As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the full, would not rise early, we held a little council:  a short one, for clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could find.  So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out for anything like a house.  Thus we held on, speaking little, for four or five dull miles.  It was very cold, and, a collier coming by us, with her galley-fire smoking and flaring, looked like a comfortable home.  The night was as dark by this time as it would be until morning; and what light we had, seemed to come more from the river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars.

At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that we were followed.  As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound came, one or other of us was sure to start and look in that direction.  Here and there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them nervously.  Sometimes, “What was that ripple?” one of us would say in a low voice.  Or another, “Is that a boat yonder?” And afterwards, we would fall into a dead silence, and I would sit impatiently thinking with what an unusual amount of noise the oars worked in the thowels.

At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked up hard by.  Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and found the light to be in a window of a public-house.  It was a dirty place enough, and I dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers; but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink.  Also, there were two double-bedded rooms — “such as they were,” the landlord said.  No other company was in the house than the landlord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the “Jack” of the little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too.

With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all came ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder, and boat-hook, and all else, and hauled her up for the night.  We made a very good meal by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms:  Herbert and Startop were to occupy one; I and our charge the other.  We found the air as carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to life; and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the beds than I should have thought the family possessed.  But, we considered ourselves well off, notwithstanding, for a more solitary place we could not have found.

While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the Jack — who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of shoes on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and bacon, as interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago from the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore — asked me if we had seen a four-oared galley going up with the tide?  When I told him No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she “took up too,” when she left there.