The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged1 grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently2 like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription3, no appliance beyond a rusty4 boathook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small to take in cargo5 for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman6 or river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide, which had turned an hour before, was running down, and his eyes watched every little race and eddy7 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 intensity8 of her look there was a touch of dread9 or horror.
Allied10 to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of the slime and ooze11 with which it was covered, and its sodden12 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 savage13 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 wilderness14 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 lithe15 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 slant16 of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching17 a rotten stain there which bore some resemblance to the outline of a muffled18 human form, coloured it as though with diluted19 blood. This caught the girl’s eye, and she shivered.
‘What ails20 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 shudder21 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 stationery22 boat or barge23 that split the current into a broadarrowhead, at the offsets24 from the piers25 of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat the filthy26 water, at the floating logs of timber lashed27 together lying off certain wharves28, his shining eyes darted29 a hungry look. After a darkening hour or so, suddenly the rudder-lines tightened30 in his hold, and he steered31 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 hood32 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 hovered33 about one spot; but now, the banks changed swiftly, and the deepening shadows and the kindling34 lights of London Bridge were passed, and the tiers of shipping35 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 spat36 upon it once — ‘for luck,’ he hoarsely37 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 ruffled38 head, bore a certain likeness39 to a roused bird of prey40.
‘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 it wasn’t your living! As if it wasn’t meat and drink to you!’
At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment paused in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention, for he was glancing over the stern at something the boat had in tow.
‘How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of the river alongside the coal barges41. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed ashore42. The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or another.’
Lizzie took her right hand from the scull it held, and touched her lips with it, and for a moment held it out lovingly towards him: then, without speaking, she resumed her rowing, as another boat of similar appearance, though in rather better trim, came out from a dark place and dropped softly alongside.
‘In luck again, Gaffer?’ said a man with a squinting43 leer, who sculled her and who was alone, ‘I know’d you was in luck again, by your wake as you come down.’
‘Ah!’ replied the other, drily. ‘So you’re out, are you?’
‘Yes, pardner.’
There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river, and the new comer, keeping half his boat’s length astern of the other boat looked hard at its track.
‘I says to myself,’ he went on, ‘directly you hove in view, yonder’s Gaffer, and in luck again, by George if he ain’t! Scull it is, pardner — don’t fret44 yourself — I didn’t touch him.’ This was in answer to a quick impatient movement on the part of Gaffer: the speaker at the same time unshipping his scull on that side, and laying his hand on the gunwale of Gaffer’s boat and holding to it.
‘He’s had touches enough not to want no more, as well as I make him out, Gaffer! Been a knocking about with a pretty many tides, ain’t he pardner? Such is my out-of-luck ways, you see! He must have passed me when he went up last time, for I was on the lookout45 below bridge here. I a’most think you’re like the wulturs, pardner, and scent46 ‘em out.’
He spoke47 in a dropped voice, and with more than one glance at Lizzie who had pulled on her hood again. Both men then looked with a weird48 unholy interest in the wake of Gaffer’s boat.
‘Easy does it, betwixt us. Shall I take him aboard, pardner?’
‘No,’ said the other. In so surly a tone that the man, after a blank stare, acknowledged it with the retort:
‘— Arn’t been eating nothing as has disagreed with you, have you, pardner?’
‘Why, yes, I have,’ said Gaffer. ‘I have been swallowing too much of that word, Pardner. I am no pardner of yours.’
‘Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam Esquire?’
‘Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a live man!’ said Gaffer, with great indignation.
‘And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer?’
‘You COULDN’T do it.’
‘Couldn’t you, Gaffer?’
‘No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to have money? What world does a dead man belong to? ‘Tother world. What world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse49’s? Can a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don’t try to go confounding the rights and wrongs of things in that way. But it’s worthy50 of the sneaking51 spirit that robs a live man.’
‘I’ll tell you what it is —.’
‘No you won’t. I’ll tell you what it is. You got off with a short time of it for putting you’re hand in the pocket of a sailor, a live sailor. Make the most of it and think yourself lucky, but don’t think after that to come over ME with your pardners. We have worked together in time past, but we work together no more in time present nor yet future. Let go. Cast off!’
‘Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way —.’
‘If I don’t get rid of you this way, I’ll try another, and chop you over the fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with the boat-hook. Cast off! Pull you, Lizzie. Pull home, since you won’t let your father pull.’
Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern. Lizzie’s father, composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted a pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What he had in tow, lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench52 itself away, though for the most part it followed submissively. A neophyte53 might have fancied that the ripples54 passing over it were dreadfully like faint changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte and had no fancies.
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1
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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2
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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4
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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5
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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6
lighterman
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| n.驳船夫 | |
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7
eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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8
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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10
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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11
ooze
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| n.软泥，渗出物；vi.渗出，泄漏；vt.慢慢渗出，流露 | |
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12
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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13
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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14
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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15
lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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16
slant
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| v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向 | |
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17
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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18
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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19
diluted
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| 无力的，冲淡的 | |
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ails
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| v.生病( ail的第三人称单数 )；感到不舒服；处境困难；境况不佳 | |
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21
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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22
stationery
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| n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封 | |
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23
barge
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| n.平底载货船，驳船 | |
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24
offsets
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| n.开端( offset的名词复数 )；出发v.抵消( offset的第三人称单数 )；补偿；（为了比较的目的而）把…并列（或并置）；为（管道等）装支管 | |
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25
piers
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| n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 )；（常设有娱乐场所的）突堤；柱子；墙墩 | |
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26
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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27
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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28
wharves
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| n.码头，停泊处( wharf的名词复数 ) | |
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29
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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30
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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31
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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32
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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33
hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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34
kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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35
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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36
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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37
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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38
ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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39
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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40
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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41
barges
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| 驳船( barge的名词复数 ) | |
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42
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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43
squinting
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| 斜视( squint的现在分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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44
fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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45
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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46
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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47
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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48
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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49
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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50
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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51
sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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52
wrench
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| v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受 | |
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53
neophyte
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| n.新信徒；开始者 | |
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54
ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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