The foremost and biggest of these seemed to be the captain, although, so far as outward appearances went, the only difference between him and his crew lay in a marlin-spike which he wore slung to a thong beside his knife. When I reached the deck he was telling a long story to Mistress Bertram, and telling it very slowly. But the drift of it I soon gathered. While the fog lasted he could not put to sea.
"Nonsense!" cried my masterful companion, chafing at his slowness of speech. "Why not? Would it be dangerous?"
"Well, madam, it would be dangerous," he answered, more slowly than ever. "Yes, it would be dangerous. And to put to sea in a fog? That is not seamanship. And your baggage has not arrived."
"Never mind my baggage!" she answered imperiously. "I have made other arrangements for it. Two or three things I know came on board last night. I want to start-to start at once, do you hear?"
The captain shook his head, and said sluggishly that it was impossible. Spitting on the deck he ground his heel leisurely round in a knothole. "Impossible," he repeated; "it would not be seamanship to start in a fog. When the fog lifts we will go. 'Twill be all the same to-morrow. We shall lie at Leigh to-night, whether we go now or go when the fog lifts."
"At Leigh?"
"That is it, madam."
"And when will you go from Leigh?" she cried indignantly.
"Daybreak to-morrow," he answered. "You leave it to me, mistress," he continued, in a tone of rough patronage, "and you will see your good man before you expect it."
"But, man!" she exclaimed, trembling with impotent rage. "Did not Master Bertram engage you to bring me across whenever I might be ready? Ay, and pay you handsomely for it? Did he not, sirrah?"
"To be sure, to be sure!" replied the giant unmoved. "Using seamanship, and not going to sea in a fog, if it please you."
"It does not please me!" she retorted. "And why stay at Leigh?"
He looked up at the rigging, then down at the deck. He set his heel in the knothole, and ground it round again. Then he looked at his questioner with a broad smile. "Well, mistress, for a very good reason. It is there your good man is waiting for you. Only," added this careful keeper of a secret, "he bade me not tell any one."
She uttered a low cry, which might have been an echo of her baby's cooing, and convulsively clasped the child more tightly to her. "He is at Leigh!" she murmured, flushing and trembling, another woman altogether. Even her voice was wonderfully changed. "He is really at Leigh, you say?"
"To be sure!" replied the captain, with a portentous wink and a mysterious roll of the head. "He is there safe enough! Safe enough, you may bet your handsome face to a rushlight. And we will be there to-night."
She started up with a wild gesture. For a moment she had sat down on a cask standing beside her, and forgotten our peril, and the probability that we might never see Leigh at all. Now, I have said, she started up. "No, no!" she cried, struggling for breath and utterance. "Oh, no! no! Let us go at once. We must start at once!" Her voice was hysterical in its sudden anxiety and terror, as the consciousness of our position rolled back upon her. "Captain! listen, listen!" she pleaded. "Let us start now, and my husband will give you double. I will promise you double whatever he said if you will chance the fog."
I think all who heard her were moved, save the captain only. He rubbed his head and grinned. Slow and heavy, he saw nothing in her prayer save the freak of a woman wild to get to her man. He did not weigh her promise at a groat; she was but a woman. And being a foreigner, he did not perceive a certain air of breeding which might have influenced a native. He was one of those men against whose stupidity Father Carey used to say the gods fight in vain. When he answered good-naturedly, "No, no, mistress, it is impossible. It would not be seamanship," I felt that we might as well try to stop the ebbing tide as move him from his position.
The feeling was a maddening one. The special peril which menaced my companions I did not know; but I knew they feared pursuit, and I had every reason to fear it for myself. Yet at any moment, out of the fog which encircled us so closely that we could barely see the raft below-and the shore not at all-might come the tramp of hurrying feet and the stern hail of the law. It was maddening to think of this, and to know that we had only to cast off a rope or two in order to escape; and to know also that we were absolutely helpless.
I expected that Mistress Bertram, brave as she had shown herself, would burst into a passion of rage or tears. But apparently she had one hope left. She looked at me.
I tried to think-to think hard. Alas, I seemed only able to listen. An hour had gone by since we parted from that rascal in the court, and we might expect him to appear at any moment, vengeful and exultant, with a posse at his back. Yet I tried hard to think; and the fog presently suggested a possible course. "Look here," I said suddenly, speaking for the first time, "if you do not start until the fog lifts, captain, we may as well breakfast ashore, and return presently."
"That is as you please," he answered indifferently.
"What do you think?" I said, turning to my companions with as much carelessness as I could command. "Had we not better do that?"
Mistress Bertram did not understand, but in her despair she obeyed the motion of my hand mechanically, and walked to the side. The younger woman followed more slowly, so that I had to speak to her with some curtness, bidding her make haste; for I was in a fever until we were clear of the Whelp and the Lion Wharf. It had struck me that, if the ship were not to leave at once, we were nowhere in so much danger as on board. At large in the fog we might escape detection for a time. Our pursuers might as well look for a needle in a haystack as seek us through it when once we were clear of the wharf. And this was not the end of my idea. But for the present it was enough. Therefore I took up Mistress Anne very short. "Come!" I said, "be quick! Let me help you."
She obeyed, and I was ashamed of my impatience when at the foot of the ladder she thanked me prettily. It was almost with good cheer in my voice and a rebound of spirits that I explained, as I hurried my companions across the raft, what my plan was.
The moment we were ashore I felt safer. The fog swallowed us up quick, as the Bible says. The very hull of the ship vanished from sight before we had gone half a dozen paces. I had never seen a London fog before, and to me it seemed portentous and providential; a marvel as great as the crimson hail which fell in the London gardens to mark her Majesty's accession.
Yet after all, without my happy thought, the fog would have availed us little. We had scarcely gone a score of yards before the cautious tread of several people hastening down the strand toward the wharf struck my ear. They were proceeding in silence, and we might not have noticed their approach if the foremost had not by chance tripped and fallen; whereupon one laughed and another swore. With a warning hand I grasped my companions' arms, and hurried them forward some paces until I felt sure that our figures could not be seen through the mist. Then I halted, and we stood listening, gazing into one another's strained eyes, while the steps came nearer and nearer, crossed our track and then with a noisy rush thundered on the wooden raft. My ear caught the jingle of harness and the clank of weapons.
"It is the watch," I muttered. "Come, and make no noise. What I want is a little this way. I fancy I saw it as we passed down to the wharf."
They turned with me, but we had not taken many steps before Mistress Anne, who was walking on my left side, stumbled over something. She tried to save herself, but failed and fell heavily, uttering as she did so a loud cry. I sprang to her assistance, and even before I raised her I laid my hand lightly on her mouth. "Hush!" I said softly, "for safety's sake, make no noise. What is the matter?"
"Oh!" she moaned, making no effort to rise, "my ankle! my ankle! I am sure I have broken it."
I muttered my dismay, while Mistress Bertram, stooping anxiously, examined the injured limb. "Can you stand?" she asked.
But it was no time for questioning, and I put her aside. The troop which had passed were within easy hearing, and if there should be one among them familiar with the girl's voice, we might be pounced upon,