A melancholy and funereal sound of bells tolled vaguely through the thick air, striking the midnight hour, as he reached the head of State street. The streaming gusts had lulled, and in dead silence, broken only by the hollow tramp of his quick footfalls, and by an occasional muffled shudder of rolling thunder, he sped over the deserted pavement, while ever and anon the sudden blue of the lightning lit for a moment the dark bulks of the looming buildings, and gleamed ghastfully on their multitude of gilded signs to vanish into sightless darkness.
Soon he reached the wharf, and saw beyond the dim wilderness of masts and yards, far out at sea, under the heavy canopy of cloud, a broad half-sphere of clear purple sky with the moonlit level of the distant ocean shining in lustrous silver beneath it. Again the lightning quivered, bluely irradiating for an instant the dark vault into livid violet, and as it vanished, and the darkness closed, a long, staggering roll of heavy thunder resounded above him, and a few large drops of rain fell.
Breaking into a run, he sped along the pier, and presently saw a vague figure standing and looking toward him. It was Captain Fisher, dressed in an oil-skin coat and tarpaulin, on which the sprinkling rain was pattering.
“Here I am,” whispered Harrington. “Have they arrived?”
“Yes,” returned the Captain in a low voice. “We’re all here.”
“In then, and away at once,” returned Harrington, rushing along the pier in advance of him to the boat.
They came upon it presently, and in a faint shimmer of blue lightning Harrington saw Wentworth and Bagasse standing below him in the little vessel. Letting himself down from the pier, he dropped lightly into it, followed by the Captain.
“By Jove!” murmured Wentworth, with a low laugh, while the Captain was unhampering the sails, “this is a bad night for our work.”
“No, it’s a good night,” whispered Harrington, glancing up at the hulls of the two vessels between which the boat lay, to be sure that no one was listening. “The storm is a real godsend, for it will be sure to drive those fellows in doors, and I hope every man of them.”