FullReads

I

“Ah! She’s off!”

A deafening blast came from the great steamship’s siren, and a long sigh went up from the crowd upon the quay. Someone raised a cheer that was quickly drowned in the noise of escaping steam. Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, the vessel began to move.

A black gap appeared, and widened between her and the wharf till it became a stretch of grey water veiled in the dank fog of a murky sea. The fog was everywhere, floating in wreaths upon the oily swell, blotting out all distant objects, making vague those that were near. Very soon the crowd on the shore was swallowed up and the great vessel was heading for the mouth, of the harbour and the wide loneliness beyond.

Sybil Denham hid her face in her hands for a moment and shivered. There was something terrible to her in the thought of those thousands of miles to be traversed alone. It cowed her. It appalled her.

Yet when she looked up again her eyes were brave. She stood committed now to this great step, and she was resolved to take it with a high courage. Whatever lay before her, she must face it now without shrinking. Yet it was horribly lonely. She turned from the deck-rail with nervous haste.

The next instant she caught her foot against a coil of rope and fell headlong, with a violence that almost stunned her. A moment she lay, then, gasping, began to raise herself.

But as she struggled to her knees strong hands lifted her, and a man’s voice said gruffly:

“Are you hurt?”

She found herself in the grasp of a powerful giant with the physique of a prize-fighter and a dark face with lowering brows that seemed to wear an habitual scowl.

She was too staggered to speak; the fall had unnerved her. She put her hand vaguely behind her, feeling for the rail, looking up at him with piteous, quivering lips.

“You should look where you are going,” he said, with scant sympathy. “Perhaps you will another time.”

She found the rail, leaned upon it, then turned her back upon him suddenly and burst into tears which she was too shaken to restrain. She thought he would go away, hoped that he would; but he remained, standing in stolid silence till she managed in a measure to regain her self-control.

“Where did you hurt yourself?” he asked then.

She struggled with herself, and answered him. “I–I am not hurt.”

“Then what are you crying for?”

The words sounded more like a rude retort than a question.

She found them unanswerable, and suddenly, while she still stood battling with her tears, something in the utterance touched her sense of humour. She gulped down a sob, and gave a little strangled laugh.

“I don’t quite know,” she said, drying her eyes. “Thank you for picking me up.”

“I should have tumbled over you if I hadn’t,” he responded.

Again her sense of humour quivered, finally dispelling all desire to cry. She turned a little.

“I’m glad you didn’t!” she said with fervour.

“So am I.”

The curt rejoinder cut clean through her depression. She broke into a gay, spontaneous laugh.

But the next instant she checked herself and apologized.

“Forgive me! I’m very rude.”

“What’s the joke?” he asked.

She answered him in a voice that still quivered a little with suppressed merriment.

“There isn’t a joke. I–I often laugh at nothing. It’s a silly habit of mine.”

His moody silence seemed to endorse this remark. She became silent also, and after a moment made a shy movement to depart.

He turned then and looked at her, looked full and straight into her small, sallow face, with its shadowy eyes and pointed features, as if he would register her likeness upon his memory.

She gave him a faint, friendly smile.

“I’m going below now,” she said. “Good-bye!”

He raised his hat abruptly. His head was massive as a bull’s.

“Mind how you go!” he said briefly.