Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/295

Rh room, with a very small and very dirty piece of paper twisted up into a bad imitation of a three-cornered note.

"Please, you was to give me sixpence if I run all the way," remarked the youthful Mercury, "an' I 'ave: look at my forehead;" and, in proof of his fidelity, the messenger pointed to the water-drops which chased each other down his open brow and ran a dead heat to the end of his nose.

The scrawl ran thus—"The Washington sails at three for New York: be on the quay and see the passengers embark: don't notice me unless I notice you. Yours truly "

"It was just give me by a gent in a hurry wot was dumb, and wrote upon a piece of paper to tell me to run my legs off so as you should have it quick—thank you kindly, sir, and good afternoon," said the messenger, all in one breath, as he bowed his gratitude for the shilling Gus tossed him as he dismissed him.

"I said so," cried the young surgeon, as the Smasher applied himself to the note with quite as much, nay, perhaps more earnestness and solemnity than Chevalier Bunsen might have assumed when he deciphered a half-erased and illegible inscription, in a language which for some two thousand years has been unknown to mortal man. "I said so; Peters is on the scent, and this man will be taken yet. Put on your hat, Smasher, and let's lose no time; it only wants a quarter to three, and I wouldn't be out of this for a great deal."

"I shouldn't much relish being out of the fun either," replied his companion; "and if it comes to blows, perhaps it's just as well I haven't had my dinner."

There were a good many people going by the Washington, and the deck of the small steamer which was to convey them on board the great ship, where she lay in graceful majesty down the noble Mersey river, was crowded with every species of luggage it was possible to imagine as appertaining to the widest varieties of the genus traveller. There was the maiden lady, with a small income from the three-per-cents, and a determination of blood to the tip of a sharp nose, going out to join a married brother in New York, and evidently intent upon importing a gigantic brass cage, containing a parrot in the last stage of bald-headedness—politely called moulting; and a limp and wandering-minded umbrella—weak in the ribs, and further afflicted with a painfully sharp ferrule, which always appeared where it was not expected, and evidently hankered wildly after the bystanders' backbones—as favourable specimens of the progress of the fine arts in the mother country. There were several of those brilliant birds-of-passage popularly known as "travellers," whose heavy luggage consisted of a carpet-bag and walking-stick, and whose light ditto was composed of a pocket-book and a silver pencil-case of protean construction, which was