Story 9.
Chapter Two.
Bowled Out.
When we reached Fleetwood it was blowing (so I heard some one say) “half a cap.” I privately wondered what a whole cap must be like; for it was all I could do, by leaning hard up against the wind, and holding on my hat—a chimney-pot hat, by the way—to tack up the platform and fetch round for the Belfast steamer, which lay snorting and plunging alongside.
It takes a very good sailor to be cheerful under such circumstances. I felt profoundly melancholy and wished myself safe at home in my bed. The sight of the black and red funnel swaying to and fro raised qualms in me which, although still on terra firma, almost called for the intervention of a friendly steward. Alas! friend there was none.
In my desperation I was tempted basely to compromise with duty. How did I know Michael McCrane was on the steamer at all? He might have dropped out at any one of a dozen wayside stations between Bletchley and here. Indeed the probability was that he had. Or—and I felt almost affectionately towards him as the thought crossed my mind—even if he had come so far, he, like myself, might be a bad sailor, and prefer to spend the night on this side of the angry Channel. I could have forgiven him much, I felt, had I been sure of that.
In any case, I asked myself earnestly, was I justified in running my employers into the further expense of a return ticket to Belfast without being reasonably sure that I was on the right track? And was I reasonably sure? Was I even—
On the steerage deck of the steamer below me, with a portmanteau in one hand and a brand-new hat-box and a rug in the other, a figure staggered towards the companion ladder and disappeared below. That figure, even to my unwilling eyes, was naught else but a tragic answer to my own question.
Michael McCrane was on board, and going below!
A last lingering hope remained.