Then, casting off, he rowed slowly up the Thames until, below the palace walls, he moored near to the little postern gate which let into the lower end of the garden.
But if to obtain our desire it be necessary to expose our joints to the Thames' fog then it were virtue to remain at home."
My Lord!' she cried, "Richard our son, has been assassinated and thrown into the Thames."
Amongst the great commercial streams of these islands, the
Thames is the only one, I think, open to romantic feeling, from the fact that the sight of human labour and the sounds of human industry do not come down its shores to the very sea, destroying the suggestion of mysterious vastness caused by the configuration of the shore.
There was a wharf behind, opening on the
Thames. An empty dog-kennel, some bones of animals, fragments of iron hoops, and staves of old casks, lay strewn about, but no life was stirring there.
Across the Thames, except just where the boats landed, everything was quiet, in vivid contrast with the Surrey side.
I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Mar- tians, upon the broad, bare gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. I expected nothing but death.
I have coursed many creatures in many countries during my checkered career, but never did sport give me such a wild thrill as this mad, flying man-hunt down the Thames. Steadily we drew in upon them, yard by yard.
Somewhere in the dark ooze at the bottom of the Thames lie the bones of that strange visitor to our shores.
The night that we did choose was as misty as even the Thames Valley is capable of making them.
It was never known that these Thames Valley robberies were all com-mitted by miscreants decked in the livery of crime, but that was because until this night we had never even shown our masks.
The next morning, February 21st, at three o'clock, the furnaces began to roar; at five, the anchors were weighed, and the Resolute, powerfully driven by her screw, began to plough the water toward the mouth of the
Thames.
We asked him if he had ever tried washing flannels in the river, and he replied: "No, not exactly himself like; but he knew some fellows who had, and it was easy enough;" and Harris and I were weak enough to fancy he knew what he was talking about, and that three respectable young men, without position or influence, and with no experience in washing, could really clean their own shirts and trousers in the river
Thames with a bit of soap.
Then there is the Fortune Theatre near Cripplegate, and, most charming of all, two views--street and river fronts--the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in Fleet Street, designed by Wren, decorated by Gibbons--graceful, naive, dainty, like the work of a very refined Palladio, working minutely, perhaps more delicately than at Vicenza, in the already crowded city on the
Thames side.
And what, during this same period, had shorn the waters of the
Thames of their pristine grandeur?
