Martha’s rescue at the Thames turns a night-time encounter with apparent danger into a fragile commitment to help another person. David Copperfield and Daniel Peggotty find her at the river’s edge in Westminster, where she understands the water as the fitting companion to a life marked by shame and estrangement. They draw her away from it, hear her insist that she had no part in Emily Peggotty’s misfortune, and give her a purpose she accepts without reservation: to find Emily and help reunite her with Daniel.

The pursuit to Millbank

David and Daniel encounter Martha in Westminster and follow her as she moves away from the crowded streets. Their pursuit takes them past Westminster Abbey and into the narrow riverside streets by Millbank. When Martha crosses the road, apparently trying to avoid the footsteps behind her, the two men continue on the opposite side, keeping close while staying in the shadows. The route places the encounter between a busy city and the dark water toward which Martha is heading.

At the end of the street stands a dilapidated wooden building, probably an old ferry-house. Martha reaches the river there and walks slowly along its brink, looking intently at the water. David and Daniel approach using boats and barges stranded in the mud. David signals Daniel to wait while he goes forward to speak with her, unsettled by her solitary walk and by the position she has chosen beneath the shadow of an iron bridge. The detail of the approach matters: Daniel is held back for the first contact, but the rescue becomes immediate when Martha struggles.

Rescue from the river’s edge

David calls Martha by name. She screams and resists him with such force that he doubts he could hold her alone; Daniel’s stronger hand joins his, and Martha collapses between them. They carry her away from the water and lay her on dry stones. Her repeated cry, "Oh, the river!", makes clear how powerfully the place has seized her attention, while her shaken condition leaves the men to comfort and steady her before asking what has brought her there.

Martha describes the river as a likeness of herself: it begins in the country, passes through streets that have become polluted and miserable, and flows toward a troubled sea. She feels that she belongs to it and must go with it. The comparison gives physical form to her despair and to the social rejection she has endured. Yet this is not a completed plunge into the water: David and Daniel find her before she goes in, and their intervention interrupts the movement from inward desolation toward possible death.

Remorse, recognition, and forgiveness

Once she is able to speak, Martha says she does not want to plead for herself. She believes herself lost and without hope, but asks David to tell Daniel that she was never responsible for Emily’s misfortune. David answers that they have not blamed her and know she was innocent of Emily’s flight. Her fear is not merely that she has been condemned for her own circumstances: she has also dreaded that people would say she had corrupted Emily because the two women had once kept company.

Martha remembers the kindness Emily showed her and regrets that she did not have a better heart when she might have benefited from that care. Her greatest grief, she says, was being separated from Emily; after hearing of what had happened, she also feared that Emily’s former association with her would damage Emily’s good name. This confession makes clear that Martha’s distress includes loyalty and remorse, not complicity in the event that separated Emily from her family. David had previously treated Martha gently when others shunned her, and she recalls that kindness as part of why she trusts him now.

Daniel answers her fear of judgment by telling her not to expect condemnation from him. He explains that he and David have sought her because Daniel is still searching for Emily, who has become more dear to him, not less, since her disappearance. The change in Daniel’s response is consequential: the man who might have approached Martha only as a witness or source of information instead recognizes her suffering and makes room for her help. His trust offers a practical alternative to the isolation that had driven her toward the river.

A pledge that gives despair a task

Martha asks whether Daniel will trust her to speak to Emily if she finds her, shelter her if shelter is available, and then bring Daniel to her without Emily’s knowledge. David and Daniel agree. Martha solemnly promises to devote herself to the search, never to waver or give it up while there remains any hope. Her vow is addressed quietly to the night sky, and she stands afterward in silence beside the water she had just described as her natural company.

The promise changes the immediate direction of the scene. Martha refuses financial assistance, explaining that accepting money would undo the trust and purpose that now keep her from the river. David urges her not to hold to that terrible idea, but her insistence establishes that she understands the task itself—not payment—as the secure connection she has been offered. The rescue therefore has both a physical and a relational outcome: she is removed from immediate danger, and Daniel entrusts her with a role in finding Emily.

The episode makes compassion concrete. Daniel’s forgiveness is not simply a softened judgment, and Martha’s recovery is not presented as complete; the evidence shows her still pale, shaken, and vulnerable. Instead, their encounter turns sympathy into an undertaking. Martha, who feared that her reputation made her fit only for the river, leaves the meeting with a commitment that binds her to Emily’s possible return and to Daniel’s search.