Our Mutual Friend

dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark

ould 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

. Half savage as the man showed, with no covering on his matted head, with his brown arms bare to between the elbow and the shoulder, with the loose knot of a looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast in a wilderness of beard and whisker, with such dress as he wor

runs strong here. Keep her

t happened now, that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there which bore

ly aware of it, though so intent on the

g-chain and rope, at every stationery boat or barge that split the current into a broadarrowhead, at the offsets from the piers of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat the filthy water, at the f

her sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudd

n the river, kept the boat in that direction going before the tide. Until now, the boat had barely held her own, and had hovered about one spot; but now,

hem over the side. In his right hand he held something, and he washed that in the river too. It was money. He chinked it

zzi

r face was very pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and with that and his bright

thing off

ut it

of the sculls. I’ll take

an’t indeed. Father! — I

laces, but her terrified expostulatio

rt can i

. But I can

u hate the sight o

ot like it

iving! As if it wasn’t

in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention

ked out of the river alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed ashore. The very ro

d it out lovingly towards him: then, without speaking, she resumed her rowing, as another boat of sim

leer, who sculled her and who was alone, ‘I know’d

ther, drily. ‘So yo

pard

r, and the new comer, keeping half his boat’s lengt

, pardner — don’t fret yourself — I didn’t touch him.’ This was in answer to a quick impatient movement on the part of Gaffer: the

y many tides, ain’t he pardner? Such is my out-of-luck ways, you see! He must have passed me when he went up last t

t Lizzie who had pulled on her hood again. Both men then loo

xt us. Shall I take

tone that the man, after a blank sta

ing as has disagreed with

ve been swallowing too much of that wo

no pardner of mine,

man. Accused of robbing a live man!’

en accused of robbing

ULDN’T

’t you,

d. What world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse’s? Can a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it

l you wha

lor, a live sailor. Make the most of it and think yourself lucky, but don’t think after that to come over ME with your pard

hink to get rid o

fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with the boat-hook.

ked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What he had in tow, lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself away, though for the most part