Sumner robs Baxter and flees Hull

Sumner robs Baxter and flees Hull after a confrontation that converts Baxter’s attempt to buy silence into a calculated escape. Baxter offers him fifty guineas and a clean departure; Sumner instead demands every penny in the safe, takes the money, and leaves Baxter bound in the stable. The flight carries him through northern England and into a new attempt to leave the country, while a newspaper report identifies him as a wanted man. The episode’s central reversal is not simply that Sumner takes the money: Baxter’s proposed settlement treats the past as something that can be paid away, but Sumner refuses the terms and makes his own future with the proceeds.

The Scheme Behind the Confrontation

The encounter grows out of a commercial plot organized around the Volunteer and its insured loss. Earlier, Baxter showed Arthur Brownlee papers and emphasized that twelve thousand pounds, divided three ways, would far exceed what they could expect to earn killing whales. Brownlee’s agreement was qualified: Campbell had to be present when needed, or Brownlee would turn the ship around and head home. The papers and the sum give the scheme a concrete financial stake, while Brownlee’s condition shows that its success depends on coordination rather than money alone.

Baxter describes money as a force that cannot be controlled, but the plot requires careful control of appearances. Campbell warns that the Volunteer must be sunk in a way that does not invite questions from the underwriters. The timing matters too: he wants the sinking to happen before he risks becoming trapped by the ice himself. When the ship is protected by a purpose-built ice dock, Henry Drax recognizes that letting it sink later would look less convincing. The dock therefore serves two purposes: it answers an immediate danger from moving ice and becomes part of the scene meant to make the loss appear plausible.

By the time Sumner confronts Baxter, the ships are sunk and Henry Drax is dead. Sumner accuses Baxter of arranging for Cavendish to sink the Volunteer and of relying on a chain of deaths to leave the affair neat and unexplained: Drax would shoot Sumner, then Stevens would shoot Drax. The plan did not unfold as intended. Sumner’s account makes the confrontation a reckoning over the scheme, but Baxter denies that Sumner has understood the situation correctly and redirects attention to the two dead men in the timber yard, one of whom Sumner killed.

Baxter’s Offer and Sumner’s Reversal

Baxter presents himself as the person who can manage the danger. He points to Sumner’s uncertain background and former service in India, and argues that an investigation could expose him as well as Baxter. Since Drax is dead and both ships are lost, Baxter says, pursuing the matter cannot restore either the dead or the ships. His proposed solution is practical and self-interested: Sumner should leave, and Baxter will pay him for killing Drax, whatever the circumstances.

The offer is specific. Baxter unlocks the large iron safe in his study, takes out a brown canvas wallet, and gives it to Sumner, saying it contains fifty guineas in gold. He proposes that Sumner go to London, forget the Volunteer and Drax, and let Baxter invent a story to divert attention from the timber-yard killings. Sumner holds the wallet but does not agree. He recognizes that the moment has unsettled his sense of what comes next, yet Baxter’s money does not resolve the problem on Baxter’s terms.

Sumner places the wallet on the desk and demands the rest of the safe’s contents. Baxter treats the demand as though it might be a joke and offers twenty guineas more than the original payment. Sumner persists and orders him to fill a leather satchel. That change—from accepting a negotiated payment to taking the full contents—makes the encounter a contest over agency as well as money. Baxter had framed himself as the man who could buy a new beginning and arrange the story told afterward; Sumner takes control of the money and refuses to let Baxter set the price of his departure.

The Escape from Baxter’s House

After Baxter fills the satchel, Sumner checks that the safe is empty. He binds Baxter’s hands with cord cut from a curtain, gags him with a napkin and cravat, and makes him lead the way to the stables. The route passes through the rear hallway and kitchen, out into an ornamental garden, and past its pond, fountain, potting shed, and gazebo. These ordinary domestic spaces become the passage from Baxter’s managed interior to Sumner’s escape.

In the stable, Sumner secures Baxter with a rope and warns him to remain quiet, telling him he may be found alive in the morning. He chooses an older gray horse rather than either of the two younger black horses. When it is unsettled, he rubs its neck and hums until it accepts the bit. He saddles it, carries the leather satchel, and leaves after checking that the mews is empty. The scene is presented as a sequence of practical decisions: restrain the man who could summon help, select a horse, prepare it, and depart without drawing attention.

At dawn Sumner is twenty miles north. He passes through Driffield, stops at Gorton to water the horse, and reaches Pickering late that night, hungry and short of sleep. At the inn he gives the name Peter Batchelor and claims to be traveling to see an ill uncle. He keeps Drax’s gun close while he sleeps, with the satchel hidden beneath the bed. The assumed identity and concealed money mark the next phase of the escape: Sumner is no longer simply leaving Baxter’s house but trying to make himself difficult to trace.

Pursuit, Disguise, and Departure

The escape becomes more precarious when Sumner reaches Guisborough. He sells the horse and saddle for half their value, then reads a newspaper report at the railway station. The account of the Hull murder and robbery names Patrick Sumner, identifies him as an Irish former soldier, describes the stolen horse, and reports Baxter’s reward for useful information. Sumner leaves the paper behind and boards a train to Middlesbrough with the satchel on his knees. Baxter’s promised ability to invent a story has not prevented a public account from identifying Sumner as the culprit; the report makes clear that the money has been taken at the cost of immediate exposure.

That night Sumner searches the dockside taverns for a foreign-speaking contact who will take him abroad. He finds a Swedish captain in the Baltic Tavern, whose brig is due to leave for Hamburg with coal and iron. The captain is wary and asks about the number of men Sumner has killed. Sumner first offers a single sovereign, admits that he has no passport or papers, and waits while the captain considers whether he can find passage. When the captain says that someone will take him if he pays well enough, Sumner adds a second sovereign. The captain’s response offers a route, not a guarantee: the evidence establishes that Sumner has found a prospective passage to Hamburg, not that the crossing has already been completed.

The event therefore ends with an escape in motion rather than a settled freedom. Sumner has taken the contents of Baxter’s safe, left Baxter restrained, eluded immediate pursuit, and secured a possible berth abroad. Yet the newspaper has named him, and his journey depends on false identity, limited cash, and an arrangement made without travel papers. The earlier scheme sought to turn a ship’s destruction into a convincing insurance loss; the Hull episode exposes how fragile such control becomes when a survivor refuses the offered settlement and carries the money—and the knowledge—away.