“Pull in then. Soon’s you’ve got ’em stowed show a spark and I’ll follow.”
Anson’s gig disappeared shorewards, wallowing deep. Jacky’s George gripped a stay with his hook and swung over the rail into his own boat.
“I can’t do it, cap’n,” he called. “Good night and thank ’e kindly all the same. Cast off!”
They were away. It burst upon Ortho that he had not seen his hero—that he never would. In a minute the tall cutter would be fading away seawards as mysteriously as she had come and the great King Nick would be never anything to him but a voice. He could have cried out with disappointment.
“Push off,” said Jacky’s George.
Ortho leant on his oar and pushed and, as he did so, somebody sprang from the cutter’s rail, landed on the piled casks behind him as lightly as a cat, steadied himself with a hand on his shoulder and dropped into the stern-sheets beside the fisherman.
“Coming ashore wid ’e, George,” said the voice, “and by God’s grace I’ll persuade ’e yet.”
King Nick was in the boat!
“Mind what I bade ’e, Zebedee,” he hailed the cutter. “Take she round to once and I’ll be off to-morrow night by God’s providence and loving kindness.” The cutter swung slowly on her heel, drifted beam on to the lapping tide, felt her helm and was gone, blotted out, swallowed up, might never have been.
But King Nick was in the boat! Ortho could not see him—he was merely a smudged silhouette—but he was in the stern-sheets not a yard distant. Their calves were actually rubbing! Could such things be?