t actually shaken by
many fears. She had looked so small and young; and who could know what
deviltry lurked abroad that night?

He had not gone with her because it was necessary that he be in Boulogne
the next morning. And also, the very chance of getting her across lay
in her being alone and unobserved.

So he stood by the rail and looked back and said a wordless little prayer
that if there was trouble it come to his boat and not to the other.
Which might very considerably have disturbed the buyers had they known
of it and believed in prayer.

Sara Lee stood in the shadows and listened. There were voices overhead,
from the bridge. A door opened onto the deck and threw out a ray of
light. Some one came out and went on shore, walking with brisk ringing
steps. And then at last she put down her bag and tried door after door,
without result.

The man who had gone ashore called another. The gangway was drawn in.
The engines began to vibrate under foot. Sara Lee, breathless and
terrified, stood close to a cabin door and remained immovable. At one
moment it seemed as if a seaman was coming forward to where she stood.
But he did not come.

The Calais boat was waiting until the other steamer had got well out of
the harbor. The fog had lifted, and the searchlight was moving over
the surface. It played round the channel steamer without touching it.
But none of this was visible to Sara Lee.

At last the lights of the quay began to recede. The little boat rocked
slightly in its own waves as it edged away. It moved slowly through
the shipping and out until, catching the swell of the channel, it shot
ahead at top speed.

For an hour Sara Lee stood there. The channel wind caught her and tore
at her skirts until she was almost frozen. And finally, in sheer
desperation, she worked her way round to the other side. She saw no
one. Save for the beating heart of the engine below it might have been
a dead ship.

On the other side she found an open door and stumbled into the tiny dark
deck cabin, as chilled and frightened a philanthropist as had ever
crossed that old and tricky and soured bit of seaway. And there, to be
frank, she forgot her fright in as bitter a tribute of seasickness as
even the channel has ever exacted.

She had locked herself in, and she fell at last into an exhausted sleep.
When she wakened and peered out through the tiny window it was gray
winter dawn. The boat was quiet, and before her lay the quay of Calais