The Murder On The Thames—Todd's Narrow Escape.
"Help—help! murder!" shouted his assailant.
The pistol was still in Todd's grasp. With a devilish ingenuity, he thrust the barrel of it under his arm and felt that it touched his assailant. He pulled the trigger, and then he and the man who held him fell to the bottom of the barge together.
Todd kicked and plunged until he got uppermost, and then he felt for the throat of the other, and when he got a clutch of it he held it with a gripe of iron.
"Fool," he said. "Did you think that one driven to such desperation as I am, would be conquered so easily?"
There was no reply. Todd lifted up the head of the man, and it hung limply and flaccidly from the neck. He was quite dead. The pistol-bullet had gone through his heart, and death was instantaneous.
"Another one," said Todd, as he sprang to his feet and stood upon the dead body. "Another one sacrificed to my vengeance. Let those only interfere with me who are tired of life."
He placed his hand to his ear now, to listen if there were any indications of others of the boat's crew stirring; but all was still. No sound, save the lazy ripple of the tide past the old barge on which he was, met his ears.
"It is over," he said. "It is quite over now. That one great danger is past now."
The rain began to fall quicker, and splashed upon the half deck of the barge. Todd felt that he was thoroughly wet through; but all minor ills he could now laugh at, that he had escaped the one great peril of capture. He felt that his life had hung upon a thread, and that only the recent accident had saved him; for to be captured, was to him equivalent to death.