"I am obeying you, sir." "Very well. Now, listen attentively to what I am about further to say to
you, Bill White. You can pull away while you listen. We are going now
very well with the stream." "Yes, sir." "We shall, no doubt, pass many wherries, and you may think it a very
good thing to call out for help, and to say that I threatened to murder
you, and all that sort of thing; but so soon as you do, you die. I will
hold this pistol in my hand, and whenever we come near a wherry, my
finger will be upon the trigger, and the muzzle at your head. You
understand all that, I hope, Bill White?" "Of course I do, sir." "Go on then." Todd reclined back in the stern of the boat, and kept his eyes fixed
upon the boy, down whose cheeks the tears rolled in abundance, as he
pulled down the stream. Having the tide fully in its favour, the wherry,
with very little labour, made great way; and Todd, as he saw the dawn
slowly creeping on, began to congratulate himself upon the cleverness
with which he had escaped from the barge. The river began to widen--the pool was left behind, and the dull
melancholy shore of Essex soon began to show itself, as the tide, by
each moment increasing in strength, carried the light boat swiftly along
its undulating surface, with its frightfully wicked load. Todd thought it would be as well now to say something of a cheering
character to the boy. Modulating his voice, he said--

"Now, you see, my lad, that by obeying me you have done the very best
thing you possibly could, and when I think proper to land, I will give
you a guinea for yourself." "I don't want it," said the boy. "You don't want it?" "No; and I won't have it." "What do you mean by that, you idiot of a boy? How dare you tell me to
my face that you won't have what I offer you?" "I don't see," said Bill White, "how that ought to put you in a passion. All you want is to make me row you down the river. Well, you have made
me, cos I don't want to be shot down like a mad dog, of course; but I
won't be paid for doing what I don't like--not I." "Well, it don't matter to me. You may please yourself about that; I am
just as well pleased at being rowed for nothing as if I paid for it. You
can please yourself in that particular; but it would have been better
for you to have taken what I chose to give you than to have refused it." The boy made no answer to this speech, but rowed on in sullen silence. He no longer wept now, and it was evident to Todd that indignation was
rapidly taking the place of fear in his heart. Todd even began to debate
with himself whether it would not be better to throw him into the river
and take the oars himself, and trust to his own skill to conduct the
boat with the stream to Gravesend, than was the risk of any sudden act
of the boy's that might bring danger upon him. It would have been but a poor satisfaction to Todd to have shot the boy
at the moment possibly of his calling for help, when the sight of such
an act would be sufficient to insure his capture, without people
troubling themselves about what he had done or not done before. These were considerations that began to make Todd very unhappy indeed. "Well, Bill White," he said; "as your father, no doubt, expects you by
this time, and I daresay you will be glad enough to go back and forget
all about the little disagreement that we have had, I will get you to
land me at once at those stairs yonder, and then we will shake hands and
part." "No we won't." "Ah?" "I say we won't shake hands. I'm willing enough that we should part, but
as for the shaking hands, I won't do it; and I'm quite willing to pull
in to the stairs." As he spoke he inclined the head of the boat to a little landing-place,
where a few wherries were moored. CHAPTER CLXIII. ANOTHER POLICE-GALLEY. "Bill White," said Todd. "Well, what now?" said the boy, in a sulky tone. Todd pointed to the pistol, and merely uttered the one word--"Remember!" and then, with a horrible misgiving at his heart, he let the lad pull
into the landing-place. Some half-dozen lazy-looking fellows were
smoking their pipes upon the dirty beach, and Todd, concealing the
pistol within his capacious cuff, sprang on the shore. He turned and
looked at the boy, who slowly pushed off, and gained the deep water
again. "He is afraid," thought Todd, "he is afraid, and will be too glad to get
away and say nothing." Bill White's actions were now not a little curious, and they soon
attracted the observation of all the idlers on the beach, and put Todd
in a perfect agony of apprehension. When the boy was about half a dozen
boats' length from the shore, he shipped one of his oars, and then, with
his disengaged hand, he lifted from the bottom of the boat an old
saucepan, which he held up in an odd, dodging kind of way before his
face, with an evident idea that if Todd fired the pistol at him, he
could interrupt the bullet in that way. Then, in a loud clear voice, he
cried--

"Hilloa! Don't have anything to do with that Mr. Smith. He has been
threatening to shoot me, and he has got a pistol in his hand. He's a bad
'un, he is. Take him up! That's the best thing you can do. He's
well-nigh as bad as old Todd the murderer of Fleet Street, that they
can't catch. Take him up. I advises you. Blaze away, old curmudgeon." Todd's rage was excessive, but he thought that the best plan would be to
try to laugh the thing over, and with a hideous affectation of mirth, he
cried out--

"Good-by, Bill--good-by. Remember me to your father, and tell him all
the joke." "It wasn't a joke," said Bill White. "Ha! ha!" laughed Todd. "Well--well, I forgive you, Bill--I forgive you. Mind you take my message to your aunt, and tell her I shall be at the
chapel on Wednesday." "Oh, go to the deuce with you," said Bill, as he put down the saucepan
upon finding that his late fare was not disposed to carry his threat of
shooting him into effect. "You are an old rogue, that you are, and I
daresay you have done something that it would be well worth while to
take you up for." With this, Bill began vigorously to pull away against the stream,
puffing and blowing, and looking as indignant as he possibly could. Todd
turned with a sigh to the men at the little landing, and affecting to
wipe a tear from his left eye, he said--

"You would not believe, gentlemen, that that boy could say such things
to his poor old uncle, and yet you wouldn't believe if I were to tell
you the pounds and pounds that boy has cost me and his poor aunt. He
don't behave well to either of us; but we are as fond of him as
possible. It's in our natures to love him, and we can't help it." "Lor!" said one of the men. "You looks tender-hearted," said another. The others all laughed at this, and Todd thought it was as well to seem
as if he thought that some very capital joke was going on, so he laughed
too. "I was thinking," he said, when the merriment had a little subsided, "I
was thinking of going right on to Gravesend. What do you say to taking
me now, a couple of you?