My father had already taken his seat in the carriage; my luggage was piled up on the front seat alongside the driver, and nothing therefore remained but for me to jump in, slam-to the door, and we were off.
It seemed equally impossible to my father and to myself to utter a single word during that short—though, in our then condition of acute mental tension, all too long—drive to the Hard; we sat therefore dumbly side by side, with our hands clasped, until the carriage drew up, when I sprang out, hastily hailed a boatman, and then at once began with feverish haste to drag my belongings off the carriage down into the road. I had still to say good-bye to my father, and I felt that I must shorten the time as much as possible, that ten minutes more of such mental torture would drive me mad.
The boatman quickly shouldered my chest, and, gathering up the remainder of my belongings in his disengaged hand, discreetly trotted off to the wherry, which he unmoored and drew alongside the slipway.
Then I turned to my father, and, with the obtrusive lump in my throat by this time grown so inconveniently large that I could scarcely articulate, held out my hand to him.
“Good-bye, father!” I stammered out huskily.
“Good-bye, Dick, my son, my own dear boy!” he returned, not less affected than myself. “Good-bye! May God bless and keep you, and in His own good time bring you in health and safety back to us! Amen.”
A quick convulsive hand-clasp, a last hungry glance into the loving face and the sorrow-dimmed eyes which looked so longingly down into mine, and with a hardly-suppressed cry of anguish I tore myself away, staggered blindly down the slipway, tumbled into the boat, and, as gruffly as I could under the circumstances, ordered the boatman to put me on board the Daphne.