[Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens]@TWC D-Link book
Our Mutual Friend

CHAPTER 1
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So the girl eyed him.

But, it 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 some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as though with diluted blood.

This caught the girl's eye, and she shivered.
'What ails you ?' said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent on the advancing waters; 'I see nothing afloat.' The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had come back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again.

Wheresoever the strong tide met with an impediment, his gaze paused for an instant.
At every mooring-chain and rope, at every stationery boat or barge that split the current into a broad-arrowhead, at the offsets from the piers of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat the filthy water, at the floating logs of timber lashed together lying off certain wharves, his shining eyes darted a hungry look.

After a darkening hour or so, suddenly the rudder-lines tightened in his hold, and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore.
Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in her sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern.
The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore, over her head and over her face, and, looking backward so that the front folds of this hood were turned down the river, kept the boat in that direction going before the tide.


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