The String of Pearls (1850), p. 694

The others all laughed at this, and Todd thought it was as well to seem as if he thought that some very capital joke was going on, so he laughed too.
"I was thinking," he said, when the merriment had a little subsided, "I was thinking of going right on to Gravesend. What do you say to taking me now, a couple of you? There's the tide nicely with you all the way, and I am always a liberal enough paymaster."
"What will you give?" said one with a voice like a cracked trumpet, with a bad cold.
"Why, name your price, and I shall not say no to it."
"What shall we take the gemman for, Bill?" said this man to another, who was smoking a short pipe.
"A rum 'un," was the reply of Bill.
"Don't be a hass I didn't go for to ask you what sort of indiwiddle he was, but what we'd take him to Gravesend for."
"Oh, that's the caper, is it?"
"Yes it is, idiot."
"Well, fifteen bob and a tanner."
"Will that do, sir?" said the other to Todd, who thought that it would look bad to acquiesce too readily in the amount, so he said—
"I will give the fifteen shillings."
"Very good. We won't go to loggerheads about the tanner; so come along, sir, and we'll soon get you to Gravesend, with this tide a-running all the way there, as comfortably as it can, all of a purpose."
Todd was well enough pleasecl to find that these two men owned the longest and strongest-looking wherry that was at the landing-place. He ensconced himself snugly enough in the stern of the boat, and they put aside their pipes, and soon pushed off into the middle of the stream.
"Once more," thought Todd, "once more I am on the road to escape; and all may yet be well."
The two men now set to work with the oars in earnest. They felt, that as they were paid by the job, the best way was to get it over as quickly as possible; and, aided by the tide, it was perfectly astonishing what progress they made down the river.
Todd every now and then cast a long and anxious glance behind him; and presently he saw a boat shooting along, by the aid of six rowers, at great speed, and evidently turning into the little landing-place from where he had just come.
His eyesight was either sharpened by the morning light, or fancy deceived him, for he thought he saw the boy, Bill White, seated in the stern of the boat, Todd was in an agony. He knew not whether to attract the attention of the two watermen to the large boat with all its rowers, so that he might get an opinion from them concerning it or not; and then again, he thought that at the moment, there would be a good chance of working upon the cupidity of the men, if any real danger should befall him of capture.
"I say, Bill," said one.
"Well, say it."
"There's one of the police-officer's gone into the Old Stairs. There's something afloat this here morning."
"Ah! They are always at some manoeuvre or another. Pull away. It ain't no business of our'n."
Todd could almost have hugged the man for the sentiment he uttered; and how he longed to echo those two words, "pull away;" but he was afraid to do so, lest, by any seemingly undue anxiety just then for speed upon his part, he should provoke the idea that the police-boat was as interesting to him as it really was.
Poor, wretched, guilty Todd surely suffered a hundred times the pangs of death during his progress down the river; and now he sat in the stern of the boat, looking as pale as death itself.
"You don't seem very well," said one of the men.