The noise of the sea was so great that Cornish touched his companion's arm, and pointed, without speaking, to one of the vessels where a light twinkled feebly through the spray breaking over her. It seemed to be the only vessel preparing to go to sea on the high tide, and, in truth, the weather looked anything but encouraging.
“How are we going to get on board?” shouted Roden, amid the roar of the waves.
“Walk,” answered Cornish, and he led the way into the sea.
Hampered as they were by their heavy oil skins, their progress was slow, although the water barely reached their knees. The Three Brothers was bumping when they reached her and clambered on board over the bluff sides, sticky with salt water and tar.
“She'll be afloat in ten minutes,” said a man in oil-skins, who helped them over the low bulwarks. He spoke good English, and seemed to have learned some of the taciturnity of the seafaring portion of that nation with their language; for he went aft to the tiller without more words and took his station there.
Roden seated himself on the rail and looked back towards Scheveningen. Cornish stood beside him in silence. The spray broke over them continuously, and the boat rolled and bumped in such a manner that it was impossible to stand or even sit without holding on to the clumsy rigging.
The lights of Scheveningen were stretched out in a line before them; the lighthouse winked a glaring eye that seemed to stare over their heads far out to sea. The summer lightning showed the sands to be bare and deserted. There were no unusual lights on the sea wall. The Kurhaus and the hotels were illuminated and gay. The shore took no heed of the sea tonight.
“We've succeeded,” said Roden, curtly, and quite suddenly he rolled over in a faint at Cornish's feet.
The next morning, Dorothy received a letter at the Villa des Dunes, posted the evening before by Cornish at Scheveningen.
“We hope to get away tonight,” he wrote, “in the 'pink,' the Three Brothers. Our intention is to knock about the North Sea until we find a suitable vessel—either a sailing ship trading between Norway and Spain on its way south, or a steamer going direct from Hamburg to South America. When I have seen your brother safely on board one of these vessels, I shall return in the Three Brothers to Scheveningen. She is a small boat, and has a large white patch of new canvas at the top of her mainsail. So if you see her coming in, or waiting for the tide, you may conclude that your brother is in safety.”