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It is well to be prepared. I see that the cab is at the door. I ordered it for half-past six." It was a little past seven before we reached the Westminster wharf, and found our launch awaiting us. Holmes eyed it critically. "Is there anything to mark it as a police-boat?" "Yes, that green lamp at the side." "Then take it off."
The only thing I remember is hitting my head a terrific crack against the prow of the sampan as I went over. I knew nothing after that till I sat up on the deck of the police-boat." "Jack had got hold of you, good and all right, so the policeman told me," said Buck. "Where he found you I don't know." Jack was compelled perforce to tell his story, and Jim Dent expressed his deep gratitude.
The sampan men, grown quiet and orderly, clustered like flies by the open door, through which they could see and hear what passed. Alf explained his difficulty in few words, and demanded, as the privilege of a stranger in a strange land, that the lieutenant put him aboard in the police-boat.
"There is a little joke which is causing considerable merriment at the Harbor police station at the present time, and the key to it is contained in the words, 'Long Island hospitality. A few days ago the police-boat 'Protector' was ordered to take to Long Island a party of surveyors, who were to lay out grounds for the proposed new hospital.
We hailed a boat that was two or three hundred yards from shore, and discovered in a moment that it was a police-boat on the lookout for any quarantine-breakers that might chance to be abroad. So we dodged we were used to that by this time and when the scouts reached the spot we had so lately occupied, we were absent.
He had pictured himself posing as a daredevil, and he went about his duties with a chastened mien, mistaken by the men, experts in such matters, for the reaction after a drinking bout. They passed Northfleet on their way up to Rotherhithe, where they went to discharge a small general cargo, the cook's behavior every time a police-boat passed them coming in for much scornful censure.
Now the journeys were in the other direction down the flooded river but here the remains of the bridge and the spot where the mill had stood were the only things which rewarded their enterprise; for the police-boat had been swept down for miles, and it was not till dark that the men returned by rail to report that they could do nothing in the fierce, rushing waters till the flood was at an end.
Then, after a surgeon had been found and had attended to the injured man, it leaked out that a malefactor had been apprehended at The Pigeons and taken away in the police-boat to the Station lower down the river. That singular couple, Michael Ragstroar and his great-aunt, had got to the cherry-tart before a passing neighbour, looking in at their window, acquainted them what had happened.
But amongst those persons I thought I recognized more than one familiar form, and felt reassured as to the watch which had been set upon the house. The night was dark and the river especially so, but in the gloomy space beyond the dock I detected a shadow blacker than the rest, which I took for the police-boat they had promised to have in readiness in case I needed rescue from the water-side.
That this opponent rose to the surface alive, and escaped, was barely entertained as a surmise, only to be dismissed as incredible; and this improbability became even greater when his companion was captured alone, a month later, in the commission of a burglary at Castelnau, which so it was supposed the two had been discussing just before the police-boat appeared.
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