Fay descended the ladder and stood in the gloom of the forward starboard boat which was drawn aboard and lashed to the davits. He allowed his right
hand to coil over the butt of the American automatic. Its cold chill struck through his body. He was in no mood to be thwarted by MacKeenon or the Yard. The bitterness of a vain project distilled black thoughts in his brain.
He refused to allow himself to think of Saidee Isaacs. She was gone, and forever, he thought. He steeled himself against his better judgment. He wanted the wide places where he would be free from shadows and reaching hands. Then, and afterwards, he could consider the entire matter. It had been too soon since leaving Dartmoor for him to have found himself. He knew this with the intuition of the released felon. A man’s mind was a delicate thing. It could not adjust itself over night or during the period of a few days. It wanted weeks and months.
A plan took form and substance as he waited by the boat. He did not even know the ports of call of the ship he was on. Any question toward finding out would excite suspicion. The purser would be around for the fare. Fay wondered, with a light laugh, what port he would name. Any one would do as a guess and then if the ship did not touch at that port, he could explain that a mistake had been made. A fugitive was safer without a set plan.
A Dutch village was passed to port. The low roofs of this settlement had scarcely been swallowed by the mist when Fay felt the ship swing her bow and reverse the propeller. Bells clanged in the engine-room. A stolid head appeared through the dark opening of the pilot-house. Deep-sunken eyes, beneath a cloth cap,
stared forward and over the vessel’s bow. A denser mass showed there. This mass took the form of another ship which was passing in the night.
Two blasts sounded from the siren aft the squat funnel. These were answered as both ships hugged the banks of the canal. They glided by, starboard to port, with a scant fathom’s distance between the rails.
Fay leaned outboard, grasped a davit-stay and studied the faces of the passengers on the boat. He ran his eyes down the line. He felt the answering stares. Broad faces and keen ones were there. Flashily dressed travelers were sandwiched between burly burgers. Children stood on the high places of the crowded deck with their bow legs supporting grotesque bodies.
It came to Fay, with a pang, that these were refugees and passengers from England. Some were returning to the invaded districts of Belgium. Others had been sent back to claim their own. They were the last wave receding from the war. They would land at the Lowland city he had quitted so hastily.
He searched anew for the name of the boat. It had undoubtedly left a northern British or Scotch port that morning. The stern passed. Fay leaned further outboard and squinted his eyes. He made out the name.