But inquiring of the agent, they learned that the canal steamers left only at two o’clock in the morning.
“There’s a railroad, or the fellows couldn’t come back that way,” suggested Laybold.
“That’s so; you have more wisdom than a Duxbury clam.”
They ascertained that a train left Gottenburg at noon, by which they could reach Wenersberg the same day. They knew nothing of the plan of the principal, which included a special train from the canal to the main line of railway; but they desired to see more of the interior of Sweden, and they were confident they should see the excursionists either at Wenersberg or on the way. It suited them better to make a trip even for a few hours, than to wander about a city which they had already exhausted. But they were obliged to wait some time for the train, and, after a couple of hours of “heavy loafing” about the streets, they returned to the pier. An English steamer had just arrived, and a boat was landing her passengers.
“Who are those fellows?” said Laybold, pointing to the steamer’s boat. “They wear the ship’s uniform.”
“Right; they do, and they came from that steamer,” replied Scott.
“There’s Sanford! I should know him a mile off. They are the second cutters, or I am a Dutchman.”
“Right again,” added Scott, as the passengers landed.
The steamer was the one in which Sanford and his companions had taken passage at Christiania the evening before. The absentees, “on a cruise without running away,” were sorry to see the ship at anchor in the harbor, for some of them had hoped to be too late for her. When they landed, the first persons they encountered were Scott and Laybold, who gave them a very cordial greeting. Each party had a story to tell of its own adventures, and Scott knew Sanford and his associates too well to think it necessary to conceal from them the fact that he and Laybold had been the sad victims of “finkel.”