"Stowaway, eh?" growled a squat man in dungaree. "Chuck him overboard, Sam, an' let him swim home to his mamma."
In that moment, Ken knew that he could never have sailed with the Celestine, that he would have slipped back to the wharf before she cast loose her hawsers. He looked around him as if he had just awakened from sleep-walking and did not know where he found himself. He gazed up at the gaunt mainmast, black against the green night sky, at the main topsail, shaking still as the men hauled it taut.
"I'm not a stowaway," he said; "I'm going ashore now."
He walked down the gang-plank with all the dignity he could muster, and never looked behind him as he left the wharf. He could hear the rattle of the Celestine's tackle, and the boom, boom of the sails. Once clear of the docks he ran, blindly.
"Fool!" he whispered. "Oh, what a fool! what a senseless idiot!"
The house was dark as he turned in at the gate. He stopped for an instant to look at its black bulk, with Orion setting behind the chimney-pots.
"I was going to leave them--all alone!" he whispered fiercely. "Good Heavens!"
He removed the letter silently from Felicia's door,--he was reassured by seeing its white square before he reached it,--and crept to his own room. There a shadowy figure was curled up on the floor, and it was crying.
"Kirk! What's up?" Ken lifted him and held him rather close.
"You weren't here," Kirk sniffed; "I got sort of rather l-lonely, so I thought I'd come in with you--and the b-bed was perfectly empty, and I couldn't find you. I t-thought you were teasing me."