“Come, come, master, let us get afloat,” said one of them, in a rough impressive whisper, “time and tide wait for no man.”
“They shall not wait for me,” said Lord Glenvarloch; “but I have some things to carry with me.”
“Ay, ay—no man will take a pair of oars now, Jack, unless he means to load the wherry like a six-horse waggon. When they don't want to shift the whole kitt, they take a sculler, and be d—d to them. Come, come, where be your rattle-traps?”
One of the men was soon sufficiently loaded, in his own estimation at least, with Lord Glenvarloch's mail and its accompaniments, with which burden he began to trudge towards the Temple Stairs. His comrade, who seemed the principal, began to handle the trunk which contained the miser's treasure, but pitched it down again in an instant, declaring, with a great oath, that it was as reasonable to expect a man to carry Paul's on his back. The daughter of Trapbois, who had by this time joined them, muffled up in a long dark hood and mantle, exclaimed to Lord Glenvarloch—“Let them leave it if they will, let them leave it all; let us but escape from this horrible place.”
We have mentioned elsewhere, that Nigel was a very athletic young man, and, impelled by a strong feeling of compassion and indignation, he showed his bodily strength singularly on this occasion, by seizing on the ponderous strong-box, and, by means of the rope he had cast around it, throwing it on his shoulders, and marching resolutely forward under a weight, which would have sunk to the earth three young gallants, at the least, of our degenerate day. The waterman followed him in amazement, calling out, “Why, master, master, you might as well gie me t'other end on't!” and anon offered his assistance to support it in some degree behind, which after the first minute or two Nigel was fain to accept. His strength was almost exhausted when he reached the wherry, which was lying at the Temple Stairs according to appointment; and, when he pitched the trunk into it, the weight sank the bow of the boat so low in the water as well-nigh to overset it.
“We shall have as hard a fare of it,” said the waterman to his companion, “as if we were ferrying over an honest bankrupt with all his secreted goods—Ho, ho! good woman, what, are you stepping in for?—our gunwale lies deep enough in the water without live lumber to boot.”
“This person comes with me,” said Lord Glenvarloch; “she is for the present under my protection.”
“Come, come, master,” rejoined the fellow, “that is out of my commission. You must not double my freight on me—she may go by land—and, as for protection, her face will protect her from Berwick to the Land's End.”
“You will not except at my doubling the loading, if I double the fare?” said Nigel, determined on no account to relinquish the protection of this unhappy woman, for which he had already devised some sort of plan, likely now to be baffled by the characteristic rudeness of the Thames watermen.
“Ay, by G——, but I will except, though,” said the fellow with the green plush jacket: “I will overload my wherry neither for love nor money—I love my boat as well as my wife, and a thought better.”