As the stream poured out of the gangway, the doctor glanced at each new comer's face, and then seizing him by the wrist uncovered it. Since this took him two or three seconds, one could have fancied that he either possessed peculiar powers, or that the test was a somewhat inefficient one. Then he looked at the official, who made a sign, and the man moved on.
In the meanwhile a group of first-class passengers leaning on the thwart-ship rails close by looked on, with complacent satisfaction with the fact that they were born in a different station, or half-contemptuous pity, as their temperament varied. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. The latter noticed that Wyllard sat on a hatch forward near the head of the gangway, with a pipe in his hand. She drew Mrs. Hastings's attention to it.
"Whatever is Mr. Wyllard doing there?" she asked.
Her companion, who was wrapped in furs, for there was a sting in the east wind, smiled at her.
"That," she said, "is more than I can tell you; but Harry Wyllard seems to find an interest in what other folks would consider most unpromising things, and, what's more to the purpose, he's rather addicted to taking a hand in. It's a habit that costs him something now and then."
Agatha asked nothing further. She was interested in Wyllard, but she was at the moment more interested in the faces of those who swarmed on board. She wondered what they had endured in the lands that had cast them out, and what they might still have to bear. It seemed to her that the murmur of their harsh voices went up in a great protest, an inarticulate cry of sorrow. While she looked on the doctor held back a long-haired man who was following a haggard woman shuffling in broken boots. He drew him aside, and when, after he had apparently consulted with the other official, two seamen hustled the man towards a second gangway that led to the tug, the woman raised a wild, despairing cry. It, however, seemed that she blocked the passage, and a quartermaster drove her, expostulating in an agony of terror, forward among the rest. Nobody appeared concerned about this alien's tragedy, except one man, but Agatha was not astonished when Wyllard rose and quietly laid his hand upon the official's shoulder.
A parley appeared to follow, somebody gave an order, and when the alien was led back again the woman's cries subsided. Agatha looked at her companion, and once more a smile crept into Mrs. Hastings's eyes.
"Yes," she said, "I guessed he would feel he had to stand in. That's a man who can't see any one in trouble." Then she added, with a little whimsical sigh, "He had a bonanza harvest last fall, any way."
They moved aft soon afterwards, and the Scarrowmania was smoothly sliding seawards with the first of the ebb when Agatha met Wyllard. He glanced at the Lancashire sandhills, which were fading into a pale ochre gleam amidst the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that moved back to them ahead.
"You're off at last! The sad grey weather is dropping fast astern," he said. "Out yonder, the skies are clear."