Our Mutual Friend | Page 4

searching gaze. The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down, and his
eyes watched every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight
head-way against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he directed his
daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face as earnestly as he watched the
river. But, in the intensity of her look there was a touch of dread or horror.
Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of the slime and ooze

with which it was covered, and its sodden state, this boat and the two figures in it
obviously were doing something that they often did, and were seeking what they often
sought. Half savage as the man showed, with no covering on his matted head, with his
brown arms bare to between the elbow and the shoulder, with the loose knot of a looser
kerchief lying low on his bare breast in a wilderness of beard and whisker, with such
dress as he wore seeming to be made out of the mud that begrimed his boat, still there
was a business-like usage in his steady gaze. So with every lithe action of the girl, with
every turn of her wrist, perhaps most of all with her look of dread or horror; they were
things of usage.
'Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well afore the sweep of it.'
Trusting to the girl's skill and making no use of the rudder, he eyed the coming tide with
an absorbed attention. So the girl eyed him. But, it happened now, that a slant of light
from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there
which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as
though with diluted blood. This caught the girl's eye, and she shivered.
'What ails you?' said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent on the advancing
waters; 'I see nothing afloat.'
The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had come back to the
boat for a moment, travelled away again. Wheresoever the strong tide met with an
impediment, his gaze paused for an instant. At every mooring-chain and rope, at every
stationery boat or barge that split the current into a broad- arrowhead, at the offsets from
the piers of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat the
filthy water, at the floating logs of timber lashed together lying off certain wharves, his
shining eyes darted a hungry look. After a darkening hour or so, suddenly the
rudder-lines tightened in his hold, and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore.
Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in her sculling;
presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden jerk, and the upper half of the
man was stretched out over the stern.
The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore, over her head and over her face, and,
looking backward so that the front folds of this hood were turned down the river, kept the
boat in that direction going before the tide. Until now, the boat had barely held her own,
and had hovered about one spot; but now, the banks changed swiftly, and the deepening
shadows and the kindling lights of London Bridge were passed, and the tiers of shipping
lay on either hand.
It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back into the boat. His arms
were wet and dirty, and he washed them over the side. In his right hand he held
something, and he washed that in the river too. It was money. He chinked it once, and he
blew upon it once, and he spat upon it once,--'for luck,' he hoarsely said --before he put it
in his pocket.
'Lizzie!'

The girl turned her face towards him with a start, and rowed in silence. Her face was very
pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and with that and his bright eyes and his ruffled head,
bore a certain likeness to a roused bird of prey.
'Take that thing off your face.'
She put it back.
'Here! and give me hold of the sculls. I'll take the rest of the spell.'
'No, no, father! No! I can't indeed. Father!--I cannot sit so near it!'
He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified expostulation stopped him
and he resumed his seat.
'What hurt can it do you?'
'None, none. But I cannot bear it.'
'It's my belief you hate the sight of the very river.'
'I--I do not like it, father.'
'As if