Explore "James II" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The City clocks were chiming four in the starry chill of a December morning as the King and his two attendants hurried down Whitehall stairs to the river. A boat, bespoken hours earlier by his valet Abbadie, who was in waiting for the party, lay ready off the public steps. These, for an obvious reason, had been chosen in preference to the privy stairs, and the result seemed to justify the precaution. The fugitives were not observed or followed, it appeared -- unless any significance attached to the form of a sleeping loafer, sprawled heavily over a baulk of timber hard by -- and in any case they were all prepared, if challenged, to assume the rôle of belated citizens taking boat after a frolic.
The two oars, proved men, were, if not in the actual secret of the escape, sufficiently near it to act in all things with quiet and dispatch. The embarkation proceeded noiselessly, and Sir Edward Hales, the last of the party, was about to step on board, when a remark, _sotto voce_, from one fellow to the other arrested his attention. He paused, his foot on the gunnel, and quickly demanded an explanation.