I
"Ah! She's off!"
A deafening blast came from the great steamship's siren, and a long sigh
went up from the crowd upon the quay. Someone raised a cheer that was
quickly drowned in the noise of escaping steam. Very slowly, almost
imperceptibly, the vessel began to move.
A black gap appeared, and widened between her and the wharf till it
became a stretch of grey water veiled in the dank fog of a murky sea.
The fog was everywhere, floating in wreaths upon the oily swell,
blotting out all distant objects, making vague those that were near.
Very soon the crowd on the shore was swallowed up and the great vessel
was heading for the mouth, of the harbour and the wide loneliness
beyond.
Sybil Denham hid her face in her hands for a moment and shivered. There
was something terrible to her in the thought of those thousands of miles
to be traversed alone. It cowed her. It appalled her.
Yet when she looked up again her eyes were brave. She stood committed
now to this great step, and she was resolved to take it with a high
courage. Whatever lay before her, she must face it now without
shrinking. Yet it was horribly lonely. She turned from the deck-rail
with nervous haste.
The next instant she caught her foot against a coil of rope and fell
headlong, with a violence that almost stunned her. A moment she lay,
then, gasping, began to raise herself.
But as she struggled to her knees strong hands lifted her, and a man's
voice said gruffly:
"Are you hurt?"
She found herself in the grasp of a powerful giant with the physique of
a prize-fighter and a dark face with lowering brows that seemed to wear
an habitual scowl.
She was too staggered to speak; the fall had unnerved her. She put her
hand vaguely behind her, feeling for the rail, looking up at him with
piteous, quivering lips.
"You should look where you are going," he said, with scant sympathy.
"Perhaps you will another time."
She found the rail, leaned upon it, then turned her back upon him
suddenly and burst into tears which she was too shaken to restrain. She
thought he would go away, hoped that he would; but he remained, standing
in stolid silence till she managed in a measure to regain her
self-control.
"Where did you hurt yourself?" he asked then.