peared not to hear me.

I repeated my inquiry, and added, in the feeble hope that he might
contradict me, "Doesn't look like quieting down."

"No," said he, looking up at the sky; "there'll be a goodish bit more of
it before we're over. All aboard there?"

"No," I shouted, rushing towards the gangway; "I'm not!"

Oh, how I wished I could have found myself just left behind. As it was
I was precipitated nearly head first down the gangway, amid the by no
means friendly expletives of the sailors, and landed at the bottom a
clear second after my hat, and two seconds, at least in advance of my
umbrella. Before I had recovered all my component parts the _Royal
Duke_ was off.

It was not the slightest comfort to me to reflect that if only I had
dashed on board the moment I saw my man, and arrested him there and
then, we might both be standing at this moment comparatively happy on
that quay whose lights blinked unkindly, now above us, now below, now
one side, now the other, as we rolled out of the harbour.

"Bit of a sea outside, I guess," said a voice at my side.

Outside! Then what was going on now did not count! I clapped my hat
down on my head and made for the cabin door.

It had entered my mind to penetrate into the steerage at once and make
sure of my runaway; but when I contemplated the distance of deck between
where I now stood and where I had seen him disappear; and when,
moreover, as the boat's head quitted the lee of the breakwater a big
billow from the open leapt up at her and washed her from stem to stern,
something within me urged me to go below at once, and postpone business
till the morning.

I have only the vaguest recollection of the ghastly hours which ensued.
I have a wandering idea of a feeble altercation with a steward on
hearing that all the berths were occupied and that he had nowhere to put
me. Then I imagine I must have lain on the saloon floor or the cabin
stairs; at least, the frequency with which I was trodden upon was
suggestive of my resting-place being a public thoroughfare.

But the treading under foot was not quite so bad as being called upon to
show my ticket later on. That was a distinctly fiendish episode, and I
did not recover from it all the night. More horrible still, a few
brutes, lost to all sense of humanity, attempted to have supper in the
saloon, within a foot or two of where I lay. Mercifully, their evil
machinations failed, for nothing could stay on the table.