ich the boat bearing the hunted man took from Mill Pond
stairs through the crowded shipping of the Pool, past the floating
Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and
mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea--when every sound of the
tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and
every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit--exemplifies in
the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's
observation. Forster says:--

"To make himself sure of the actual course of a boat in such
circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might
have, Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to
Southend. Eight or nine friends, and three or four members of his
family, were on board, and he seemed to have no care, the whole of
that summer day (22nd of May, 1861), except to enjoy their
enjoyment and entertain them with his own in shape of a thousand
whims and fancies; but his sleepless observation was at work all
the time, and nothing had escaped his keen vision on either side of
the river."

Scattered amongst the deserted reaches along the riverside may be seen
such lonely farmhouses or taverns as suggest the aspect of the alehouse,
"not unknown to smuggling adventurers"--for the "owling", that is, the
smuggling industry had flourished for centuries in these parts--to which
the fugitives were led by a twinkling light in the window up a little
cobbled causeway, and where Dickens placed that amphibious creature, "as
slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too", who exhibited a
bloated pair of shoes "as interesting relics that he had taken from the
feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore". This type of the gruesome
long-shoremen whom Dickens had encountered in his waterside rambles, as
he collected the materials for _Great Expectations_, was afterwards
elaborated in the Rogue Riderhood of _Our Mutual Friend_.

"Swamp, mist, and mudbank"--if that is the dominant impression made by
the view of the Thames off the Cooling marshes, it is not the only and
the invariable impression. Even the bleak churchyard, at the foot of the
cold, grey tower, is sometimes strewn by the light and flying gust "with
beautiful shadows of clouds and trees". And from the Old Battery, where
Joe would smoke his pipe with a far more sagacious air than anywhere
else, as Pip strove to initiate him into the mysteries