"Thereabouts?... I suppose you worked your passage and then gave them the slip?"
"No. I thought of that, but it was a bit too chancy."
"Then what did you do?"
"Well—strictly between ourselves, George—it's much better not talked about—you see my difficulty—but I swam it."
I stopped dead in my stride. "You what!"
He spoke apologetically, as if it were something not quite creditable.
"Yes. But I don't want to give you a wrong impression. I didn't swim it really fairly. Not like Webb and Burgess. I only swam it more or less. For one thing, I hadn't trained, you see."
I recovered my breath. "What do you mean by swimming it more or less?"
His modesty was almost excessive. "It was like this, George. You see I rather funked just jumping in at Dover and trusting to luck to bring me across. It's a devil of a long swim, you know, and besides, I had to have my clothes; couldn't land here with nothing on. So I got hold of a fellow at the Lord Warden, a boatman who'd been with Woolf when he just missed it. I swore him to secrecy and all that, and fixed things up with him, and he gave me tides and times and currents and so on. I told him I was only an amateur who didn't want to make a fuss till he'd had a sighting-shot, and—well, it cost me a tenner. But it saved no end of trouble. He and another chap came across with me in a little motor-launch. I greased myself and got into a mask, and a mile out of Dover I went overboard. Even then I didn't swim it fairly, for I was hauled in again after about six hours for another greasing. My flesh was quite dead half an inch in, you see. I was sick too. If we'd been really meant to do that sort of thing we should have been given scales, like fishes."
"Well, and then?"