[CHAPTER XIX.]
THE SECOND MAN.
The evening had come; it was seven o'clock. Towards where London lay, something--a murky, grimy-looking ball, had sunk away half an hour ago, its disappearance being followed after a very short interval by darkness and an increase of the fog, so that those who were out in the night could not see thirty paces ahead of them. Nor of artificial light was there any hereabouts in these gloomy, miserable marshes, except a glimmer that shone from one window of the "Red Rover." Yet, nevertheless, another light was dawning that, later, served to brighten somewhat the dense mist and to make it possible by degrees to see objects fifty yards away, but no further. The light of a moon approaching her second quarter and consequently rising at this time.
Nearer to London than where the inn was--nearer by some three or four hundred paces--and upon the bank close by, where there was a rough causeway running out into the river and down to the point which the lowest tide touched, two men paced slowly--Algernon Bufton and Lewis Granger. Each was now wrapped in a long cloak, that which the latter wore being almost the counterpart of the one that Anne had laid her hand upon that morning in his house--nay, in the mist and grime through which the sickly light of the moon shone fully, it was the counterpart, Bufton's being very similar to it. Each, too, held in his hand, though he had not yet assumed it, a vizard mask.
"You hear that sound?" Granger said to his companion, as now upon his accustomed ear, if not upon the other's, there came a deep grunting noise, a noise as regular as the ticking of a clock. "You hear it and know what it is?"
"I hear nothing yet. Ah! yes; now I catch it. What is the noise?"
"The thumping of oars in rowlocks. It is the quarter-boat of the schooner coming ashore for its victims. And, alas! I fear now that it will get none."
"I fear so, too," said Bufton, glancing under the flap of his hat at the other, who was peering forward along the river-bank as though he might be imagining that still there was a hope of Ariadne and Anne coming. "I fear so, too," Bufton repeated, though as he spoke he knew that nothing could now well prevent there being one victim.
"No time must be wasted," Granger said. "The schooner sails to-night as soon as the boat returns to her. Empty or full, that boat must go back within half an hour."
"What shall we do?" Bufton asked, feeling that he was trembling with excitement.