He wormed himself up.
“Yer won't tell?” he said.
I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that I should agree.
“Say 'I swear.'”
“I swear.”
The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like secret oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.
“Good-bye, cockey.”
But he turned again, and taking from his pocket an old knife, thrust it into my hand. Then with that extraordinary hopping movement of his ran off across the mud.
I stood watching him, wondering where he could be going. He stumbled a little further, where the mud began to get softer and deeper, but struggling up again, went hopping on towards the river.
I shouted to him, but he never looked back. At every few yards he would sink down almost to his knees in the black mud, but wrenching himself free would flounder forward. Then, still some distance from the river, he fell upon his face, and did not rise again. I saw his arms beating feebler and feebler as he sank till at last the oily slime closed over him, and I could detect nothing but a faint heaving underneath the mud. And after a time even that ceased.