vening developments.

He had asked no questions of Liane, and his knowledge of Cherbourg was
limited to a memory of passing through the place as a boy, with a
case-hardened criminal as guide and police at their heels. But assuming
that Liane had booked passages for New York by a Cunarder, a White Star
or American Line Boat--all three touched regularly at Cherbourg, west
bound from Southampton--he expected presently to go aboard a tender and
be ferried out to one of the steamers whose riding lights were to be
seen in the roadstead. Meanwhile he was lazily content....

Mellow voices of bell metal swelled and died on the midnight air while,
lounging against the motor car--with Liane at his side registering more
impatience than he thought the occasion called for--Lanyard listened,
stared, wondered, the breath of the sea sweet in his nostrils, its
flavour in his throat, his vision lost in the tangled web of masts and
cordage and funnels that stencilled the moon-pale sky: the witching
glamour of salt water binding all his senses with its time-old spell.

It was quiet there upon the quay. Somewhere a winch rattled drowsily
and weary tackle whined; more near at hand, funnels were snoring and
pumps chugging with a constant, monotonous noise of splashing. On the
landward side, from wine shops across the way, came blurred gusts of
laughter and the wailing of an accordeon. The footfalls of a watchman,
or perhaps a sergent de ville, had lonely echoes. The high electric
arcs were motionless, and the shadows cast by their steel-blue glare
lay on the pave as if painted in lampblack.

Dupont, the road to Paris, seemed figments of some dream dreamed long
ago...

The tip of a pretty slipper, tapping restlessly, continued to betray
Liane's temper. But she said nothing. Privately Lanyard yawned. Then
Jules, tagged by three men with the fair white jackets and shuffling
gait of stewards, sauntered into view from behind two mountains of
freight, and announced: "All ready, madame." Liane nodded curtly,
lingered to watch the stewards attack the jumble of luggage, saw her
jewel case shouldered, and followed the bearer, Lanyard at her elbow,
Jules remaining with the car.

The steward trotted through winding aisles of bales and crates, turned
a corner, darted up a gangplank to the main-deck of a small steam
vessel, so excessively neat and smart with shining brightwork that
Lanyard thought it one uncommon tender indeed, and surmised a martinet