They came while he was still shouting. Their boat was alongside. They were coming up the ladder. Captain Cairns, on the bridge with the pilot, looked down at the vague clambering forms and cursed them one by one and all together. They were in tarpaulin coats, clutching at their bundles or chests and seeming to have an absurd amount of baggage; one at least of them—if not every one of them, as the Captain said—appeared to be drunk. The others had to aid him as he sprang weakly and clumsily from the boat to the ladder.
Then soon the Mercedaria began to glide down the river, emitting a melancholy siren blast to demand her rights of way. They were off. The dusk was deepening, the rain swept along with them; all was greyness, mistiness, and smoke, and the city towers and pinnacles seemed to sink lower and to fade behind banks of cloud, below which hundreds of lights began to twinkle feebly. The wretchedness and misery of departure enveloped the whole broad estuary.
Dyke had put on a waterproof and a sou’wester, and he prowled to and fro below the bridge gazing across the water, now on this side, now on that. He was quiet now, and yet not altogether easy in his mind. The fretfulness caused by dread of delay and interruption could not immediately be subdued, and perhaps certain doubts still lingered. He went down to the lower deck, made his way aft and stood for a while right at the stern, looking out intently. One might have supposed that he was now silently brooding on his love, sadly thinking of the girl he had left behind him; but in truth he thought only of the voyage and the venture. Watching and waiting, as the low land slid away and the darkness fell, he was wondering if a steam pinnace with those confounded custom-house people would come racing after him, and feeling that he would like to sink them if they came. But nothing happened. It was all right.
He went up again to the chart-room and stood there, cheerful, rubbing his hands. He slapped jolly old Cairns on the back and the two sat there for a bit, drinking whisky and water, and gaily chatting, like two schoolboys glorying in the success of their latest prank.
The pilot had been dropped. It was black night now and the Mercedaria was safely out at sea; rain and wind drove at her as she ploughed across the pleasant heave and swell, rolling scarcely at all, but filled with throbbings and vibrations—with delightful sounds too, of orders repeated through the darkness, the scurry of footsteps, of the rudder chains clanking in their grooves, the work of her screw, the splash of water against her bows: sounds that are so stimulating and seductive to those who delight in journeys by sea, but so insidiously distressing, so suggestive of augmented woe, to those unpractised in the ways of the unsteady deep.
Every throb and murmur rejoiced the heart of Dyke; the very smells of the ship were refreshing to him. Some of them rose, to welcome and cheer, as he went down the companion-way towards the comfortable lamp-light of the saloon. There was the peculiar characteristic stuffiness, with odours of leather, stale salt water, and dead fish, enriched at the moment by the efforts of Reynolds the steward frying meat and onions in grease, and that oil lamp burning cheerily but with a smoky flame.
Dyke stood in the saloon doorway, his face all wet, his beard glistening, and the water falling from his coat to the floor. He stood there, dripping but full of enjoyment, for one moment; then Reynolds in the cuddy heard him shout.
“Great heavens! Emmie!”
She was calmly sitting at the table, with the lamp-light on her white face; and she spoke to him in gentle pleading tones.