Free The Secret River by Kate Grenville

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    Lucas had something in his hand. Thornhill saw a glitter of metal and knew it to be the short hanger Mr Lucas carried with him everywhere. He heard it slice the air near him, the sound of the blade through the air filling him with panic. He retreated onto the skiff, stumbling on the timber, a helpless blind man. For God’s sake do not! he heard himself call out, feeling his flesh cringe from the blade, but Lucas was shouting, Come here you blackguard , and Thornhill felt a hand clutching at his sleeve.
    He jerked up his arm and freed it, felt hands fumbling at his collar, and stumbled along the skiff with Lucas following him, but he heard Lucas trip on the oars and crash full-length. He heard the grunt as the wind was knocked out of him, imagined that big striped belly squashed like a bladder. He got to the skiff, Rob already in it—slow, but quick enough when it came to saving his own skin—and undid the rope. As he pushed away from the lighter and began to row, he heard one of the pieces of timber slide off the gunwale into the water, sending the little boat rocking so they near capsized.
    He was gasping with the fright of it, but also with a convulsion of the stomach that he recognised as having some relationship to laughing.
    Rob seemed more aggrieved at the loss of his coat than the nearness of his escape, earnestly telling Thornhill, My coat were there, my good thick coat! And—each time remembering as if for the first time— my wiper, how will I blow the snot, Will? Then his phlegmy laugh came from out of the stern, his voice jumping. My wiper , Will, think of that, Mr Lucas got my wiper for his very own .
    Rob’s brain was a peculiar one, with pockets of sense in it like plums in a pudding.
    He thought they were clean away, but there was Lucas’s voice, roaring from the lighter, Yates! Get them, man! Turning around, Thornhill saw something moving on the shimmering blackness of the water: another skiff closing on them. He dug his oars in, so deep, so sudden, to turn the boat, that Rob was sent sprawling sideways.
    As he had for the Doggett’s race, Thornhill shrank his being down to nothing but his arms, his shoulders, his feet straining against the board. He rowed so hard he could feel his backside lifting off the thwart, and he thought he had left the skiff behind. A quick glance over his shoulder let him see the square bulk of the cathedral, and he made for Crawshay’s Wharf just along from it, had got the oars shipped and was about to make fast when out of the splashing blackness another boat was upon him, and a big person scrambling from it into his own, making it rock and tilt, and there was Yates panting, I have got you, I will shoot you if you attempt to escape . Even in this moment, Thornhill wanted to laugh and say, Coming the high horse sits odd with you, Yates .
    Rob let out a yell, the boat lurched, and there was an almighty splash. His brother had gone over the stern and no more was heard from him.
    Thornhill could see the bulk of Yates, smell the pipe he always had about him. Yates was not a bad man, had been a lighterman himself. Over the years, plenty of things had stuck to his fingers. For God’s sake have mercy, Mr Yates , Thornhill pleaded. You know the consequence! He saw the bulk hesitate and he tried again. You known me ten years, Yates, would you have me swing?
    And while Yates stood, not advancing on him, saying nothing, Thornhill made a lunge aft, athwart of the boat, and sprang over the side. The tide was but half in, so the water was up to no more than his thighs, and there was Yates’s skiff bobbing alongside. Itwas the work of an instant to feel his way to the knot, slip it free, and pull himself into the boat. As Thornhill pulled hard away there was no sound from Yates.
    Yates might have been a merciful man, but Lucas was not. A man who knew himself destined to be Lord Mayor of London was not one to turn a blind eye to a work of thievery. There was a reward advertised,