“If all goes well,” said I, “you will be perfectly free and safe again within a few hours.”
“Well,” he returned, drawing a long breath, “I hope so.”
“And think so?”
He dipped his hand in the water over the boat’s gunwale, and said, smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:—
“Ay, I s’pose I think so, dear boy. We’d be puzzled to be more quiet and easygoing than we are at present. But—it’s a flowing so soft and pleasant through the water, p’raps, as makes me think it—I was a thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no more see to the bottom of the next few hours than we can see to the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it’s run through my fingers and gone, you see!” holding up his dripping hand.
“But for your face I should think you were a little despondent,” said I.
“Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of that there rippling at the boat’s head making a sort of a Sunday tune. Maybe I’m a growing a trifle old besides.”
He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out of England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he had been in constant terror; for, when we ran ashore to get some bottles of beer into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted that I thought he would be safest where he was, and he said. “Do you, dear boy?” and quietly sat down again.
The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to lose none of it, and