In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no
need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with
two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which
is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening
was closing in.

The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled
hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty,
sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl
rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the
rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband,
kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could
not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no
inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope,
and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small
to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or
river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked
for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide, which
had turned an hour before, was running down, and his eyes watched
every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight
head-way against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he
directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face
as earnestly as he watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look
there was a touch of dread or horror.

Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of
the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden state, this
boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing something that they
often did, and were seeking what they often sought. Half savage as the