She could reckon on two friends in the world--Mr. Benny and Tom
Trevarthen. Aunt Hannah was far away, and Miss Marvin (though now
forgiven, and indeed worshipped for having interfered to protect Clem from
his flogging) could not be counted on for effective help.
Tom Trevarthen and Mr. Benny--it was on Tom that she pinned her hope; for
Tom (she had heard) was shipped on board the _One-and-All_ schooner; and
the _One-and-All_ was ready to sail for London; and somewhere near
London--so the paper in her pocket had told her--lay the dreadful place in
which Clem was hidden. She could find the vessel; the _One-and-All_ was
moored--or had been moored last night--at the buoy under the hill, ready
for sea. But to find the vessel and to find Tom Trevarthen were two very
different things. To begin with, Tom would be useless unless she
contrived to speak with him alone; to row straight to the schooner and
hail her would spoil all. Moreover, on the night before sailing he would,
most likely, be enjoying himself ashore. But where? Peter Benny might be
able to tell. Peter Benny had a wonderful knack of knowing the movements
of every seaman in the port.
She ran down the dark street to the alley over which poor Nicky Vro's
signboard yet glimmered in the light of the oil lamp at the entrance.
The cottage still lacked a tenant, and it had been nobody's business to
take the board down. On the frape at the alley's end his ferryboat lay
moored as he had left it. Myra tugged at the rope and drew the boat in.
As it drew alongside out of the darkness she leapt on board and cast off.
The paddles, as she laboriously shipped them between the thole-pins, were
unconscionably heavy; she knew little of rowing, and nothing of
double-sculling. But the tide helped her. By pulling now one paddle, now
another, she worked the boat across and down towards the ladder and the
quay-door at the end of Mr. Benny's yard.
Nearing it, she found herself in slack water, and the boat became more
manageable, giving her time between the strokes to glance over her
shoulder and scan the dark shadow under the longshore wall, where each
garden and alley-way had its quay-door and its ladder reaching down into
the tide. Now the most of these quay-doors were painted green or blue,
but Mr. Benny's a light grey, which in the darkness should have made it
easily discernible. Yet for some while she could not find it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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