“But a wonder, count, a wonder.  There is no waterman on the river in whose hands we should be safer,” I replied, expressing my confidence in stronger terms than it really deserved.  To shoot London Bridge when the tide was running out, as it then was, would give pause to the hardiest waterman.  A misstroke of the steering oar, the slightest faltering in the hands that held it, the mere touch of the boat’s nose against the jagged rocks and logs of the pier, and all would be lost.

We could not stop to put De Grammont on shore, and presently recognizing that fact, he sat down in resignation in the bow of the boat, remarking with a sigh, as though speaking to himself:—­

“Ah, the beautiful land!”

By that time the flambeau was blazing not two hundred yards ahead of us.  The current had caught us, and the waves of the running tide came almost to the gunwale of the boat.  Bettina had risen to her feet, leaving her hat, vizard, and cloak in the bottom of the boat, and was standing on the stern thwart, her back towards us and her face up-stream.  Behind us, perhaps three hundred yards, came the king’s great barge, ablaze with torches.  The men in the barge had ceased firing, supposing, probably, that we should be forced to land above the Bridge, and should then become an easy prey.  But we had Bettina with us; they had not.  Besides ours, there was not another one in the world.

On came the flambeau over the middle arch.  It seemed to be coming toward us rather than we going toward it.  Nearer lowered the black dim outline of the houses on the Bridge, with here and there the flicker of a candle in a window, magnified to starlike brightness by distance.

Clearer and clearer came the dash and the splash, the roar and the turmoil of the waters pouring through the terrible death’s door, the middle arch.  Yet over the middle arch was the only flambeau on London Bridge, placed there because it was the broadest of all the spans, and we dared not attempt to pass under the Bridge in the dark.

But worse than the middle arch ahead of us was the king’s barge following close behind us.  It, too, was in the current, though its twelve sweeps could easily have taken it ashore.  I suppose that pride and eagerness to overtake us prompted its captain to follow in our wake.  At any rate, he continued and was narrowing the distance between us with each stroke of the sweeps.  When I asked Bettina if she thought they would attempt the arch, she replied:—­

“I hope not,” then laughing softly, “—­for their own sakes.  The royal barges are not built to shoot the bridge.”

As we approached the bridge, Betty turned her eyes backward toward it every few seconds, taking her bearings and bringing the boat’s nose now a little to the right, now to the left, and again holding it straight ahead.

When we were within twenty yards of the middle arch, she told us to cease rowing, and we obeyed, leaving the boat in her hands.