“A traitor!  A spy!” shouted the preacher, at the top of his voice, seizing Harry by the doublet.  The latter shook himself free just as Jacob, jumping in the air, brought his hand down with all his force on the top of the steeple hat, wedging it over the eyes of the little man.  Before any further effort could be made to seize them, the two lads dived through the crowd, and dashed down a lane leading toward the river.

This sudden interruption to the service caused considerable excitement, and the little preacher, on being extricated from his hat, furiously proclaimed that the lad he had seized, dressed as an apprentice, was a malignant, who had bean taken prisoner at Brentford, and who had foully ill-treated him in a cell in the guardroom at Finsbury.  Instantly a number of men set off in pursuit.

“What had we best do, Jacob?” Harry said, as he heard the clattering of feet behind them.

“We had best jump into a boat,” Jacob said, “and row for it.  It is dark now, and we shall soon be out of their sight.”

At the bottom of the lane were some stairs, and at these a number of boats.  As it was late in the evening, and the night a foul one, the watermen, not anticipating fares, had left, and the boys, leaping into a boat, put out the sculls, and rowed into the stream, just as their pursuers were heard coming down the lane.

“Which way shall we go?” Harry said.

“We had better shoot the bridge,” Jacob replied.  “Canst row well?”

“Yes,” Harry said; “I have practiced at Abingdon with an oar.”

“Then take the sculls,” Jacob said, “and I will steer.  It is a risky matter going through the bridge, I tell you, at half tide.  Sit steady, whatever you do.  Here they come in pursuit, Roger.  Bend to the sculls,” and in a couple of minutes they reached the bridge.

“Steady, steady,” shouted Jacob, as the boat shot a fall, some eight feet in depth, with the rapidity of an arrow.  For a moment it was tossed and whirled about in the seething waves below, and then, thanks to Jacob’s presence of mind and Harry’s obedience to his orders, it emerged safely into the smooth water below the bridge.  Harry now gave up one of the sculls to Jacob, and the two boys rowed hard down the stream.

“Will they follow, think you?” Harry said.

“I don’t think,” Jacob laughed, “that any of those black-coated gentry will care for shooting the bridge.  They will run down below, and take boat there; and as there are sure to be hands waiting to carry fares out to the ships in the pool, they will gain fast upon us when ones they are under way.”

The wind was blowing briskly with them, and the tide running strong, and at a great pace they passed the ships lying at anchor.

“There is the Tower,” Jacob said; “with whose inside we may chance to make acquaintance, if we are caught, Look,” he said, “there is a boat behind us, rowed by four oars!  I fear that it is our pursuers.”