As there were no rowlocks in the boat, I sat aft, and pushed off with all my strength from the shore. I had, however, hardly covered one-third of the distance, when the ebbtide caught me in its whirl, spun my boat round like a top and paralysed all my efforts at steering. The time had come to show my sailor’s efficiency. With an iron grip I recovered control of the boat, and, floating with the tide, I steered a downstream course. A dangerous moment was at hand. An imposing military pontoon-bridge, stretching across the river, and guarded by soldiers, came across my way. Summoning cool resolution and sharp attention to my aid, looking straight ahead and only intent on my scull, I disregarded the sentry’s challenge and shot through between the two pontoons. A few seconds after the boat sustained a heavy shock, and I floundered on to the anchor-cable of a mighty coal-tender. With lightning speed I flung my painter round it, and this just in time, for the boat nearly capsized. But I was safe. The water whirled madly past it, as the ebbtide, reinforced by the drop of the river, must have fully set in. I had now only to wait patiently. [Illustration: GUNTHER PLÜSCHOW IN THE DISGUISE OF A DOCK LABOURER IN WHICH HE ESCAPED] My steamer lay to starboard. I wanted to bide my time until the flow of the tide made it possible for me to get across. I was already bubbling over with cock-sureness when the necessary damper was administered. Dawn was breaking, the outlines of the anchored ships became clearer and clearer. At last the sun rose, and still the water ran out so strongly that it was impossible even to contemplate getting away. Anyhow, it was impossible to carry out my flight just then. But at last, happy in the possession of the long-desired boat, I slid downstream and, after an hour, pulled up at a crumbling old bridge on the right bank of the Thames. I pushed my boat under it, took both sculls with me as a precautionary measure, and hid them in the long grass. Then I lay down close to them, and at eight o’clock I saw my steamer, the _Mecklenburg_, vanishing proudly before my eyes. My patience had still to undergo a severe test. I remained lying in the grass for the next sixteen hours, until, at eight o’clock that night, the hour of my deliverance struck. I again entered my boat. Cautiously I allowed myself to be driven upstream by the incoming tide, and fastened my boat to the same coal-tender near which I had been stranded the night before. Athwart to me lay the _Princess Juliana_ moored to her buoy. As I had time to spare, I lay down at the bottom of my boat and tried to take forty winks, but in vain. The tide rose, and I was once more surrounded by the rushing water. At midnight all was still around me, and when at one o’clock the boat was quietly bobbing on the flow, I cast off, sat up in my boat, and rowed, with as much self-possession as if I had been one of a Sunday party in Kiel Harbour, to the steamer.