“Hardly put off to-night, will you?” said I to a mate beside me, with the best assumption of swagger at my command.
He was encasing himself in tarpaulins, and appeared not to hear me.
I repeated my inquiry, and added, in the feeble hope that he might contradict me, “Doesn’t look like quieting down.”
“No,” said he, looking up at the sky; “there’ll be a goodish bit more of it before we’re over. All aboard there?”
“No,” I shouted, rushing towards the gangway; “I’m not!”
Oh, how I wished I could have found myself just left behind. As it was I was precipitated nearly head first down the gangway, amid the by no means friendly expletives of the sailors, and landed at the bottom a clear second after my hat, and two seconds, at least in advance of my umbrella. Before I had recovered all my component parts the Royal Duke was off.
It was not the slightest comfort to me to reflect that if only I had dashed on board the moment I saw my man, and arrested him there and then, we might both be standing at this moment comparatively happy on that quay whose lights blinked unkindly, now above us, now below, now one side, now the other, as we rolled out of the harbour.
“Bit of a sea outside, I guess,” said a voice at my side.
Outside! Then what was going on now did not count! I clapped my hat down on my head and made for the cabin door.
It had entered my mind to penetrate into the steerage at once and make sure of my runaway; but when I contemplated the distance of deck between where I now stood and where I had seen him disappear; and when, moreover, as the boat’s head quitted the lee of the breakwater a big billow from the open leapt up at her and washed her from stem to stern, something within me urged me to go below at once, and postpone business till the morning.