All the way up the river from the Nore after they had picked up the pilot the ship moved through a dense fog. A huge P. & O. liner, heavily laden with passengers and mails, she had to proceed cautiously, like some blind giant, emitting every two minutes a dolorous wail from her foghorns.
"Clear the way, I am coming," was the substance of the weird sound, and in answer to it shrill whistles sounded on all sides, from small fleets of fishing-boats, coal hulks, and cargo boats bound from far-off lands.
"We are here too," they panted in answer; "don't run us down, please."
It was eerie work, even for the passengers, who remained in blissful ignorance of the danger of their situation. By rights the ship should have been in dock before breakfast; they had planned the night before that an early dawn should see them awake and preparing to land; yet here was eleven o'clock, and from what the more hardy of them could learn by direct questioning of those in authority, they had not as yet passed Canvey Island. Dick Grant, ship's doctor and therefore free of access to inquirers, underwent a searching examination from all and sundry. The P. & O. regulations are, that the officers shall not talk or in any way become friendly with any of the passengers; the ship's doctor and the purser share the responsibility of looking after their clients' comfort, well-being, and amusement. On occasions such as a fog, when the hearts of passengers are naturally full of questions as to where they are, how long will the fog last, is there any danger, and ought we to have on our life-belts, these two afore-mentioned officials have a busy time. Dick felt that Barton, the purser in question, had played him rather a shabby trick, for Barton had asserted that the work of sorting out passengers' luggage and seeing to their valuables would confine him to his office till the ship docked, which excuse left Dick alone to cope with the fog-produced situation.
Dick had been at sea now for close on two years. He had shifted from ship to ship, had visited most of the ports in the near and far East. This was his last voyage; he was going to go back and take up life in London. From Marseilles he had written to Mabel telling her to expect him the week-end after they got in.
His journeyings had given him many and varied experiences. The blue eyes had taken unto themselves some of that unwavering facing of life which seems to come almost always into the eyes of people who spend their lives upon the sea. He had learned to be patient and long-suffering with the oddities of his patients, passengers who passed through his hands on their brief journeyings; he had seen the pathos of the sick who were shipped with the full knowledge that they would die ere the first port was reached, simply because the wistful ache of home-sickness would not allow them to rest. Home-sickness! Dick had known it keep a man alive till the grey cliffs of Dover grew out of the sea and he could fall back dead and satisfied.
Board ship throws people together into appalling intimacy; Love springs full-winged into being in the course of an afternoon; passion burns at red-heat through drowsy, moon-filled nights. Almost wilfully, to begin with, Dick had flung himself into romance after romance; perhaps unknown to himself, he sought to satisfy the hunger of heart which could throb in answer to a dream, but which all reality left untouched. He played at love lightly; he had an ingrained reverence for women that even intercourse with Anglo-Indian grass-widows and the girl who revels in a board-ship flirtation was unable altogether to eradicate. He made love, that is to say, only to those women who first and openly made love to him; but it is to be doubted whether even the most ardent of them could boast that Dicky Grant had ever been in love with them. They slipped out of his ken when they disembarked at their various ports, and the photographs with which they dowered him hardly served to keep him in mind of their names. And a certain weariness had grown up in his heart; he felt glad that this was to be his last voyage. He had put in two good crowded years, but he was no nearer realizing his dream than he had been on the day when Mabel had said to him: "Did you think I should not know when you fell in love?"
Dick was thinking of this remark of Mabel's as he stood by himself for the time being, right up by the front of the ship peering into the fog, and with the thought came a memory of the girl with the brown eyes who had stood to face him, her hands clenched at her sides, as she told her piteous tale. Piteous, because of its very bravado. "I am not afraid or ashamed," she had claimed, while fear stared out of her eyes and shame flung the colour to her face. What had the past two years brought her? Had she stood with her back to the wall of public opinion and fought her fight, or had the forces of contempt and blame been too strong for her?
A very light hand on his arm brought him out of his thoughts with a start, and he turned to find a small, daintily-clad lady standing beside him.
"How much longer shall we be?" she asked; "and when am I going to see you again, Dicky, once we land?"