They passed another street lamp, and the boy saw that Mr. Thompson had something else in his hand. It was a fantastically shaped metal case. The murderer opened it coolly and took out a queer, dark looking substance. He cut a piece off with his knife, put it in his mouth, then closed the blade and returned it to his pocket. The boy began to breathe again. It was a plug of tobacco. 

 All the same, Henry Harper knew he was not yet out of the wood. He was as sure as he was sitting in a four-wheeler—a thing he had never done before in his life—that this large and hairy sailor with the clasp knife was the murderer. Moreover, as he cast terrified glances through the wet windows into the sodden streets, he was certain this was Whitechapel itself. Everything looked so dark and mean and sullen, with noisome alleys on every hand and hardly any lamps to see them by, that full-grown women, let alone boys of thirteen, could be done to death in them without attracting the police. 

 It was not a bit of use trying to escape. Jack the Ripper would cut his throat if he moved hand or foot. The best thing he could do was to keep still. That was all very well, but he was sick with fear. He was being taken into the heart of Whitechapel to be done to death as Mary Ann Nichols and Catherine Morton—he was always very good at remembering names—and the other victims had been. He was familiar with all the details; they had been enormously discussed; there wasn't a newsboy in Blackhampton who hadn't his own private theory of these thrilling crimes. For instance, Henry Harper himself had always maintained that the sailor was a big sailor, and that he had a black beard. He had little thought a week ago when he had presented this startling theory to young Arris with a certain amount of intellectual pride that he would so soon be in a position to prove it. 

 They came to some iron gates. The cab stopped under a lamp. Mr. Thompson put his head out of the window. If the boy had not been petrified with terror now would have been his chance. But he couldn't move. 

 The Ripper began to roar like a bull at some unseen presence, and soon the gates moved back and the cab moved on. And then about a minute later, for the first time in his life, the boy saw the mast of a ship. He knew it was a ship. He had seen pictures in shop windows. There was one shop window in particular he frequented every Friday evening, which always displayed the new number of the 'Lustrated London News and the 'Lustrated London News was great on ships. This was a kind of glorified canal boat with masts, 

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