This was our only long conversation during the impatient days while I waited for Edmund’s post-card.
A note came at last to say they were starting. I was to begin looking out for them on the afternoon following the day I received it. The time of their arrival of course depended on wind and tide. I had somehow forgotten to allow for this uncertainty in my anticipation, and now it added to my impatience.
Bates packed up my things wistfully. He had pleaded hard to be taken, and I should have been glad to have him in many ways. But it appeared there was no possible accommodation for him on the Astarte. Besides, I had no one else to leave in charge of the pigeons and Snape.
Bates had the imagination and sympathy which make the best kind of servant, and he conceived of me as something utterly helpless in his absence.
I shook off Snape as soon as I could after lunch, and went up on the Downs where I could get a wide view of the Channel.
There was a fresh topsail breeze from the east, a fair wind for the Astarte. I knew it had held steady for forty-eight hours. It was not unreasonable to expect that she would come up to time or ahead of it.
I had an unreasoning desire to see her for which I could not account. But I had a feeling that something was going to intervene to prevent my sailing. When the idea had first been broached, it had been but a matter of a trip to me. Now it had somehow assumed an unwarranted importance. My desire for the start filled me with senseless apprehensiveness. I was like a schoolboy dreading rain on his holiday.
I could not account for this mood in myself; it made me uneasy, and intensely intolerant of any society—especially Snape’s.
There was a warm April sun glowing on the Downs, and glistening on the loose flints that everywhere pushed their way up through the chalk, and lay about among the short grass of the sheep-pastures. The Channel was a crisp blue under a shining sky, and the air was full of the infinitely soothing sound of the distant calling of sheep.
Peace came over me as I lay watching for the expected sail, wondering what exotic form it would take, trying to picture the long bowsprit and the head-sails “like a skein of geese” that I had been told of.