I see it.--Now I see him! Pull both.
Easy, Herbert. Oars!"

We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board,
and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, and a black canvas
bag; and he looked as like a river-pilot as my heart could have wished.

"Dear boy!" he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his
seat. "Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!"

Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty
chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for the
moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood
and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the
figure-head of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as
is done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality
of bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches out of her head; in
and out, hammers going in ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber,
clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships,
capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures
roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent lightermen, in and
out,--out at last upon the clearer river, where the ships' boys might
take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them
over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly out to the wind.

At the Stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had
looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen none. We
certainly had not been, and at that time as certainly we were not either
attended or followed by any boat. If we had been waited on by any boat,
I should have run in to shore, and have obliged her to go on, or to
make her purpose evident. But we held our own without any appearance of
molestation.

He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural part
of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the wretched life he had
led accounted for it) that he was the least anxious of any of us. He
was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live to see his
gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign country; he was not
disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it; but he had no
notion of meeting danger half way. When it came upon him, he confronted
it, but it must come before he troubled himself.

"If you knowed, dear boy," he said to me, "what it is to sit here
alonger my dear boy and have my smoke