Yet I had not the least fear; nay, I preserve the recollection of an increasing emotion of triumph swelling into elation and hope and confidence as the hours of that wet, cold, and miserable day rolled past and brought me to the night whose dawn should start me on my adventure. Never was my love for Tom so great as now in this lonely time of waiting in those Woolwich lodgings, when I reflected that all I had done, was doing, and yet hoped to do, was for him, that he might know me to be true as the faithfullest of women could be to the man of her heart; that he might be gladdened by presently discovering I was with him in the same ship; that his guiltless spirit might be supported by knowing we were together, that we should arrive together, and that whilst his term of infamous, unjust servitude lasted, I should never be far off, patiently and hopefully waiting for him. Yet I could not close my eyes all that night. I seemed to catch the sound of the storm-whipped river, though my lodgings were at a distance from it. Would Will be on the look-out for me? I kept on thinking. Suppose he should be detained by illness ashore; many things I supposed; and then I thought to myself, if he should not be on board, yet if I can contrive to enter the ship it will be strange if I don’t find my way into the hiding-place under the forecastle. But if he is not on the look-out or, indeed, not in the vessel, I shan’t be able to invent an excuse to go on board of her. The guard will be received at Deptford; the surgeon superintendent will be already, no doubt, in the ship; there will be mates and apprentices on the poop and about the deck. I knew it would be impossible for me to cross the gangway without being challenged as to my business. What, then, should I do if Will was not on the look-out for me? These were considerations to give me a sleepless night. I lay in bed till seven, then rose, dressed myself in my ordinary apparel, and telling the servant to have breakfast ready by half-past eight, I passed out of the house and went quickly toward the river. It was still blowing fresh, but the morning was dry, gray, hard with cold. I passed through some mean little streets of small houses, such as labourers would occupy. Hard as the morning was, the mud lay soft as grease in the roadways. Here and there was a public-house, two of which--the ‘Warrior Arms’ and the ‘Justitia’--were named after the prison-hulks. Though it was barely good daylight as yet, these public-houses looked as if they had been open for some time. In places I tasted an acid smell of stale beer and tobacco as I passed along these mean little streets, and most of the people I saw, dressed in a sort of velveteen or corduroy, conversing near the public-houses, many of them of the flat-faced type of Englishman, with streaks of black hair down their cheeks, and a habit of glancing sideways without turning their head, might have passed for convicts enjoying a free-and-easy half-hour.