Now I don’t know it is exactly to my credit, but it certainly says something for my physical condition, that I was first down. I plunged panting across the railway lines, and simply hurled myself down the embankment, on to the shore.
The first boat with the sailors already in it, the boodle in its linen bags gleaming ghostily in a tumbled heap at the bottom, was just pushing off. I tore through the water up to my waist, and they soon had me on board, pulling me in excitedly by the arms. The night was so dark that, a dozen strokes from the shore, there was nothing to be seen but the yacht’s lights, fifty yards ahead. We flew over the water, the men talking, swearing, panting, and helping one another push at the oars. We were alongside almost immediately, and I was the first up on deck.
“All safe, sir?” cried the captain, as I swung myself up.
“Get her ready,” I panted, “the others will be here in a minute.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
My sister ran up and kissed me. Miss Rybot was standing at the taffrail, glaring like a young eagle over the black water, and drumming her fingers on the rail. A few heavy raindrops were beginning to fall.
“Where’s Lucy?”
“We sent her below; she’s reading a book.”
I paused to listen for the other boat, and could hear the tearing of the oars, the thud of the rowlocks. Away down from Monaco came the stern and menacing beat of a drum. Through the open lighted windows of the Casino concert-room I could see dark figures preparing to descend the ladders I had noticed considerately placed there against the balconies.
And then, suddenly, for the first time since we had been aboard, just as the other boat came tearing alongside and I stumbled off breathlessly below, it began to rain in earnest, a seething, hissing downpour; what my old Derbyshire nurse used picturesquely to call, whole water.