Roberts only shook his head.
"Then I must run away somehow. Will you help me?"
"Yes, that I will."
That very evening Eric escaped from the Stormy Petrel, unknown to all but Roberts. They were in the dock, and he dropped into the water in the evening, and swam to the pier, which was only a yard or two distant; but the effort almost exhausted his strength, for his knee was still painful, and he was very weak.
Wet and penniless, he knew not where to go, but spent the sleepless night under an arch. Early the next morning he went to a pawnbroker's, and raised £2:10s. on his watch, with which money he walked straight to the railway station.
It was July, and the Roslyn summer holidays had commenced. As Eric dragged his slow way to the station, he suddenly saw Wildney on the other side of the street. His first impulse was to spring to meet him, as he would have done in old times. His whole heart yearned towards him. It was six weeks now since Eric had seen one loving face, and during all that time he had hardly heard one kindly word. And now he saw before him the boy whom he loved so fondly, with whom he had spent so many happy hours of school-boy friendship, with whom he had gone through so many schoolboy adventures, and who, he believed, loved him fondly still.
Forgetful for the moment of his condition, Eric moved across the street. Wildney was walking with his cousin, a beautiful girl, some four years older than himself, whom he was evidently patronising immensely. They were talking very merrily, and Eric overheard the word Roslyn. Like a lightning-flash the memory of the theft, the memory of his ruin came upon him; he looked down at his dress--it was a coarse blue shirt, which Roberts had given him in place of his old one, and the back of it was stained and saturated with blood from his unhealed wounds; his trousers were dirty, tarred, and ragged, and his shoes, full of holes, barely covered his feet. He remembered too that for weeks he had not been able to wash, and that very morning, as he saw himself in a looking-glass at a shop-window, he had been deeply shocked at his own appearance. His face was white as a sheet, the fair hair matted and tangled, the eyes sunken and surrounded with a dark color, and dead and lustreless. No! he could not meet Wildney as a sick and ragged sailor-boy; perhaps even he might not be recognised if he did. He drew back, and hid himself till the merry-hearted pair had passed, and it was almost with a pang of jealousy that he saw how happy Wildney could be, while he was thus; but he cast aside the unworthy thought at once. "After all, how is poor Charlie to know what has happened to me?"