On through the darkness went Jarker, always with the stream, his hands outstretched in front, and his head turned from time to time to catch a glimpse of the flash of some bull's-eye lantern. On he pressed, but not unpursued; since for some distance a couple of policemen, the one in plain clothes and he who had been knocked down and made vicious by the blow, came plashing along. Once the ruffian stopped, drew out a heavy life-preserver, and with an oath turned back, but directly after he was pressing on again, carefully feeling his way by the slimy wall, for the water grew deeper and deeper, and more than once his quick ear detected the light scuffling noise as of some little animal running, and a plash as of something leaping into the murky stream. At last Jarker stopped, for the long-continued silence and the thick darkness taught him that he was unpursued; but he knew well enough that though the pursuit had perhaps ceased, the entrances to the sewers would be carefully watched; and he felt too now that there would be no home for him again in Bennett's-rents. "They're gallus clever!" growled the ruffian when, after pressing on a little further, he once more stopped short--"they're gallus clever, them p'lice, but they don't know everythink." And now, after listening long and carefully, he turned off short round to the right, and waded onward for a few minutes, when he stopped again to draw forth a box and light a match; but he found that they were wetted, and nothing followed but faint streaks of phosphorescent light; when with a curse he threw the useless splints away and pressed on. Dark, plashing, echoing paths, with noisome mephitic smells and the sound of hurrying waters--paths that might in ignorance be traversed for days and days, until the weary wanderer sank down for the black stream to bear him out to the great river. Here there would be a smaller sewer off to the right, here one to the left; while drain-pipe and culvert emptied their filthy streams, augmenting always the larger sewer where the ruffian waded; as the current swelled and rose and rolled swiftly on, at times with almost sufficient force to render his footing insecure.