The waterman sat for a moment, apparently lost in intense surprise, at the alteration which the two articles had made in his customer’s appearance, and certainly it would have required somebody most wonderfully well acquainted with the young man to recognise him in his strange disguise. A more complete alteration of personal appearance could not possibly be conceived, and the absence of the long curled hair gave his face quite a different contour.
“Upon my word,” said the waterman, “I never saw, in all my life, anything to ekal this. Why, I shouldn’t have known you myself for my fare. You needn’t mind running alongside of him now, for I’ll be hanged if he’ll guess it’s you, if he eats, drinks, and sleeps with you.”
“I dare say I look very different,” said Albert, “but for Heaven’s sake don’t lose sight of him.”
“Oh! I’ll be up to him in five minutes. I know how Ben’s boy can pull, and I know how I can pull. Hilloa—there goes your friend.”
The boat, with the spy, shot past at this moment, and Albert was now the last in the chase, to his great aggravation.
Such a state of things, however, did not long continue, for the waterman, after taking a sturdy look behind him to mark the relative position of the boats, bent to his oars with such strength and determination that the light wherry shot through the water with amazing speed. At each vigorous pull of the oars the boat actually seemed to jump forward several yards, and the distance between it and the boat preceding it sensibly decreased each moment.
“I told you I’d soon be up with them, sir,” said the waterman, as they came within a dozen boats’ lengths of the wherry in which was Sir Francis Hartleton’s man. “Now you’ll see me pass ’em, in proper style. I won this boat on the Thames, and you shall see as it ain’t thrown away upon me.”
The oars were dipped cleanly into the stream, and rose with scarcely a ripple—the speed of the boat, for the space of about twenty yards, was prodigious, and Albert felt that he was moving through the water at a most exhilarating rate. Now they were alongside of the boat with the spy, who immediately, to the immense diversion of the waterman, cried,—
“Hilloa, you there. Where did you land that young fellow you had?”
“Him with the long hair?” said the waterman.