The watermen, taking fright at the words, hung now upon their oars.
“Put back,” Sir Walter bade them. “I’ll not betray my friends to no purpose. Put back, and let us home again.”
“Nay, now,” said Stukeley gravely, himself watching the wherry. “We are more than a match for them in oars, even if their purpose be such as you suspect—for which suspicion, when all is said, there is no ground. On then!” He addressed himself to the watermen, whipping out a pistol, and growing truculent in mien and voice. “To your oars! Row, you dogs, or I’ll pistol you where you sit.”
The men bent their backs forthwith, and the boat swept on. But Sir Walter was still full of apprehensions, still questioning the wisdom of keeping to their down-stream course if they were being followed.
“But are we followed?” cried the impatient Sir Lewis. “’Sdeath, cousin, is not the river a highway for all the world to use, and must every wherry that chances to go our way be in pursuit of us? If you are to halt at every shadow, faith, you’ll never accomplish anything. I vow I am unfortunate in having a friend whom I would save so full of doubts and fears.”
Sir Walter gave him reason, and even King came to conclude that he had suspected him unjustly, whilst the rowers, under Stukeley’s suasion, now threw themselves heartily into their task, and onward sped the boat through the deepening night, taking but little account of that other wherry that hung ever in their wake. In this wise they came at length to Greenwich on the last of the ebb. But here finding the water beginning to grow against them, and wearied by the exertion into which Stukeley’s enthusiasm had flogged them, the watermen paused again, declaring that they could not reach Gravesend before morning.
Followed a brief discussion, at the end of which Sir Walter bade them put him ashore at Purfleet.
“And that’s the soundest counsel,” quoth the boatswain. “For at Purfleet we can get horses on to Tilbury.”
Stukeley was of the same opinion; but not so the more practical Captain King.
“’Tis useless,” he declared to them. “At this hour how shall you get horses to go by land?”