More than one long and golden hour the Sailor wandered through bracken and heather. He didn't know in the least where he was going, and there seemed no reason why he should care. He had a wonderful sense of adventure. Here was something real. This was the noble and gorgeous life to which the streets of Blackhampton, the deck of the Margaret Carey, the sojourn at King John's Mansions were the dreadful but necessary prelude.
After a long beat across country, and away, away he knew not where, he struck a path which carried him into a charming village tucked away under a hill. It then occurred to him that he was very hungry. The sign of "The Chequers" in the village street brought the fact home. At this neat hostelry with a roof of thatch he was able to declare himself a bona fide traveler, and was rewarded with a noble chunk of bread and cheese and a glass of beer, a thin and tepid brew whose only merit was the quality of wetness. But such fare and an hour's rest on a wooden bench in a cool parlor with a sanded floor was Elysium.
After that again the road—but only the road in a manner of speaking. The Sailor, roaming now the high seas of his desire, was in no mood at present for the ordered routes of commerce. Let it be the open country. Let him be borne across multitudinous seas on the wings of fancy. Therefore, as a bird flies, he struck across the pathless heather. The bracken rose waist high, but wherever it ran he followed it, now through the close-grown woods, now across furzy common and open spaces.
On and on he wandered all the golden afternoon. And then quite suddenly came evening and an intense weariness which was not made less because he didn't know where he was. He only knew that he was in Surrey and very tired. But, all at once, Providence declared itself in an unexpected way. Straight ahead among the trees was a tiny opening, and threading it a hum of telegraph wires.
This could only mean that a main road was at hand. Quickened to new life by such a rare piece of luck he pushed on, thanking his stars. Evidently he could not be far from a town or a railway. As a fact, he had struck the Guilford Road, and a hundred yards or so along it the friendliest milestone he had ever met assured him that he was three miles from the country town of Surrey.
Those three miles, honest turnpike as they were, proved a test of endurance. But they ended at last. Footsore and limping now, he crossed a bridge and entered a railway station where the lamps were lit already. And then Providence really surpassed itself! The last train to London was due in twenty minutes.
The Sailor flung himself down on a seat in the station in a state of heavenly fatigue. It had been such a day as he had never known, and his final gracious act of fortune was a fitting climax. It was true the last train to London was twenty minutes late, but it sufficed to know that it was surely coming.
Finally it came, and the Sailor entered it. Moreover, he had the carriage to himself, and was able to lie full length on the cushions in an orgy of weariness. He dozed deliciously all the way to Waterloo, which he reached at something after eleven. It was striking midnight by St. Clement's Church as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 14 Brinkworth Street. At a quarter past that hour the Sailor was in his bed too deeply asleep even to dream of Athena.
XI