Another shout from the men below demanded if I had got the prisoner. "Ay, ay," I mechanically replied, and they immediately hastened to join us.
"Which way—which way is he gone?" I asked as the seamen approached.
She instinctively caught my meaning: "By the shore to Weston," she hurriedly answered; "he will find a boat there."
The men now came up: "The chase has led us astray," I said: "look there."
"His mother, by jingo!" cried Johnson. "They must have changed clothes!"
"Yes: the boy is off—to—to Hamble, I have no doubt. You both follow in that direction: I'll pursue by the Weston and Itchen road."
The men started off to obey this order, and as they did so, I heard her broken murmur of "Bless you, Robert—bless you!" I turned away, faint, reeling with excitement, muttered a hasty farewell, and with disordered steps and flaming pulse hurried homeward. The mother I never saw again: the son at whose escape from justice I thus weakly, it may be criminally, connived, I met a few years ago in London. He is the captain of a first-class ship in the Australian trade, and a smarter sailor I think I never beheld. His mother is still alive, and lives with her daughter-in-law at Chelsea.