Besides ours, there was not another one in the world.
On came the flambeau over the middle arch.

It seemed to be coming toward us rather than we going toward it.

Nearer lowered the black dim outline of the houses on the Bridge, with here and there the flicker of a candle in a window, magnified to starlike brightness by distance.
Clearer and clearer came the dash and the splash, the roar and the turmoil of the waters pouring through the terrible death's door, the middle arch.

Yet over the middle arch was the only flambeau on London Bridge, placed there because it was the broadest of all the spans, and we dared not attempt to pass under the Bridge in the dark.
But worse than the middle arch ahead of us was the king's barge following close behind us.

It, too, was in the current, though its twelve sweeps could easily have taken it ashore.