressed at his failure to save the boy than at his own injuries, he reached his house, groped stumblingly down the dark stairs, and found Susan Gollop placidly knitting.
“Why, sakes alive, what’s come to you?” she cried, as the candlelight fell upon his pale face.
“I’ve hurt my head,” he replied, dropping into a chair.
“There! If my thumbs didn’t prick!” she exclaimed. “I knew something had happened to you, you’re so late. I said to Gollop: ‘That boy’s got into mischief, and you can’t deny it.’ Now just you sit still and let me look at the place and tell me all about it.”