back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two
stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about,
seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind
the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life.
I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the
north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure
pallor. And back again I flew.

'I cannot see it...!' I cried.

'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said
with decision.

'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!'

'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?'

'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then
death--just think, together--on the same couch, for ever, heart to
heart--how sweet!'

'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?'

'It travelled slowly before. Get quick--will you?--into one of the
smaller boats by the quay--there is one just under the crane that is an
air-boat--you have seen me turn on the air, haven't you?--that handle on
the right as you descend the steps under the dial-thing--get first a
bucket of oil from the shop next to the clock-tower in the quay-street,
and throw it over everything that you see rusted. Only, spend no
time--for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and compass: well,
the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First unmoor, then
to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly North-East by
North. I will meet you on the sea--go now--'

I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms,
and have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short
firm-fleshed upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and
mutter upon her, and say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was
gone from the telephone, I still stood there, hoarsely calling after
her: 'My wife! My wife!'

* * * * *

I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the
previous day. Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be
forty knots: in three hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of
her dying before I saw her: for, apart from the deliberate movement of
the vapour that first time, I fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she
would surely come, and not fail: as dying saints fore-tasted and trusted
Eternal Life.

I was no sooner on board the _Stettin_ than her engines