Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 730

The wherry pulled under the bows of the vessel; we followed just in time to see, by a very convenient flash of lightning, two packages handed up; then a figure, which we had recognised by the same flash as the bony ferryman, got into the ship. As he disappeared, our wherry touched the vessel; and at the same instant, to my great relief, a long black Thames police galley came alongside us, and its crew, five constables, with Barney Wilkins, who was there as guide, clambered up like cats. I and Peter imitated them, but not quite so quickly; and when I looked over the bulwark, I saw by the light of a couple of lanterns, screened from the outside, four or five men, the boatman and the skipper being two, lifting up a great lid which fitted in the deck – the hatches I heard it called – while by their side lay the packages of paper. I could not see Mr Byrle; but there was no time to consider; we all jumped in at once, the men looking round in amazement at the noise. I fancied that just then I heard a shout from the boat.

'What do you all want here?' said the skipper angrily.

'We hold a warrant' – I began.

'Oh, it is you, is it?' he screeched, like a hyena, or something of that sort. 'I owe you a little for a past score, and you shall have it.' As quick as lightning he pulled a long straight knife from the side of his trousers, where it must have been in some sort of sheath, and jumped at me with such suddenness that he would have stabbed me, only Barney Wilkins snatched a handspike from the deck, and dashing between us, hit him down with such a blow, that the skipper fell with a crash like a bullock when it is killed, the blood pouring from his head instantly.

It was all as quick as thought. The other men were all seized in a breath. So quick was it all done, that I had no idea Barney was hurt, until he reeled, made a wild clutch as if he caught at something for support, and then pitched forward on his hands and knees.

'Hollo, Barney!' I said, stooping down to him. 'What's the matter, old fellow?'

'It's all up, Mr Nickham,' he gasped; 'he's done me. I only hope I've killed him. Where's the other?'

'Oh, never mind the other, Barney,' I says. 'Where are you hurt?'

But as I spoke, one of the men came with a lantern, and Barney had no occasion to answer me, for I could see a straight stream of blood running from his chest on to the deck; and his hands giving way from weakness, he fell over on his side.

'Pull in for the shore, you, sir!' said the sergeant of the Thames police to my waterman. 'You know Marigold Street? Knock up Mr Gartley, and tell him what has happened. Say we are afraid to move the man to his house, so he had better come aboard.'

'Send one of your own men, will you?' answers the boatman. 'I've got something to tell the governor' (that was me), 'as I think he ought to know.'

'Cut away then, Bill,' says the sergeant to a constable; 'these fellows are ironed, and we can manage all that are aboard this craft.'

So the man went off in my wherry; and the Thames men tried to make poor Barney a little more comfortable, while I undid his waistcoat, hoping to stop the bleeding.

'It ain't no use,' he said; but in that short time his voice was almost gone, and we could tell that he was dying. 'I'm done for, Mr Nickham. If there's a reward, you'll act fair and square, I know; you always was a gentleman – let my sister have' – And with that he gave a gasp, and was dead.

I rose up, dreadfully vexed for the poor chap. The sergeant and one of his men were looking after the skipper, when I felt myself touched on the arm.

'I say, sir,' said the boatman, 'when I'm in for a thing, I go through with it honourable. Did you know as you was followed?'

'Followed? no!' I said.

'I thought we was!' said Peter Tilley.

'We was followed, sir, by a light wherry with two people in it,' continues the boatman; 'and when they see our boats, they held hard; and as you all boarded the ship and the noise began, they rowed away as hard as they could go.'

'Which way did they go?' I said.

'Down river,' says the man. 'But it's of no use thinking of looking after them now. They are ashore long afore this.'

This was likely enough; and it was quite certain that Mr Edmund Byrle was one of the two in the boat, and I had lost him for the present. Well, it couldn't be helped; so we set to work to question the men and search the ship, till the doctor came. The men knew nothing more about the business than that they were going to have two passengers, a lady and a gentleman, this voyage. One of the Thames men understood Dutch, or we should not have heard even this scrap of information. The sulky boatman never uttered a word, except that once he said as I passed him, and he said it with a bitter curse: 'I always had my doubts of you.'

The doctor came off; but poor Barney was stone-dead, while the skipper's skull was badly fractured. However, the paper was all there; so I supposed, and so it proved; and I shouldn't have cared if the skipper's head had been broken fifty times over.

We got our prisoners to the shore, leaving the craft in charge of a Thames police galley that came in answer to our signals; and late as it was, I drove with Peter Tilley in a cab to the City. Our people there were immensely glad, I can tell you; and when I went over to the Bank (for there was no need for secrecy or dodging now), I thought the gentlemen never would have left off paying me compliments. Poor Barney Wilkins that was dead deserved most credit; but it could not do him any good to say so now, so I let them go on. The paper was examined, and found to be exactly the quantity required; enough, I believe, to have made about twenty thousand bank-notes. Ah! if they had got into circulation!

I hope you will understand, however, that I did act fair and square; and when the reward was paid (and the Bank people did come down most liberal; I bought my house at Pentonville with my share), I told the gentlemen about poor Barney and his wishes; and I'm proud to say they found his sister out and took her away; and after a time she went abroad with kind people who looked after her, and took care of her money till she got married, and did well. Why, she sent me a snuff-box made out of pure Australian gold, with a letter signed by herself and her husband, who was a butcher in a great way of business out there; and they sent it as an acknowledgment of my having acted all fair and square. I promised so to do, and I did.

Edmund Byrle was never caught, and so far as we were concerned, was never heard of; and if it hadn't been for his father, I should never have understood a lot of things that puzzled me. I had given a pretty good guess as to how Miss Doyle came in the first place to inquire about Mr Byrle and the detective; a very clever idea in itself, but like many other clever things, it lost her the game. Mr Byrle had talked with his friends about employing detectives; and Miss Doyle knowing about the Bank paper, and being always on the watch, had got hold of just enough to mislead her. She went out with Edmund Byrle to Turkey, I think, and was married to him; and old Mr Byrle sent out a friend to see them; and it was in this way I got the particulars. It appears she knew me again – only as the limping labourer, of course – when she saw me talking at the ferry to Tilley. But she knew him as the detective at the Yarmouth Smack, and she thought that although it might be all right, yet a detective was a dangerous customer, and his acquaintances might be dangerous also. Consequently she tried to persuade Edmund to put off his journey; but he wanted the money for the paper, and wouldn't listen to her. But he agreed at last to go aboard in another boat, which satisfied her, as she felt so certain the skipper's boat would be attacked. As I have explained, her precaution saved him from fifteen years' 'penal,' which is the least he would have had. The skipper was sent for life, having killed a man in his arrest; but he didn't live six months in prison; he never got over the tremendous blow he received from Barney. All the reports spoke of his being a receiver of 'stolen goods.' The Bank paper was never mentioned, for the authorities did not want to unsettle the public again, or let them see what a narrow escape they had had.

And now comes about the queerest part of my story. Call me names if I didn't stop the thieving at Byrle's factory as well as recover the Bank paper, killing two birds with one stone.

It was all through my catching the bony ferryman. Finding that things was going hard with him, and hoping to make them easier, and being disappointed that those who were concerned with him did not come forward with money to provide for his defence, he 'rounded' on them; he split on them all, and owned how he was the means of taking the metal over to a fence on his side of the water, the things being stolen by a mechanic and a watchman who were in league. (I see I have used the word 'fence;' this means a receiver of stolen goods; but though I have been warned by the editor of this magazine, we can't do without some slang words.)

Peter Tilley got a tidy present, and was noted for promotion through this business. I was glad of it, for Peter was a capital chap – never wanted to play first-fiddle; and I admire people of that disposition. I tell you what I did: I got the newest five-pound note of all what the Bank gave me, and they were all very clean and crisp, and I wrapped old Bob the gatekeeper's own sixpence in it; and I went to the factory and I stood a pint of ale, and says: 'Bob, here's your sixpence!' He hadn't known exactly who I was till then, for I had made excuses as usual; and then I'm blessed if he didn't quite cry over his luck. Mr Byrle too thought a lot of Bob's kindness, for I told the old gent about it; and I heard that on that very account he put six shillings a week on Bob's wages, and I was glad to hear it.

They couldn't keep me off the detective staff after this; and although I am free to confess – now I am on my pension and nothing matters to me – that I only stumbled upon these discoveries by accident, I was praised to the skies by those for whom I worked. However, it all died away, as such things do; but I had managed to get my house at Pentonville, as I have hinted; and a pleasanter neighbourhood I don't know, or one more convenient for getting about. I have had some rather odd adventures since I have lived in my street; you can't help seeing strange things, if you keep your eyes open in London. But I didn't begin to tell about them. I have finished my account of the robberies at Byrle & Co.'s and my story finishes in consequence.

FEATS OF ENDURANCE

London, which has witnessed many strange doings in its day, was lately the scene of the most wonderful feats of pedestrianism ever accomplished within a given period.

Every hour, day and night, for six weary weeks a man plodded on his way round a measured track, until the grand total of fifteen hundred miles in one thousand hours had been made up, finishing his self-imposed task with his physical and mental faculties apparently unimpaired.

The task of walking fifteen hundred miles in a thousand hours had never before been attempted, and henceforth the new achievement will throw into the cold shade of obscurity even the marvellous act of walking a thousand miles in as many hours, which was once accomplished in 1809 by Captain Robert Barclay of Ury, a Scotchman, who proposed to perform the then incredible task of walking a thousand miles in a thousand consecutive hours. The proposition was received with every sign of incredulity, though, when the affair was finally arranged to take place, many thousands of pounds were staked on the event. Newmarket Heath was selected as the scene of the exploit, and the famous walk began on the 1st of June 1809, at midnight. It is unnecessary to repeat the details of this feat; it will suffice to mention that the enterprising captain completed his task on the 12th July, at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Since then, an attempt has, we believe, been made to walk the same distance backwards; and within the past twelve months, Weston, the American pedestrian, has performed some remarkable exploits of the kind; being however at last beaten by an Irishman named Kelly.

The hero of the lately completed task (fifteen hundred miles in a thousand hours) is a little Welshman of not more than five feet three and a half inches in height, and about forty-two years of age; while in personal appearance and general physique he presents anything but what is usually supposed to be the characteristic of a good pedestrian. His name is William Gale, and he is a bookbinder by trade, living at Clerkenwell.

At the commencement of his task on Sunday the 26th of August, he weighed no more than eight stone four pounds (8 st. 4 lbs.); and from that day until Saturday the 6th October, during a portion of every hour day and night, he pursued his monotonous way around the inclosure at Lillie Bridge grounds, Brompton. When the attempt was first announced, even those most acquainted with pedestrian feats where great endurance was required, expressed themselves dubious as to the result; and in order to have a reliable record of his proceedings, Gale requested the different sporting papers to appoint competent men as judges – a request which was at once generously complied with.

Thus we have an official report of his great exploit, and the public are enabled to judge for themselves on the nature of the feat performed. Gale's average pace appears to have been about four miles an hour; but when he had reached his thousandth mile he assumed a brave spurt, and footed it in ten minutes, or at the rate of six miles an hour. During the last few days of his walking he started rather stiffly at first, owing to the pain caused by the swelling of some varicose veins in his left leg; but undaunted by so great and manifest a disadvantage, and other disadvantages which we shall presently refer to, the gallant little Welshman 'plodded his weary way' with a determined pluck that won the admiration and applause of every one present.

On Friday the 5th October, the day before the finish of the tramp, Dr Gant of the Royal Free Hospital was called in to see this extraordinary walker, and after examining his legs, he pronounced Gale to be in excellent condition so far as his physical powers were concerned; there being no fever, the pulse only seventy, no murmur at the heart; and the varicose veins which had been the cause of so much pain to him, were rather better than worse, having considerably decreased in size. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the performance is, that it has been accomplished on a system of training which entirely sets at variance all athletic rules, for Gale partook of no fixed refreshment, neither did he have his meals at stated hours. His chief food was plain mutton-chops; and as an instance of how he varied his dishes, his afternoon meal on Friday the 5th October, which might have been either breakfast, dinner, or supper (so irregular had he been in this respect), consisted of a lobster and bread and butter, followed by a fried sole, and one or two cups of ordinarily strong tea. During the walk he also drank a good deal of beer – not strong beer, but the ale which is usually sold at fourpence per quart, which he seemed to prefer to any other kind, probably on account of its freedom from that tendency to increase rather than assuage thirst, so remarkably apparent in the stronger beers.

Many strange incidents occurred in the course of the six weeks, which were calculated to while away the time, and occasionally to bring a smile to the pedestrian's lips. For instance, a certain illustrated sheet, notorious for its very sensational cartoons, published a picture of Gale on the track followed by Old Time with the conventional scythe on his shoulder; and many people it would seem actually paid their money with the idea that they were going to see the two figures as thus represented. One man, who had evidently gone to the grounds for this purpose, had watched Gale go round the track several times, when he could no longer control his disappointment. He shouted aloud, angrily demanding his money back, because, as he said with the greatest naïveté possible, 'the beggar with the scythe hadn't turned up!'

As the last week of the great walking match wore on, signs of weariness in the indomitable pedestrian became painfully apparent, and many persons began to fear that the task he had set himself would after all remain unaccomplished. On several of the rounds he fell asleep whilst walking, and dropped to the ground; but this contact with mother earth seemed to revive him instantly, and he plodded on as pluckily as before.

At length success crowned his efforts; and at seventeen minutes past five o'clock (less a second) on Saturday afternoon the 6th October 1877, Gale terminated his long and dreary walk in the presence of a large, fashionable, and enthusiastic assemblage, who rewarded his efforts with several rounds of hearty applause.

From the commencement of his task to the finish Gale bore up against all obstacles with extraordinary pluck and determination, his last mile being performed in ten minutes and eight seconds. He was at once removed to the tent or pavilion under which he had snatched so many brief half-hours' rest, and was examined by three medical men, who found that his heart was quite natural in its movements, and that the temperature of his body did not exceed one hundred and six degrees.

The great feat which has thus been accomplished without the aid of artificial training, is a marvellous instance of what human endurance, allied with courage and determination, can effect; though of what particular benefit it may be to the world at large it is utterly impossible to imagine.

Since the preceding account was written, Gale has accomplished a still more extraordinary feat, and one which for strength of will and physical endurance far surpasses his previous efforts. We still fail, however, to see the benefit which can accrue from exhibitions of this kind, and well might he have been contented with the laurels he had already won. He had scarcely allowed himself time to recover from his former task, when he once more appeared at a public place of entertainment, namely the Agricultural Hall at Islington, to walk four thousand quarter-miles under the astounding condition, that it was to be done in four thousand consecutive periods of ten minutes.

This of course deprived him of the half-hour's rest which he could obtain at one time in the former race, and only allowed him a few minutes between each round to get a little sleep. Despite these drawbacks, however, Gale finished his task at eleven o'clock P.M. on the 17th November, after a dreary walk of nearly four weeks. By accomplishing his task, he has placed himself at the head of all the famous pedestrians the world has known; and we trust that this fact will be sufficient to satisfy his craving after what is at best but ephemeral fame.

Men have on many occasions attempted walking feats which required a vast amount of physical endurance, and have failed from their utter inability to go without the natural quantum of sleep; but Gale has not only shewn himself to be possessed of the former, but to be altogether independent of the latter. This, however, instead of indicating 'pluck' merely, would rather seem to point to a peculiarity in the man's constitution; as there are doubtless many persons whose courage would enable them to perform the same or even a greater task if, like Gale, they could walk about in a state of somnolency or semi-sleep – a state in which, to use his own words, he was as one in a dream, unconscious of all that was going on around him, and believing himself to be walking in forests and other places of silvan beauty; and the truth of this was made evident by the fact that he would have often exceeded the limit of his walk had not the voice of his attendant aroused him from his stupor.

The average time occupied by this extraordinary walker was by day about three minutes for each quarter of a mile, and by night about five minutes; and the fastest round recorded was done in two minutes and forty-two seconds. His pulse was always found to indicate a perfect state of health, and was as regular when he left off as when he commenced his task. His food consisted principally of fish, fowl, chops, eggs, and light puddings; and his drink was, with only one exception during the whole time, tea.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the whole affair was the fact that, although he sank into a deep sleep directly he reached his chair behind the curtain, which hid him from view between his walks, the moment the bell rang the second time, he would appear as fresh as ever and begin trudging away again.

When the feat was accomplished, Sir John Astley stepped forward, and amid a scene of great enthusiasm, presented the undaunted Welshman with a silver belt of the value of a hundred guineas, bearing the following inscription: 'This belt was presented to William Gale of Cardiff, on the 17th November 1877, by some of the nobility and gentry of Great Britain, in commemoration of his hitherto unprecedented feat, namely walking one thousand five hundred miles in one thousand hours at Lillie Bridge Grounds, August 26th to October 6th, 1877; and four thousand quarter-miles in four thousand consecutive periods of ten minutes, at the Agricultural Hall, London, October 21st to November 17th, 1877.' The belt is of lion's skin, mounted on velvet, the metal portion of it weighing one hundred ounces of sterling silver.

None will begrudge Gale his well-earned reward; but it is to be hoped that such exhibitions will in future be discountenanced by the general public, as they not only detract from the dignity of man, but are needless and unwarrantable in a country which, we trust, will ever pride itself on a nobler civilisation than that which is founded upon mere physical endurance.

A DIFFICULT QUESTION

THE STORY OF TWO CHRISTMAS EVES

IN TWO CHAPTERS. – PROLOGUE

In the gray light of an Indian dawn, with the cool breeze blowing through the curtains of the tent, and his friend's sorrowful eyes looking down on him, a soldier lay on his rough couch – waiting for death. They were soon to be parted those two, who had lived and fought together; but the face of the one who was starting on that journey of which none has measured the distance, was smilingly calm, while the eyes of the other glistened with regretful tears as he spoke low, faltering, remorseful words.

'Hush, Ralph, hush!' the other said at last. 'Don't you think, dear old fellow, I would sooner lose my life in having saved yours, than in any other way? After all, a few days or years sooner or later, what does it signify? My fate is perhaps the happiest, though I hope it is not. I don't think life is so very desirable,' he continued; 'I am only twenty-six; but mine has not been a happy one. It was my own fault, though. Take my advice, Ralph; don't marry young. There is only one thing that troubles me' —

'Your little girl,' Ralph interrupted. 'Wrayworth, let me take care of her; if I can make her happy, it will be some slight atonement, some' —

'You would take care of her, Ralph? would you?' The dying man's eyes shone gratefully as he looked up in his friend's face. 'She has nothing, poor little thing,' he went on sadly – 'motherless, fatherless, scarcely more than a baby either. It would be a heavy charge to leave you, Ralph.'

'Wrayworth! how can you speak so; you will drive me mad! You – you' – He broke down utterly; it was something so terrible to see this friend dying there – for him. 'Anything on earth that I can do' – he murmured.

'You will do for her,' said Wrayworth. 'Thank you. I have no friends to send her to. I meant to have made her very happy.'

'She shall be; I swear it!' Ralph answered fervently, thankful for this charge, which might in some degree help him to pay that debt of gratitude, and forgetful that he had no control of fate, that the promise he gave of happiness was a fearfully presumptuous one. But he made it willingly, gladly, solemnly, before God; and as far as lay in his power it should sacredly be kept; any sacrifice he would make for this child.

His friend's eyes rested on him searchingly for a moment. 'I trust you,' he said – 'I trust you.'