They had sailed to Quarantine through an almost continual blare of every kind of noise-making instrument on the decks of every ship they passed or met. With his head at the port Polaris caught, in a sudden interval of quiet, a few words from the deck above him. He recognized the voice of Captain Scoland, talking to the mate.
"They'll come for him in a launch at Quarantine," he said. "It's all arranged. Here's the cabin key. Better take a couple of the boys to help the keepers. He might try to make trouble."
That was all—and enough!
Soon after his return to consciousness Polaris had learned that the door to the cabin where he lay was kept locked always. It had been one of his earliest causes for suspicion. Some time after midnight that night he set his powerful shoulder to that door, and pressed his weight against it. Minutes he stood there, gradually increasing the pressure, until the lock sprung in its wards with a slight snap, and the knob yielded in his twisting fingers.
The man who had brought the food had left in the cabin a few rough garments such as the sailors wore. Polaris had donned them as he occasionally left the berth in the day time. He wore them now. Had any one met him, he scarcely would have been recognized as the "madman." He had found a razor in Burleson's cabin, and had shift to shave himself cleanly. He had hacked off the most of his long hair with the same instrument, and had disposed of the evidences of his tonsorial efforts by throwing all through the port into the harbor. Around his neck he wore the necklace of Kalin.
Only a half-defined notion of what he was about to do was in his mind, but there was no fear.
He stole along the silent corridor, and gained the deck and the rail, without being observed by the lone sailor on watch near the wheel-house. Ready to his hand, it seemed, were a short length of plank and a trailing rope, attached firmly to some part of the ship, but long enough and loose enough to serve him.
With the plank under one arm he clambered over the rail and let himself down with the rope. He could not swim a stroke, but he reached the water, and with one arm over the stout bit of plank, he struck out fearlessly for the glittering skyline of the great city that lay ahead.