The count, trembling like a leaf, leant for support against the crazy table.
"Sit down, my friend," said Brown. "We must keep our heads. Jack has come on a desperate adventure; it takes my breath away; he must tell us what it means."
A long conversation ensued—not long in point of time, but in the amount of matter compressed into it. The difficulty of arranging the escape lay in the impossibility of knowing from what quarter the wind would be blowing at any hour that might be determined. Without a favourable wind the Yu-ye could not get out to sea; and it would be madness for Mr. Brown and the count to go aboard until there was a practical certainty of the junk being able to slip away. As soon as they were missed, every boat in the roadstead would be searched. And even if the vessel cleared the bay, there was always a risk of its being followed by the government launch engaged to patrol the fishing settlements along the coast, perhaps by a gunboat sent from Korsakovsk in response to a telegram. The launch at this moment lay at anchor in the bay, and unless the Yu-ye got a good start and a fair wind, it must inevitably be overhauled, though the government boat was an old and crazy vessel whose best work was long since done.
Granted a favourable wind, then, it was arranged that the two, the following midnight, should make their way down to the point at which Jack had landed. If the wind proved unfavourable, the departure must be postponed. The junk would slip her moorings at the first glint of dawn, and before the escape was discovered Jack hoped they would be hull down on the horizon.
"But what speed can you make?" asked Mr. Brown. "You can't outrun a steamer."
"I doubt whether the launch would venture far into the open," said Godunof, the colonist who had carried the letters between Gabriele and her father. "She can't stand heavy weather, and a gale may spring up at any moment in these seas. Besides, she'd be chary of meeting Japanese cruisers in the Strait of La Perouse. I wonder, indeed, she ventured into this bay—no better than an open roadstead, and exposed to attack."
"She only arrived two days ago from Korsakovsk," said Mr. Brown. "She came on a matter of revenue; nothing else brings her here."
"Well, we must chance it, Father," said Jack. "We've got here safely, and please God we shall get away safely too. We can run for the nearest Japanese port, and there we'll be as safe as—as in Portsmouth Harbour, by Jove!"
The plan having been discussed rapidly, yet with anxious care, Jack took leave of the two gentlemen—all three with full hearts wondering whether they would ever meet again—and returned by the way he had come.
His return was eagerly expected on board the junk. He had scarcely clambered over the side when a figure closely enwrapped in Chinese dress moved towards him.