ll be all right?" continued Tillotson.

"What do you mean?" repeated the captain from his seat. "Speak plain."

"I mean that you had better bolt," said Tillotson in a hurried whisper.
"There's a heavy reward out for you, which Captain Wilson wants. You
can't do what you did for nothing, you know."

Captain Gething sat down in his seat again and shaded his face with his
hand.

"I'll go back," he said brokenly. "Wilson told me he was alive, and that
it was all a mistake. If he's lying to me for the price of my old neck,
let him have it."

"What about your wife and daughter?" said Tillotson, who was beginning
to have a strong disrelish for his task. "I saw in the paper last night
that Wilson had got you. He's gone ashore now to make arrangements at
the station."

"He had a letter from my daughter this morning, said the old man
brokenly.

"He told you it was from her," said Tillotson. "Get your things and come
quick."

Excited by the part he was playing, he bent forward and clutched at the
old man's arm. Captain Gething, obedient to the touch, rose, and taking
his battered cap from a nail, followed him in silence above.

"We're going for a drink," said Tillotson to the boy. "We'll be back in
ten minutes."

"All right," said Henry cheerfully; "wish I was going with you."

The other laughed airily, and gaining the quay, set off with the silent
old man by his side. At first the captain went listlessly enough, but as
he got farther and farther from the ship all the feelings of the hunted
animal awoke within him, and he was as eager to escape as Tillotson
could have wished.

"Where are we going?" he inquired as they came in sight of the railway
station. "I'm not going by train."

"London," said Tillotson. "That's the most like-ly place to get lost
in."

"I'm not going in the train," said the other doggedly.

"Why not?" said Tillotson in surprise.

"When they come back to the ship and find me gone they'll telegraph to
London," said the old man. "I won't be caught like a rat in a trap."

"What are you going to do, then?" inquired the perplexed Tillotson.

"I don't know," said the old man. "Walk, I think. It's dark, and we
might get twenty miles away before daybreak."

"Yes, we might," said Tillotson, who had no fancy for a nocturnal
pilgrimage of the kind; "but we're not going to."

"Let me go alone," said the old man.

Tillotson shook his head.

"They'd be bound to spot you tramping about the country,